The "Harlem Shake," a viral dance that has swept college campuses across the nation the past two weeks, has arrived at  Andrews University. Last Friday, February 15, the unofficial AU version of the popular video was shot in the Campus Center with approximately 25 students. The clip begins inside the building, but students were soon asked to leave the building and the clip ends with the students on the lawn outside of the building entrance.

The event allegedly started when one of the AUSA candidates tried to incorporate the popular idea into his campaign. When the candidate discovered that according to AU policy dancing is not allowed in campus events the event was quickly cancelled. Regardless, a few students decided to host the event anyway, and used fake AUSA posters to promote it.
Sandra Owusu-Antwi, AUSA’s current President stated, “Whatever went on in the Student Center, AUSA was not involved.” She goes on to explain that the posters were “a mistake”, and that a “person put AUSA’s name on the poster without permission. The first time I saw the poster was when I walked into Student Life.”

This dance craze started going viral about a week ago, and suddenly spread across the nation, involving videos from many major U.S. universities including Notre Dame, TV shows such as Daily Show, the U.S. Army, and a number of Adventist institutions of higher education including Oakwood University, Pacific Union College, Southern Adventist University, Southwestern Adventist University, Union College, La Sierra University, and Walla Walla University. As previously mentioned, none of these Adventist videos were produced by or approved by their respective institutions.

Spectrum Magazine published a blog about the phenomenon on February 17, and a collection of the videos mentioned above can be seen there: spectrummagazine.org  
This Harlem Shake should not be confused with a 2001 mainstream dance move that bears the same name. This new trend, with the music by DJ Baauer, involves a (usually) masked figure, dancing in a room full of inattentive and inactive occupants. 15 seconds into the video the beat changes and the video cuts to a frenzied mass of moving bodies, costumes, and crowds, with no clear rhythm. The clip usually ends with the video in slow motion, lowering the tone of the musician’s voice. These clips have become extremely popular with over 175 million views.