Blue man solo

Bob Huish painted himself blue in fulfilment of a dare, part of the Stephen Lewis Foundation's Dare to Remember campaign raising money for AIDS in Africa.

Professor Bob Huish attracted quite a few stares on Tuesday. But then it’s hard not to gawk when someone is blue.

The International Development Studies professor painted himself as part of A Dare to Remember campaign. The campaign involves daring somebody or yourself to do something—it can be anything the person chooses—in order to raise money and awareness for people with AIDS in Africa. It’s put on by the Stephen Lewis Foundation, an organization that funds grassroots AIDS projects.

Students in Dr. Huish’s class, Development and Activism (INTD 3102), laughed and cheered as he made his grand entrance into the classroom. He had sponged blue theatre paint on his entire body, although dressed in a turtleneck, jacket and trousers, only his blue head and blue hands were visible.

As he walked down the street, people’s reactions ranged from running away to asking for a photo. “People were literally running across Spring Garden to say hello and others would run the other way across Spring Garden to get away,” he says. “It was quite interesting.”

Dr. Huish’s favourite reactions were when two workers came down from telephone poles and snapped pictures of him with their camera phones. When Dr. Huish waved to a bus of people, everyone on the bus waved back.

The blue man was smiling all day.

He chose this dare because he felt it would really get people asking questions and give him the chance to tell people about the campaign and the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Mission accomplished. Dr. Huish says about 25 people asked him why he was blue.

Two days later, he still has slightly blue hands and fingernails. He laughed, “(Removing the dye) took a lot of scrubbing.”

“It’s entirely on the participation of the students that has made this a big success,” he added. “Cheers to the students.”

The dare was conditional—Dr. Huish would only complete it if 10 of his students completed dares too. The students worked as a team and set a goal to raise $2,000. In the end, they raised $8,400—the most of any student group in Canada. Some of the students committed to personal challenges that included giving up smoking, foregoing Facebook for a week, and in the case of Michael Wilson, walking as far as he could in one day (about 62 kilometres over seven hours). Students Charity May and Luke Dempsey duct-taped their legs together for a day, pausing to talk about the Stephen Lewis Foundation whenever someone asked them what they were doing.

John Cameron, assistant professor in the Department of International Development Studies, carried out on his dare too—bringing back the caped-and-spandexed Sustainable Development Person, who made his debut last year. On Monday, during the class Introduction to International Development Studies, Dr. Cameron leapt on desks and swooped up the aisle of the lecture hall dressed as his alter ego.

"International development studies can get quite depressing and daunting; we talk about global issues that don't have easy solutions," says Dr. Cameron. "So I was absolutely delighted to see so much student involvement ... it's important to feel there is an outlet, that individual actions can make a difference."