Omega Phi Alpha hosts ‘Polar Run’ clothing drive for Salvation Army
Aaron Chestnut and Matt Pantone were shivering, outside in their skivvies Saturday morning.
They’d just finished running through campus, and now, standing by Greene Street, neither had on more than a pair of boxers.
They were two of about 40 runners in Omega Phi Alpha service sorority’s Polar Run, according to Samantha Versace, a second-year public relations student, who organized the race.
It began shortly after 9 a.m. by the Darla Moore School of Business, starting with a charge toward the Pickens Street Bridge and turning through the Horseshoe before ending across from the Russell House.
As they passed by Gambrell Hall and the Colloquium Cafe, they peeled off layers and layers of shirts and coats, throwing them in the air and strewing piles of clothes behind them. One woman paused and hopped on one foot as she struggled to take off a pair of sweatpants.
In all, runners in the “Nearly Naked Almost Mile” left about 655 articles of clothing in their wake, Versace said, all of which will be donated to the Salvation Army.
Donations came from runners like Gerry Koons, a third-year biomedical engineering student, who wore 17 layers in all, including 13 shirts and sweaters. One participant donated 154 pieces of winter clothes on her own, Versace said.
The numbers benefited from the event’s off-beat style, Versace said — a clothing drive masked as a run.
“It’s harder to get people to donate clothes, so this was unique take on how to get people to donate clothes without even realizing how much they gave,” Versace said.
Without that format, she doesn’t think it wouldn’t have been as successful — “not even close,” she said.
Pantone agreed. He thought the race went well, but he did have one qualm.
“I was a little bit disappointed that we couldn’t get all the way naked,” he said.
Still, he and Chestnut had a long enough walk down Greene Street ahead of them to get out of the chilly weather.
Chestnut’s trip home was a bit longer. He planned to drive across town to see his girlfriend first, but the 2009 USC graduate came down from Greenville to take part in the race. To make matters worse, he’d be doing the drive barely clad; he didn’t have a change of clothes in his car. But he had no regrets.
“I heard ‘homelessness,’ ‘stripping’ and ‘race,’ and I was there,” Chestnut said. “Please sign me up.”