Health & Fitness
Con Los Terroristas! College, Elementary Students Unite for Harlem Shake
Wesleyan University student-athletes and students at The Macdonough School get together to film their own version of the "Harlem Shake!"
Here in the athletics department at Wesleyan University we have watched, just like everyone else, the "Harlem Shake" craze go viral.
Athletic departments at different universities around the country have done their own versions of the dance. So our Student-Athlete Advisory Committee met a couple weeks back to decide on whether or not we should add to the craze and do our own version. SAAC is a group composed of student-athletes from each of the 27 varsity sports teams here at Wesleyan.
The co-presidents of SAAC, Adam Kaiser ’13 and Kaylin Berger ’13, came up with the idea that we should do it, but with a twist. We should do it with the students at the Macdonough School.
You see Macdonough has really become the athletic department's “adopted” elementary school where we visit regularly with their students during recess and class. So it just made a lot of sense to film it with them.
The phone call went in to Jon Romeo, the principal at the Macdonough School. He loved the idea. What we did not realize was the teachers at Macdonough had recently done their own Harlem Shake video. They shared it with their students at an assembly and now the students would get a chance to do their own version, with us.
Next we turned to Wes Pregame, which is our student version of ESPN, and they agreed to shoot the video. The date was set and everyone prepared their costumes and dance moves.
Shooting the video at Macdonough with their 5th grade students was an absolute blast. Both our mascot, Wes Cardinal, and Macdonough's mascot, The Owl, were in attendance. We had student-athletes from both basketball teams, the football team, women's lacrosse team, both hockey teams and track teams.
At times when we visit during recess we have played “Duck, Duck, Goose” with their students, usually the kindergartners. Even though it was the 5th grade, we decided to start it out with the game and then go from there. Eric Lopez ’15, part of Wes Pregame, did an fantastic job as the director and later editing and producing the final cut of the video.
Three takes and 25 minutes later, we were done filming. Check out the following link to see the final product:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoEBNSRpT3U&feature=youtu.be
Big thank you to Jon Romeo (principal at Macdonough) for being so supportive of the idea and for his continued efforts in this flourishing partnership between our two schools. Also a huge thank you to the amazing students both here at Wesleyan and at The Macdonough School.
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