By Nicole Maguire ’13

Photo Courtesy of Pi Beta Phi

Pi Phi put on their dancing shoes Saturday, October 27 and raised $5000 for charities like the Easton Area Community Center, Spring Garden Children’s Center and the Pi Phi foundation.

Dance marathon was a 24-hour festival of dancing, games, food and fun. It started at 6pm, with New York based DJ John Hamilton kicking it off. There was a great turnout for the dance in the Marlo Room, despite the football game going on across the campus at Fisher Field.

The sorority is halfway to its $10,000 goal for the year and will host more fundraisers later this month. Pi Phi is hoping to beat the $9,500 it raised last year

This year’s event landed on Parent’s Weekend.

“Dance Marathon is supposed to be an event where we provide a home for children after school, and so I thought it was really fitting that our parents came to see the girl’s ‘home away from home’ during parent›s weekend.” Caroline Johnson ‘13 said.

“Parent’s Weekend made it more difficult to coordinate schedules between parent’s dinners, the football game, and performers, but I thought it was nice that the parents of performers even came out to the event.”

“It was a great way of involving all of the other sororities and people on campus by uniting them together for a good cause” Jessica Ritzenthaler ’14 of Delta Gamma said. “There was so much energy, dancing, and smiling. It really seemed like everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. DJ Hamilton even seemed like he was enjoying himself.”

John Hamilton was brought into the event through a co-sponsorship with LAF Underground Music, which hosts one event every month. The Pi Phi girls and others in attendance thought he was a hit.

“He really aided us in ticket sales because we marketed his appearance as a special event included in the ticket price, so we did see people come out for his performance,” Johnson said. During his performance there were probably between 130-150 people there. He was a really great, nice guy and he was extremely receptive to the idea of performing for a charity event.

“I couldn’t believe how into it some of the girls were,” Hamilton said. “I loved it, I had a great time.”