Members of a new AACC student club will take the Polar Bear Plunge together for charity in February.
The club will not request funding from the Office of Student Engagement to pay the required $50-per-plunger fee to take the Plunge, according to club President Gavin Kesselring. Instead, club members will fundraise and donate themselves.
Kesselring took the Plunge last year by jumping into the frigid waters of the Chesapeake Bay with more than 10,000 other locals and called the event “a blast.”
“Free hot chocolate and there’s free food and there’s games and dancing and everyone’s having a great time, and they go into the water, and it’s not so great, but it’s still a lot of fun,” Kesselring said. “It’s definitely a worthwhile experience.”
The Maryland State Police organize the annual Polar Bear Plunge and donate the entry fees to Special Olympics Maryland.
“Anyone can sign up for it,” Kesselring, a first-year business student, said. “We want to get students and teachers and faculty and family. We want to get everyone involved and … bring everyone together to have a really special day.”
Kesselring said he formed an official campus club to get outreach support from the Office of Student Engagement and the Student Government Association.
Being an official club “makes it a lot easier for people to get information about it,” Kesselring said. “I have all those resources from the Nest, I have the Office of Student Engagement to help me, I have SGA [to] help me.”
English professor KT Perkins, the club’s faculty adviser, said the members’ participation in the Plunge will be good for the college.
“It’ll be good for students because they will have this opportunity to do something crazy to help a really good cause,” Perkins said.
First-year business student Noah Watson, the club’s vice president, has never taken the Plunge, but said he looks forward to trying it.
“I’m a little nervous because it’s going to be really cold,” Watson said. “But other than that, I’m pretty excited.”