For their callback audition to become this year’s Dance Marathon masters of ceremonies, Chad Bell and Andrzej Moyseowicz held a political convention at 3 a.m., leading the judges in a singing Conga line surrounded by 40 students. They won the “election” Friday morning.

The Weinberg senior and the McCormick senior now have 137 days to motivate the campus in preparation for DM, the 30-hour event they will lead from March 2 to March 4. The event is Northwestern’s largest philanthropy.

“The hard part is just beginning,” Bell said, calling the emcees DM’s mascots. “It’s not just about that weekend.”

A dancer his freshman year and a 30-hour referee for the next two, Bell recruited Moyseowicz to be a referee last year. Because the two unsuccessfully auditioned to be emcees last year, they said they spent the last year working on ideas for this year’s try-out to showcase their imagination and creativity.

In the first round, the best friends started a new event: DM emcee auditioning. As part of the “competition,” they improvised a blues song about Wonder Woman, performed magic tricks and danced. The six judges, all DM co-chairs, called back three of about 12 teams that auditioned.

For the callback, Bell and Moyseowicz led the judges in a Conga line outside the Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps building, where about 40 students waited to cheer them on as if at a political convention.

DM Executive Co-chair Mark Waterston said the pair’s antics led the judges to believe they could lead a 30-hour marathon.

“(We were) impressed that they could motivate a group of people to stay up until 3 a.m. … to do that with them,” said Waterston, a Weinberg senior.

Moyseowicz said the students came because they love DM and wanted to support their friends.

“If they didn’t feel that we could make the DM events more special or a little easier for the 30 hours,” Moyseowicz said, “I don’t think they would have been there.”

Though Waterston said the decision was difficult, he said the display of Bell’s and Moyseowicz’s knowledge of this year’s charity in two interviews helped. This year’s DM charity is the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

“The charity had a deeper connection with the two of them,” Waterston said.

Bell said he knew people who died from AIDS, and though none of them were children, a few children from his hometown were infected with the disease through blood transfusions.

Bell and Moyseowicz also presented new ideas they had for DM, including the hug-a-dancer initiative, where the emcees pledge to hug each of the 500 dancers at least once during the 30 hours.

Bell, a political science major, said he and Moyseowicz have the ability to motivate the dancers, but he was less optimistic about the abilities of the U.S.’ soon-to-be-elected national leaders.

“We’re voting for people to run our country,” he said. “But they can’t dance as well as we can.”