Friday was a beautiful day to go for a winter walk, and one group of fraternity brothers is taking a long one.
All for a very good cause.
The Grand Valley fraternity Alpha Tau Omega decided to spend their spring break raising awareness and funds for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Twenty of them are walking 160 miles over the course of eight days, from Traverse City back to their Allendale campus.
Sophomore Jake Golding is a GVSU student, and one of the members of Alpha Tau Omega going on this long walk.
But he’s also someone with a personal connection to MS.
“I’ve seen my family going from being able to run and walk just to sitting in wheelchairs and not being able to take on their daily routines,” he says.
Jake and his fraternity brothers are foregoing the sun and surf of spring break to raise money and awareness for this disease.
He says they’re also out to prove fraternities aren’t all about the fun times.
“When you think about Greek life as a whole, people have kinda that mindset of it just being partying, it’s very surprising to see people out in public doing things for the community, but that’s essentially all that we do,” he says.
And by putting one foot in front of the other for eight days straight, they’re also getting a feel of what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes.
“Yeah, we have sore muscles, sore bones—we’ll deal with that for a week or two after, and that’s all good and fair, but at the end of the day you have to realize that people with MS deal with this for 10 to 15 plus years,” Jake says.
Tammy Willis, executive director of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, says the disease affects everyone differently.
“There is no predictive course of it and you never know from day to day what challenges you might be facing,” she says.
That’s the life of someone with multiple sclerosis.
It’s a chronic disease of the central nervous system that affects nearly one million Americans in the United States.
For some this walk is a tradition.
Senior Holt Wimbury says this experience will leave a mark on their lives, and hopefully the lives of others.
“We only have four years in college, and that means you only have four years to experience this,” he says.
For others, this walk is a mission.
“The funds raised help go to find a cure, and that’s in the form of research, but we also believe people need to be able to live their life to the fullest with MS,” Willis says, “It’s programs and services and referrals to help maneuver the challenges.”
So far this year, the fraternity has raised nearly $30,000.
“If this is what the future holds then we are in good hands,” Willis says.
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