Funding a living memorial, Vandal Solution and ASUI band together 

For the next couple of Tuesday and Thursday nights at 7 p.m., students will gather in a small office packing and shipping a message of union.  

Vandal Strong bracelets are being sold as a way to raise to money for a living memorial to honor the four students whose lives were cut short last November. The bracelets were originally made for the students’ shared vigil, with 2,000 being made and given out for free. 

“But within the weeks following, we started getting hundreds of requests from people who were asking how they could get them,” President of Vandal Solutions Caitlin Lanterman said. “That kind of quickly turned into an idea of how we could do something with this and how do we make it a full project that we could also do some good with it.” 

Faculty lead Michael McCulloguh for Vandal Solutions discussed how this has been so important to Vandal Solutions.  

“We lost two students, Maddie was (a) longtime member of payment solutions and Xana was on the sales team at Vandal Solutions,” McCulloguh said. “Caitlin took it on herself to order bracelets over the last fall break for the memorial service.” 

Lanterman, with the help ASUI’s Chief of Staff Olivia Niemi, has been working together to make it possible to procure and distribute the bracelets. 

“I realized that ASUI has a lot of manpower behind it, and combining the two organizations, we could possibly make this happen with the amount of students and the amount of support that we both can provide coming together,” Niemi said. “So at that point, that’s when Caitlin and I started talking and figuring out where we want the money to go, how much you’re gonna cost, how all the logistics behind it.” 

KHQ donated two hours to a live broadcasted event. Following the broadcast,  both organizations raised $10,000 for donations and bracelet purchases. Niemi said that there have been purchases from New York, Florida, Hawaii as well as most other states of the Union. 

Since the broadcast, they have raised $27,000 with another $5,000 in donations. In total, over 15,000 bracelets have been sold.  

“It’s just really cool to see a way for people to feel like they have a purpose or a way to be involved,” Niemi said.  

The money raised from the donations and the sale of the bracelets will contribute to a fund to build a living memorial.  

Niemi said that while there is no set plan for what the living memorial will be, the donations and sales of the bracelets will be placed into a fund that will help with its construction.  

“I think one thing that everyone here is feeling is the impact these four incredible people left on our community and in so many communities outside of this town,” Lanterman said. “We thought it was really important to create to help create a space to honor and celebrate them; something really beautiful and a place to kind of bring people together” 

McCollough said that there are two living memorials that came out of this. 

“The efforts of the students to sell these bracelets and the outpouring of support for the community, that’s the memorial in and of itself.” 

Bracelets can be purchased until  Feb. 28. Vandal Solution is hosting packing parties, where students are invited to volunteer and support the process of getting the bracelets shipped out.  

These packing parties are happening every Tuesday and Thursday in Feb. at 7 p.m. at Hay’s Hall, where there is a capacity for 40 volunteers. The first packing party reached capacity from the start, with groups of people having to be turned away.  

“Every single person that’s walked in here has had a smile on their face and been excited to be here, which really means a lot to me,” Lanterman said. “Seeing people willing to come together and give their time to do something that’s meaningful and is really heart-warming.” 

McCollough reacted similarly upon seeing the number of students that came to help with the packing party.  

“It puts an incredible smile on my face; it really does,” McCullough said. “There’s no other way to put it. We have great students here at the University of Idaho.” 

To sign up to help with the packing parties can be found here.  

Bracelets can be purchased here.

Daniel V. Ramirez can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @DVR_Tweets