And Justache For All at GW Law
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
The global movement to promote men’s health issues, Movember, led GW Law students to adapt it to raise money to support public interest law service. The idea behind the Movember movement is that men grow moustaches in November to raise money and awareness for men’s health issues, especially prostate and testicular cancer.
A group of wonderful GW Law students (some pictured) tweaked that in an awareness- and fund-raiser, called Justache, to make it about the Equal Justice Foundation, which funds stipends for law students working in the public interest. Begun last year, Justache invites participants to register in early November clean-shaven. For the rest of the month, men have to let the upper-lip grow and keep the rest of their face relatively clean. Women participate using fake mustaches, glued, drawn or otherwise.
Participants must raise pledges of at least $15 weekly during the month. The participant raising the most money wins first prize in the competition. Last year, most contributions came from friends passing along a dollar or two, but there were a couple big donations. With about ten competitors in 2008, Justache raised about $3,000. The fund-raiser winner was Katie Taylor, winning a $150 prize. The honor of best mustache went to Jeremy Abbott.
This year, more funds are expected. There are 35 participants signed up, including 4 women and 3 professors, with pledges raised and photographs appearing here (and rules are here). There is also a gala dinner this year, tomorrow night, where a couple dozen guests, mostly GW Law students, are paying $75 each to attend.
I was the lucky recipient of an invitation and look forward to a delightful evening with this group. (I wasn’t asked to pay the entrée fee but how can I resist contributing at least that for this wonderful cause?) Rumor is other guests may include Members of American Mustache Institute and selected Members of Congress sympathetic to the cause.
The only other school GW Law’s Justache promoters are aware of that’s done anything similar is Georgetown, although it seems to have been abandoned. An old post on mustaches from the WSJ Law Blog has a defunct link to their competition. Also, as GW Law student Dan Martin put it to me, “they apparently did it in the spring, rather than the sacred month of Movember.”
Kudos to all GW Law students behind this, with special thanks to Dan Martin (on the right in the photo here) and Greg Crespo (in the center) for the leadership and Dan for the information and dinner invite!
November 19, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Posted in: Law School
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Responses (3)
EJFer - November 19, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Thank you for spreading the word, Professor! One quick note: The GW EJF website can be found at http://docs.law.gwu.edu/stdg/ejf/. We’re not actually affiliated with the Colorado EJF linked above, although I’m sure they do good work, too.
Lawrence Cunningham - November 20, 2009 at 5:39 am
EJFer,
Thanks for the note. I changed the link to connect to the GW Equal Justice Foundation.
LC
gtownstudent - November 20, 2009 at 4:03 pm
GULC still has a mustache competition, but it’s held in the spring in purely as a “fun” event…rather than as any sort of fundraiser. Hats off to GW for hte good idea.
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