Annual Thursday Night Live raises over $5,000 for kids with cancer

About $5,000 was raised for charity last week after students filled Aalfs Auditorium to attend the 19th annual Thursday Night Live comedy show.

The show is a knock off of “Saturday Night Live” that raises money for children with cancer. Pi Kappa Alpha also sponsors a room at Sanford’s Children’s Hospital in Sioux falls.

Nathan Christiensen, the president of PIKE and a senior majoring in kinesiology and exercise science, said the cause hits close to home for some of the members of the fraternity.

“The event cuts close with one of the members of PIKE, whose sister was diagnosed with cancer three years ago, beat it after a year, but passed away last year,” he said.

The event was packed, and the fraternity presented skits that made the crowd roar with laughter.

One of the skits was a Republican debate focusing on Donald Trump, whose character wore a silly blonde wig and a baseball cap and made fun of the other candidates.

Another skit was a Jeopardy show with the contestants consisting of “French Stewart,” Sean Conery and “Turd Ferguson,” who was dressed in a Batman costume.

The student behind the Batman costume was Maxwell Whitehead, the director for TNL and a senior. Whitehead said it takes a lot of commitment from the fraternity to host the show.

“It was a team effort, but I mainly did all of the work to make sure things ran smoothly,” Whitehead said.

Whitehead also appeared in another one of the skits with a fellow fraternity member, playing the drums on a toaster and head banging while the other sang a song about toast.

“The show is a big deal. It is the biggest philanthropy event of the fall for what it stands for,” he said. “It provides comedy and humor for the community, while we are acting like idiots for a good cause.”

In the end the fraternity raised $5,300 this year.

Following TNL, Mackenzie Blow, a member of the Alpha Phi sorority and a junior, was crowned the PIKE “Dream Girl.”

She is involved in Dakotathon and the Children’s Miracle Network, where she is an executive member. To be crowned “Dream Girl,” was an honor for Blow.

“It takes someone that not only gets along with the guys of PIKE, but also represents them like a sister. Someone with whom they would look up to,” she said.