Penn State’s Dance Marathon (Thon) is a 46 hour no sitting no sleeping dance marathon. Thon is the largest student run philanthropy in the world. Thon raises money for families whose children have pediatric cancer and can’t pay the bills that they would have. The whole dance marathon though isn’t even the start. There are three big parts that go into Thon, the Four Diamonds Fund, fundraising and then the event itself—which occurs each year in mid-February. 

Four Diamonds Fund

The Four Diamonds Fund is an organization that raises money for families whose children have pediatric cancer and their insurance or they can’t cover the expenses. The Four Diamonds started when Chris Millard a child with cancer in the 1972 was supposed to write a an autobiography, but instead he said “I am going to die, and I’ve been in and out of hospitals. I’m not going to write about that.” So then he wrote about the four diamonds that describe what you need to have to be a cancer survivor. He passed away six months later.

The four diamonds stand for Courage, Honesty, Wisdom and Strength. The way you become a Four Diamond family or child is that first your child needs to be diagnosed and treated in Penn State Hershey Medical Center. Second the child must be diagnosed before his or her 22 birthday. Third the child must be in the hospital’s service area (in the state of Pennsylvania).

When a child has cancer the average cost for treatment is $500,000. The cost of newly approved cancer drugs are $10,000 dollars per month. The average cost for a child to stay in the hospital with cancer is $40,000 dollars per day. Nearly five times as much the cost for a child with another pediatric condition. The Four Diamonds Fund goal is that a family NEVER has to see those bills.

Fundraising

Thon’s main fundraising kickoff is the Thon 5K, which is a three mile kids race, fun walk, competitive run and more. One of the biggest take-in’s is the canning weekends. Canning is where college students raising money for Thon go out on the streets with big metal cans and raise money. People dress in funny clothes such as tank tops and shorts in the middle of December and January. I interviewed a friend back in third grade and he said that his committee of 90 people raised $30,000 in one weekend! In 2016 the canning weekends were decreased because a young student was in a car accident and passed away. Another way of raising money is Thonvelopes. Every person who is trying to dance gets a certain amount of Thonvelopes to send to family, relatives and friends. The people who are generous to give some money (which everyone should be) they send them back with the money and then it gets put to your orgs or independent earnings.

THON

Even though Thon is raising money and their mission is being spread all year round, the big conclusion is the Dance Marathon. There is an overall committee of 15 students. Each overall picks 22 captains who then pick about 30 committee members. This leads to over 16,000 student volunteers making Thon the largest student-run philanthropy in the world. Dancing is in my opinion is the best part of Thon. There are two main ways to dance. One is that you can dance with your Org. whether that's an athletic organization, a club or a Greek Org. Each Org. gets a certain amount of dancers based on their fundraising efforts. The other option is to be an independent dancer.To become an independent dancer you need to enter a lottery. For your first lottery ticket, you must raise $2,800, and for every other it’s $600 an extra ticket. After that it is all luck.

Thon as I mentioned is a 46 hour no sitting no sleeping dance marathon. That means the dancers and spectators who are staying the whole time are there for 46 hours. All of the money that Thon raises throughout the year goes to the Four Diamonds Fund.

About three weeks before Thon the Dancer Relation Captains make the “line dance.” The line dance is performed about every hour during Thon weekend. It contains of university, political, and pop culture references. It is a fun dance to learn and everyone can do it.

Some people who don’t want to stay the whole 46 hours can go through the spectator entrance. You can stay in as long as you want.

The dancers stand at 6:00 PM on Friday and dance until 4:00 PM on Sunday. After the dancers sit down the part everybody looks forward to is the revealing of the total. In Thon 2018 they raised $10,151,663.93. Thon has raised over $157 million dollars since 1973. My friend Kayla and her friend Zach were a dancer couple and they raised the fourth most money in all of the independent dancers. They raised $16,325.55. Speaking of Kayla and Zach I interviewed both of them before and after Thon. The after interview will come in a separate article.

Jacob (Me) “What was you main connection to Thon?”

Kayla- “My biggest connection to Thon is my best friend Sophie who is a four diamonds child, and I’ve been coming to Thon with her since I was in middle school.”

Zach-  “When I was a freshman I joined and it changed my life so I wanted to be involved as long as I could because it’s the best organization I’ve ever been a part of and I love it so much.”

Jacob- “What was your main motivation for dancing?”

Kayla- “I feel like being involved in Thon as a committee member and a captain is such an awesome way to give back and help people but at the end of the day dancing with such a goal for me because to show families like hey we know that you go through something that is so difficult so terrible and we can’t fix it but we can stand for this amount of time and show you your not alone and there are people willing to go through this fight with you that want be be here with you and support you in any way that we can.”

Zach- “I think that my biggest motivation for dancing in Thon is being friends with Kayla because she’s such a great person and she really made this whole thing possible for me so I’m so lucky to know her and her strong connection tho Thon so I’m blessed to be here.”

Jacob- “What is the thing you are looking forward to the most this weekend?”

Kayla- “I really excited to learn the line dance I heard it’s supposed to be really good-that's the rumor. There are so many little moments in Thon that we’ve got to see from different perspectives and so to get to experience all those little moments as a dancer and know how much they mean to other people and know how much it means to us to other volunteers and to our friends just to be able to experience all of it from this new perspective that is why I’m most excited about.”

Zach- “I’m so excited to meet as many families as I can and hear as many stories as I can because that’s why we’re here for the families and I think that will be the driving factor for both of us to finish the weekend stong.”

This year I spent the most time I have ever spent at Thon. Thon is such a great organization and has impacted me in ways I can’t explain. Overall, Thon has had such a positive impact on me and I hope on you to. I hope that everyone in the world could be like the students of Thon. I want to give a very special thanks to Haley Staub, Maddy Hughes, and the rest of the Public Relations Captain and Committee members.

To find out more and donate go to thon.org