Dial-A-Carol is a student-run holiday program at Illinois. Each year, the students of Snyder Hall, a University Housing residence hall, host the event. Anyone from anywhere may call 217-332-1882 and request any holiday tune, which will be sung live by students over the telephone.
The annual program runs 24 hours a day for seven days and is held during finals week. It will be held from 12:01 a.m. Dec. 8 to 11:59 p.m. Dec. 14. Last year, the program logged more than 16,000 calls from all over the world. All 50 states were covered within the first 24 hours of the event and calls were received from 75 countries.
Student volunteers take pride in a being a community service program and enjoy many calls from children as well as university students, faculty members and alumni.
This year marks the 56th anniversary of the program. Dial-A-Carol was started in December 1960 by Betty Gordon, an area office secretary, and the residents of Snyder Hall who wanted to spread some holiday cheer around campus. More information is available online.