It’s not what you’d normally expect a group of college students to do on a Friday evening. 
While some students undoubtedly spent said evening partying it up, a different kind of party was taking place in the LSU University Recreation Center: a party celebrating life. 
St. Jude’s Up Til Dawn, a student-led philanthropic program on college campuses across the United States, took place for the second year on the LSU campus. The event was held in hopes of raising donations for the famed children’s facility. 
For Up Til Dawn LSU’s executive director Lara Hutchinson, the program serves as a way for students to contribute and come together for a great cause culminating in Friday evening’s main event. 
“It’s to celebrate everything we’ve done for St. Jude,” Hutchinson says. “To show how we can stay up till dawn just like the patients of St. Jude.”
For some, it’s a chance to revel in the delight of doing something good for their fellow man. For one particular participant, it was an important show of solidarity with said patients since she was one of them. 
Taylor Makis, a 19-year old freshman at Southeastern University, has spent a large portion of her teenage years in and out of St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. At the age of 15, she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. While it can be aggressively treated in younger patients, some treatments can only promised a 30% remission rate in older patients.
Despite her aggressive treatments which, at times, were potentially life threatening, she credits the hospital with giving her the motivation to move forward.
“It’s a beautiful place,” Makis says. “You see these kids who are four and five and they’re missing arms and legs but they’re so happy, genuinely happy, just to be alive.”
By the close of the night, an estimated $76,000 was raised by the LSU community for St. Jude’s. This continues to spur on a hospital that some say brings hope to those in the darkness of night, bringing them into the light of the dawn.