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Carson Scholarship Committee Aims to Raise $100,000

Costumes galore at the Eve Ball.

About 350 masqueraders — from angels and devils to Jon and Kate and Cruella de Vil and Dalmatians — danced away the night before Halloween 2009, raising $12,000 for the Eve Marie Carson Scholarship. (Photographs by Jan Kook of Photography By Jannine)

As members of the last class of students who knew Eve Carson ’08 while she was at UNC prepare to graduate, the Eve Carson Scholarship Executive Committee is dedicating itself to Carson’s legacy with a goal of raising $100,000 for the scholarship that bears her name.

The scholarship is one of few completely student-run scholarships in the country. It is named for Carolina’s former student body president who was killed in March 2008.

“We feel that this is a critical year for the scholarship, as we are the last class to have known Eve,” said Chase Pickering, a senior and the committee’s co-director of external fundraising. “Over the next year, every dollar we raise will go to the support the fund of the Eve Carson Scholarship and will help us to move closer to realizing Eve’s vision of selecting five Eve Carson Scholars.”

Currently, two students each year receive an award for half tuition and $5,000 for a summer experience.

Events will be hosted throughout November to raise money and further the scholarship’s mission, “to celebrate junior-year students who have demonstrated transformative development” at Carolina and to honor Carson’s dedication to “excellence with a heart.”

Major events for fundraising and celebration to meet the $100,000 goal include the Eve Ball, Eve Carson Memorial 5K for Education, Chi Psi and Chi Omega Benefit Dinner and Eve’s Birthday Bash. The funds will be used to increase support of scholarship recipients.  As part of the buildup to that event, Chancellor Holden Thorp ’ 86 and his wife, Patti, also are learning the Thriller dance with student leaders in the Pit on Monday, Nov. 1.

Here are details about these events, scheduled over the next two weeks:

  • Franklin Street Yoga Center will host the second annual Eve Ball on Friday, Nov. 5, at The Carolina Club in the George Watts Hill Alumni Center. The event includes a costume contest. Contest categories will include Best Couple, Best Period Costume, Most Original, Best Group and Most Amazingly Spectacular. The winner of each category will receive a $200 cash prize.
  • Pi Beta Phi and Phi Delta Theta will host the Eve Carson Memorial 5K for Education on Saturday, Nov. 6. In years past, the race has been the largest and most profitable 5K in Chapel Hill history. More information is available online.
  • Chi Psi and Chi Omega will host a dinner on Nov. 12 to benefit the scholarship and UNC Dance Marathon. The dinner will include barbecue and a bluegrass band.
  • And on Friday, Nov. 19, the Executive Committee of the Eve Carson Scholarship will host the inaugural Eve’s Birthday Bash. It will celebrate Carson’s life and aims to unite the community through an afternoon of fun and friendship. Teams of students will compete in a scavenger hunt; costume contest; present-smashing game; a punt, pass and kick contest; cake decorating; cake eating; and a dance off. Paying participants also will receive a goody bag and T-shirt.

“We have a responsibility to not only promote the scholarship and ensure its nature as it was intended, but also to carry on the spirit of our friend Eve,” said Meredith Stricker, a senior who is co-director of Eve’s Birthday Bash. “As a person we enjoyed being around, we want to maintain the human side of her. Her spontaneity, her collaborative ideas and her drive to develop friendship are unforgettable.”

These events will conclude just before the due date for the Eve Carson Scholarship application, Sunday, Nov. 21. Applications became available online on Oct. 14, and information sessions have been held for interested students.

Members of the scholarship’s Executive Committee said they hope to honor Carson’s legacy by celebrating students who have discovered their passions while at Carolina and live out their own definitions of the Carolina Way. The scholarship aspires to be one of the most prestigious honors for Carolina students because it is the recognition of an individual’s dedication to the Carolina community by his or her fellow peers.

The Eve Carson Scholarship was established in 2008 to commemorate and celebrate Carson’s life. Carson, who was a Morehead Scholar at UNC, had envisioned a junior-year scholarship and included it on her platform for student body president in 2007.

An excerpt of the platform reads: “As students, we want the best possible leaders for our campus leadership positions, regardless of their financial standing. If the best student suited for these positions cannot run for them because they have to work to supplement their financial aid package, we are severely limiting our campus community.”

Carson’s goal was to reward students who had grown significantly while in college.

“I loved that Eve, who had benefited from the financial freedom and opportunity a scholarship provides, had the passion and consideration for others to develop this idea for other students,” said Katherine Novinski, a senior who is the committee’s executive director.


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