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| Rick Mercer (centre) gets under a mosquito net with Spread the Net organizers Hilary Taylor, Victoria Jones and Keith Torrie. Tara Gault (fourth from left) is the DSU's vice-president education. (Nick Pearce Photo) |
“Oh, my God, I can’t believe it’s you!”
“I’ve never been this close to a famous person before!”
“Can you believe I’m in the same room as him?”
Dalhousie students got to rub shoulders with Rick Mercer last week, when the Canadian celeb came to campus to acknowledge the fundraising efforts of the Dal team that won the Spread the Net campus challenge.
Highlights of the visit are to be broadcast on Rick Mercer Report on CBC-TV on Tuesday, Feb. 19, 8 p.m. The show repeats on Friday, Feb. 22 at 8:30 p.m.
“Having Rick on campus was surreal,” says Hilary Taylor, one of the co-captains of the Dal team, along with Victoria Jones and Keith Torrie. “Our goal was to raise funds for the cause as well as build community within Dal.
See photo essay: Rick Mercer comes to campus
“Having Rick Mercer recognize what Dalhousie students were able to accomplish was rewarding, especially the way he ensured that everyone in the audience was a participant in the show. It was wonderful.”
The students raised a total of $19,300 for Spread the Net. The money goes to UNICEF to purchase bed nets, which will protect children in Africa from malaria-infected mosquito bites.
More than $2,000 of that total was raised while Mr. Mercer was on campus. With his star power handy, the students sold out of T-shirts in less than half an hour.
“Having Rick there … made the students come out in even greater droves,” says Ms. Jones, who had Mr. Mercer sign her T-shirt while she was wearing it.
Besides hanging out in the SUB, the TV personality waded in a quicksand simulator and hitched a ride on a concrete toboggan heading down Citadel Hill. He popped by Dalhousie archives to poke fun at yearbook photos of famous Dal alumnae, including Alexa McDonough, Ian Hanomansing, Scott Brison and Danny Williams. He took special glee in seeing a photo of Defense Minister Peter MacKay taken during his law student days using a “beer bong,” which he likened to a “torture device.”
A total of 73 teams from 35 campuses across Canada took part in the campus challenge, raising over $114,000 for Spread the Net. Runners-up were teams from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University.
LINKS: Rick Mercer on CBC | Rick Mercer's blog | Canada's Next Great Prime Minister