Penn State IFC donates cash to Harvey victims for retweets
Penn State Interfraternity Coucil is putting $10,000 into Hurricane Harvey relief, reflecting support online.
The university’s fraternity and sorority community has had a rough year. Timothy Piazza, a sophomore pledge of Beta Theta Pi, died after sustaining injuries from a fall at a party. Penn State suspended and then banned the fraternity, which has since been charged criminally in connection with Piazza’s death, along with 18 of its members.
The university also took action across the board for the Greek system, stripping disciplinary control from the IFC and three other governing councils, making sweeping changes to the way parties and pledging will take place and putting an extra fee to pay for it all on the participating students.
But the flip side of Penn State fraternity life has always been charitable, best evidenced by the annual IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon that raises millions of dollars to fight pediatric cancer.
This week, the IFC took to the internet to rally support for the Harvey victims.
In addition to collecting money through a university-run crowdsourcing page at psu.crowdchange.co/fundraiser/917, the IFC also issued a challenge on Twitter, promising to donate 15 cents for every retweet.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">With the current devastation in Houston, we are pledging $0.15 for every RT this gets! Please forward this along to help out those in need! <a href="https://t.co/lodyOBE0eG">pic.twitter.com/lodyOBE0eG</a></p>— Penn State IFC (@PennStateIFC) <a href="https://twitter.com/PennStateIFC/status/902970410404372480">August 30, 2017</a></blockquote>
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The shares exploded, with one tweet alone being retweeted more than 911,000 times, forcing the IFC to set some limits to its giving, capping the donation to the American Red Cross at $10,000.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Thank you all for the support!While we would love to donate more,we unfortunately must cap the donation from the IFC at $10K,67K RTs! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WEARE?src=hash">#WEARE</a></p>— Penn State IFC (@PennStateIFC) <a href="https://twitter.com/PennStateIFC/status/903078856424386565">August 31, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Lori Falce: 814-235-3910, @LoriFalce
This story was originally published September 1, 2017 at 10:49 AM with the headline "Penn State IFC donates cash to Harvey victims for retweets."