Thon was absolutely incredible this weekend. I worked as a member of Penn State Hillel and as an OPPerations committee member to celebrate THON, the largest student run philanthropy in the world. This weekend we raised an incredible and record breaking $9.56 MILLION dollars all For The Kids of the 4 Diamonds Fund.
Among all this wonderfulness, three things struck me worth commenting about. The first is about how passionate we are regarding THON. The Penn State community is so dedicated to this cause--devoting hours upon hours of energy and heart to this amazing event. What if we were this dedicated and this passionate about everything we do? What makes THON so much different than any other event on campus? I thinks it's the dedication--the participatory role that everyone plays in making this event possible. Would people behave differently at football games if they did something to make the game happen or contributed to the game in some way? We are as passionate about the football team in the fall as we are with THON in the spring, yet the two events have completely different fans.
The second aspect I wanted to comment on was the leadership. The overalls and captains are so dedicated to THON. Dedicated to the point that everything else--including schoolwork--becomes secondary. We forget that this is a student run organizations. We are students first. That fact needs to be respected and taken into account with all of the time this event requires. It was really disrespectful of the time and energy we put into THON to keep every OPP committee member at the BJC until 11pm the night THON ended to clean up, while there was a majority of people just sitting and not working for the last four of those hours. The lack of organization during cleanup was frustrating. I expected to stay after the event to clean up, but I thought I would be cleaning up, not sitting down staring into space.
Finally, during one of the family stories, one father mentioned how he brings his daughter to THON to show his daughter the wonderful role models that are Penn State students. I smartly commented to my friend to "not look at us next weekend," which is State Patty's Day. How can a school do such amazing good one weekend, being such wonderful role models to all of these kids and then turn around the next weekend and celebrate by getting completely trashed? What kind of message does that send to these kids?
Among all this wonderfulness, three things struck me worth commenting about. The first is about how passionate we are regarding THON. The Penn State community is so dedicated to this cause--devoting hours upon hours of energy and heart to this amazing event. What if we were this dedicated and this passionate about everything we do? What makes THON so much different than any other event on campus? I thinks it's the dedication--the participatory role that everyone plays in making this event possible. Would people behave differently at football games if they did something to make the game happen or contributed to the game in some way? We are as passionate about the football team in the fall as we are with THON in the spring, yet the two events have completely different fans.
The second aspect I wanted to comment on was the leadership. The overalls and captains are so dedicated to THON. Dedicated to the point that everything else--including schoolwork--becomes secondary. We forget that this is a student run organizations. We are students first. That fact needs to be respected and taken into account with all of the time this event requires. It was really disrespectful of the time and energy we put into THON to keep every OPP committee member at the BJC until 11pm the night THON ended to clean up, while there was a majority of people just sitting and not working for the last four of those hours. The lack of organization during cleanup was frustrating. I expected to stay after the event to clean up, but I thought I would be cleaning up, not sitting down staring into space.
Finally, during one of the family stories, one father mentioned how he brings his daughter to THON to show his daughter the wonderful role models that are Penn State students. I smartly commented to my friend to "not look at us next weekend," which is State Patty's Day. How can a school do such amazing good one weekend, being such wonderful role models to all of these kids and then turn around the next weekend and celebrate by getting completely trashed? What kind of message does that send to these kids?
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