A series of benefit concerts and other fundraising activities organized by students last week raised about $9,500 for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, student leaders said Sunday.
T-shirts sold at Sunday's performance by hip-hop group Jurassic 5 raised $2,500, while USG donation tables in Frist Campus Center collected about $1,000. Previous concerts at Richardson Auditorium, the Carl A. Fields Center and the Quadrangle Club drew in the remainder of the money.
The figures were released less than a week after USG president Leslie-Bernard Joseph '06 sent a campus-wide email announcing a fundraising target of $24,000.
Joseph — who said in a subsequent interview that the exact target was $23,175, or $10 each from half of the student body — said the turnout at some of the concerts was lower than he had hoped.
"I was disappointed," he said of Thursday's benefit concert at Quad. "I think we had 500 people show up, which was very disappointing, especially when I heard that some students chose not to come because they were watching 'The O.C.'"
But Quad president Jamal Motlagh '06 said he thought Thursday's concert, which featured testimony from hurricane survivors and volunteers in addition to performances by student groups , went well, considering the poor weather earlier in the day and the short amount of time student groups had to plan the event.
"We were kind of shooting from the hip," he said.
Motlagh raved about Sunday's performance — also held at Quad — calling it "the most amazing experience of my life" and reporting that around 500 T-shirts were sold.
He estimated that 2,000 students attended the show.
Meanwhile, Thursday's concert collected $3,348.49 in donations, while Saturday's hip hop performance by Wu-Tang Clan's Gza drew $685.31, USG Undergraduate Life Chair Tom Brown '07 said.
Donations from Tuesday's classical music benefit concert at Richardson Auditorium have not yet been counted, but Brown estimated the performance netted around $2,000. He also said around $1,000 was collected at the donation tables in Frist.
Part of the money will be donated to the Red Cross, while the rest will be pooled with funds from other Ivy League schools and donated to schools and libraries in the hardest-hit Gulf Coast counties, Joseph said.
He added that the USG hopes to focus on the county where Dillard University in New Orleans is located in order to complement the efforts of the University administration. On Tuesday, the University announced a joint initiative with Brown University to help Dillard recover from the damage it incurred during the storm.
Joseph also stressed that the USG's fundraising efforts for hurricane relief are far from over. Donation tables will soon be established in the residential colleges, possibly as part of an inter-college contest, he said.
"We're thinking we might make it like a competition between residential colleges: whichever raises the most money will have dinner cooked by a Louisiana chef," he said. "It would be a Gulf Coast dinner instead of a Garden State dinner."
The SVC is also planning three volunteer trips to be held over fall break, and clothing drives are in the works as well, Joseph said.
Joseph added that he doesn't plan to lower the $23,175 fundraising target, even if it becomes apparent that student donations won't be enough to reach it.
"If we don't hit that number or are very far off, we should know that," he said.
Brown also said he would like more students to become involved in relief efforts.
"I'm glad people came out in the numbers they did," he said. "But now the job of the USG is to get the message out to the other students."
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