Penn State's Thon

I’m a little late on this but as the saying goes better late than never. Some of you may have wondered over the past few months why you would see students from Penn State University soliciting donations in the shore area for something called THON. That’s with an “N” at the end and not a “G” and pretty much is an abbreviation for marathon as in dance marathon. Officially the event is known as the Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon, a 46-hour event that concluded on Sunday at the Bryce Jordan Center in University Park, Pennsylvania.

If you listen with any regularity you sort of know my feelings for the school which go back decades for football reasons but in recent years has taken on a new meaning. My son graduated from Penn State in 2008 and my daughter is a freshman there. It was during my son’s time at PSU that we became aware of Thon, which is the largest student-run philanthropy in the world and dates back to 1973. So what really is this all about? It’s about college students raising money to fight childhood cancer and it’s so big at the school that it’s taken on a life of its own.

Basically every organization on every campus raises money with most of it coming through canning trips. Canning, which we often call tagging is simply soliciting donations but it works in a different way for Thon. Students basically go to the hometowns of others for long weekends….four of them usually two in each semester. My daughter Alex made two trips to Long Island, one to Philadelphia and one to Maryland with some of her sorority sisters. During those trips they would find locations where they could hold out their cans and raise money.

Anyway all this fundraising culminated this past weekend where the student organizations gathered to watch and support more than 700 dancers, chosen as their representatives. The dancers are usually seniors and others like my daughter have assigned shifts in a supporting role. As a freshman this was her first direct experience and she probably spent about 35 of the 46 hours awake and loved every minute of it. The entire experience, while exhausting is uplifting and makes you feel so much better about today’s young people.

So let me give you the bottom line. In 2010 Thon raised a record $7.8 million in the fight against pediatric cancer. That’s an incredible total but when all the numbers were counted Sunday night more than 15,000 Penn State students helped raise over $9.5 million. That’s even more impressive than winning a national football championship.