This past weekend, I was canning in the Pittsburgh area for the Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon (Thon), and I had a wonderful time. However, the group I was with encountered a situation that made me think about the real meaning of Thon in general.

A certain fraternity had apparently been canning in the area we wanted to be in for a while before we arrived. Our group decided to take two different intersections in the same area.

A little while after we began, a few of the fraternity brothers drove up to some of the people from our group, and yelled at them for "cutting them off" at an earlier intersection, so they were apparently not getting as many donations. They argued that we weren't expressing the "Thon spirit" by doing so and proceeded to leave their intersection because they were angry at us.

I would just like to say all Penn State groups involved in Thon are raising money for the same cause: to help beat cancer. The fraternity members could have put their efforts into working with us to raise as much as possible, but instead they chose to leave.

Maybe this fraternity should re-evaluate its idea of the "Thon spirit," because it lies in working together for a common goal, not in competing against one another to see who can raise the most money.