Campus News and Events

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[pdf-embedder url="https://universitystaffassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/61/2019/08/hannahs-ride-poster.pdf" title="hannahs ride poster"]

Hello friends! 

I am honored to invite you to participate in a super fun, super altruistic, bicycle-oriented event at Umass, Amherst taking place on October 6^th .  This special ride is a fundraiser for the Hannah Frilot Memorial Scholarship Fund.  Hannah was a senior student worker with UMass IT, truly a gem of a human whose brilliant light was tragically darkened 5 years ago.  Hannah was walking her bike with a friend in a bike lane in North Amherst one evening when a driver fell asleep at the wheel and drifted into Hannah, ending her life.  She was truly a force, a ray of sun and spirit, loving and intelligent, a non-traditional STEM student with strong campus connections and affinities for music and art and skateboarding and biking and nature, and her passing left an outsized hole in the world. 

We in UMass IT created a scholarship fund in her honor at that time, and have been administering it since her passing.  We are now trying to grow the fund into an endowment, that her legacy may carry on and continue to uplift others, as did she.  I am on a committee that is putting on one heck of a community event on October 6^th, based at UMass lot 33 (opposite Southwest).  We will be staging a community event and bicycle ride as a fundraiser!  There will be a 17-mile group ride, as well as shorter there-and-back rides on the bike trail for those that want to ride a shorter distance or avoid the road.  There will be fire engines!  There will be a dj!  The UMass Bicycle Police will be administering a free bicycle safety rodeo, and registering bikes for Project Protect.  They will also be giving the riders a send-off honor guard escort, to the beat of the entire UMass Drum Line!  There will be opportunity to have one’s bike repaired, related items for purchase, safety and informational clinics, community sponsors tabling alongside us, spot-made liquid nitrogen ice cream, face painting, and more (the scope grows weekly!).  For those that don’t want to ride there will still be plenty of activity, including a great ‘teacup auction’ of donated goods and gift certificates to area establishments; a bicycle raffle; and excitingly, a Silent Auction Art Tent featuring art donated from the Valley community!!

Please consider joining with us in any and all ways you see fit.  We would love to include you and yours on our community ride.  Should you not care to pedal a bike that day, there is still a ton of activities and things to see and do, and ways to participate, have fun, and help grow the fund.  Please visit our website, where you will find links to more information on Hannah and the ride, ride registration, lists of raffle items available (check back often, it keeps growing!), a link to donate, and more.  Please save the date, please register today, and thank you for being a part of my Valley Community!

https://www.umass.edu/it/hannahs-ride#Hannah’s%20Ride

#hannahsride

Thank you!!  Hope to see you soon!

(If anybody wants a big poster for promotional display please let me know!)

 

Nicholas Chavez

AutoCAD/Creative Area Manager

UMASS, Amherst IT/Netcom

400 Venture Way

Hadley, MA 01035-6903

413.577.0080

nchavez@umass.edu

Sergeant-At-Arms

AFSCME local 1776

 

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