A few days ago, I decided to attend a Paterno Fellowes panel on the ethics of THON.  One of the panelists lives on my floor, so I went to check it out with a few of my friends.  The goal of the panel was to start a discussion about whether THON was ethical and about why some people do not participate in THON.  I personally did not do THON and I had my own reasons for not doing so. I wanted to hear about other people’s experiences and I was hoping to get something out of this panel.  However, I was very disappointed in the way the event was handled and did not learn anything I did not already know.

The event started off with the panelists each introducing themselves.  Then each of them gave s five to seven-minute speech on their experiences with THON and their reasons for participating or not participating. The first person was a student named Jack Shean and he came up with the topic for the panel.  He is one of the people who lives on my floor, so I am very familiar with his opinions on THON.  He talked about how he felt people who participate in THON sometimes use it as an excuse to go party and post pictures with the caption “For the Kids.” He felt a lot of people tend to hide behind the “FTK” slogan and use it as an excuse to go get drunk before or after THON events.  He also pointed out only 20% of the money raised by THON actually goes to children with pediatric cancer.  The rest of the money goes to cancer research.  Jack explained it is sort of misleading to say THON is “For the Kids” when in reality most of the money does not go to children with cancer. I would have to agree. I do not think there’s anything wrong with money going to research, but I wish the people in charge of THON would be more transparent about where the money goes.

The other panelists were not as interesting.  Emily Purnell discussed her role as communications director for THON, but the only point she really made is THON is a really amazing organization and she made so many friends from doing it.  Panini Pardiya also made a very similar argument.  An assistant professor of psychology gave a short presentation on extrinsic v. intrinsic motivation when participating in service, but I could tell he was really trying to be neutral on the subject.  An economics professor explained how THON is not actually economically efficient unless we eliminate fundraising for other student-run philanthropy organizations at Penn State.

I thought the question portion of the panel might do a better job of opening up a discussion, but I was sadly mistaken.  None of the panelists seemed to be able to answer a lot of the questions, or if they gave an answer it did not have anything to do with what was asked. Mostly they deflected and tried to steer the question towards another subject.  For example, one person asked, “For the people who participated in THON, how do you respond to some of the negative backlash it sometimes gets?” and they asked for the question to be repeated twice.  All they responded was “THON is a great cause and it really brings people together,” which didn’t answer the question at all.  I left the panel feeling disappointed, but I was able to have a good conversation about THON with the people I attended the event with. All in all it was a nice experience, but I felt the event could have been better.