Cerritos College
Cerritos College • Norwalk, Calif.

Talon Marks

Cerritos College • Norwalk, Calif.

Talon Marks

Cerritos College • Norwalk, Calif.

Talon Marks

Students weigh in on ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Social media has gone viral with tons of videos of people – including athletes, celebrities, musicians, students, teams, bands, even families – taking on the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in order to raise awareness and donations toward the ALS association.

People have a choice to either donate money or take the Ice Bucket challenge or do both. The ice bucket challenge accepters must dump a bucket of ice cold water on themselves, record it, post it on social media, inform people where to donate and nominate three other people or groups to do the same within 24 hours.

Music major Josemanuel Fraire said, “What I think about the Ice Bucket Challenge is that it started as a good cause, but it has evolved into a trend, which could lead to the advantage of using it for a different purpose; for example, self promotion.”

How did this all begin? It started with Pete Frates, a former Boston college baseball player who was diagnosed in 2012 with ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which is a growing neurodegenerative disease that affects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.

In later stages it leads to paralyzation, trouble with breathing, eating and eventually speech loss. Although there is no known cure yet, the ALS association has devoted $99 million to find effective treatments and a cure for people with ALS. With the popularity of the challenge, donations have reached to $94.3 million.

The ALS association has received donations from previous donors and from 1.7 million new donors, which consist of ordinary people and celebrities such as Charlie Sheen, WWE Superstar Triple H, Taylor Swift, The Foo Fighters, Jimmy Fallon, The Roots, Kristen Stewart and so on.

Cerritos College students tend to think it’s more an awareness for the challenge, as opposed to the actual ALS disorder itself.

Tamantha Bumma, an environmental science major, said, “I think it’s a good idea to spread awareness in places that are not going through a drought … personally, I wouldn’t do the Ice Bucket Challenge because I don’t want to add to the drought, but I’m down to donate.”

Jackie Sanchez, a history major, added, “Although it’s fun to watch all the Ice Bucket Challenge fails, I am not a big fan of it because, at first, it was a way for people to show their way of donating, but now it seems that it has become a trend.”

If you’d like to learn more about ALS or if you would like to donate, you can visit the ALS Association website.

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About the Contributors
Nicolette Aguirre, Arts Editor
Spring 2015 Hello all, my name is Nicolette and I am the Arts Editor at Talon Marks. This is my first semester as Arts Editor and it's a bit stressing but I'm really looking forward to doing page design. Besides hanging out at the newsroom most of the time, I really enjoy going to shows, mainly tribute shows :D I also enjoy listening to music specially 80's Metal!!! But I also like classic, alternative, and spanish rock. Other than that, my other hobbies are hanging out with friends, laughing, doodling or drawing, writing, watching funny or cool stuff and playing guitar even though I've been sick lagging but trying to get back into it. Any who, that's pretty much it :]
Kristopher Carrasco, Online Editor
My name is Kristopher Carrasco I'm that guy that went to college and didn't really know what to do. I just kind of jumped around until I was suddenly failing out of school. Then I found Talon Marks and little by little I started to understand what I wanted to do with my life and apparently it's journalism. The idea of gathering information from a variety of sources and re-telling it through visual or written story telling has engaged me in so much more than I ever thought possible. I love to work with Multimedia, but this year I have become Online Editor in hopes of learning a new skill set. I hope to be a music journalist in the future, but in the mean time I'll be finishing my last semester up at Cerritos College in the spring of 2016. I also love raccoons; like a lot.
 
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Students weigh in on ALS Ice Bucket Challenge