After being a former student and former dancer at the largest student philanthropy in the world, Thon, I have seen this heart-warming event grow from the 8 of millions to the 12 of millions in my time living in State College. THON’s total increases every year but, this year, was special. After the worst Public Relations year Penn State University has ever experience in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal and the death of the Legendary football coach Joe Paterno (you can keep opinions to yourself), the dust is ever so slowly beginning to settle. The school’s reputation was tarnished by these horrible events and now Penn State and all of it’s followers, students and alumni alike are looked down on and thought of disrespecting child abusers. It’s sad to me that less of the world knows what we do every year for suffering children and their families at THON.
The work Penn State students put into THON is absolutely incredible. While this is coming from me, someone who has only served on committees and danced, the work the goes into THON is year-round. Right now, the day after THON 2013, dedicated students are already applying to be overalls in THON 2014. However the work that is put in is worth 12 million dollars. Students dedicate their whole school year into organizing this event because they know kids are suffering everyday and it makes them feel good to put countless hours of time for the cause. Show me another school that cares this much about suffering kids. Show me another school that can band together and raise 12 million dollars. You see, this is my point. While during the Sandusky scandal every national news stations was covering every little feature of the story. Believe me, I know. The journalist and their trucks blocked me from getting to class everyday in the end of the Fall and beginning of the Spring last year. How much national news coverage does raising 12 million dollars for pediatric cancer at Penn State get? Maybe a couple of tweets from celebrity supporters and a few seconds of a segments on a news channel but, this doesn’t matter.
This year, THON grew. The students work their butts off doing enough marketing, networking, reaching out and promoting to the surrounding Penn State networks to get the word out about THON more so than the previous years. I would like to think people were smart enough to realize that the students of Penn State were doing something good “for the kids” and contributed in paying their part to donate. Maybe Penn State finally needs a little bit of good PR and wanted the student body and followers to succeed. I believe this is the reason the total grew so much this year. Whether the world knows about THON or not, Penn State knows about THON and it is not going away. In fact, THON is only going to get bigger possibly to the point where it needs a larger venue than the Bryce Jordan Center which was at capacity all weekend. So when the believers are out their thinking we are all followers of Jerry Sandusky’s ways and feelings toward children. We will be here raising 12 million dollars for pediatric cancer every year supporting a cure for the world’s worst disease and, that ever growing total is proof that THON is getting noticed.
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