I was driving my daughter home from college last year when we stopped at Penn State to visit a couple of her friends. I treated them to breakfast when they urged me to do a story on Thon.

What?

With passion and excitement, they told me about Thon — the world’s largest student-run charity, which is like a dance-a-thon, pep rally, rock concert and tent revival all in one. For 41 years, the students at Penn State — a university known more for its troubles than its triumphs in recent years — have raised tens of millions for pediatric cancer research and family care. They have raised so much — more than $101 million — that they have even financed a wing at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital.

I knew I had to go cover it this year.

Thon is the capstone to a year’s worth of fund-raising, in which students rely on everything from direct-mail campaigns to standing on corners with a can. Since 1977, students have supported the work of the Four Diamonds Fund, which helps the families of children with cancer meet the needs that insurance will not, as well as finance research.

Every February, about 700 couples — as well as boosters, volunteers and even children with cancer and their parents — pack the Bryce Jordan Center for the dance-a-thon.

They are not really dancing the whole time. The rules are that they must stay awake for 46 hours and stay on their feet. It is a test of endurance. Of course it is uncomfortable and sometimes painful, but when they start to buckle and hallucinate, they remind themselves that if children can go through cancer therapy, they can tough it out.

When I got there this year, it looked like March Madness; the Bryce Jordan Center, Penn State’s basketball arena, was filled to the rafters and the floor was covered with people. Each dancer has what is called a “moraler,” somebody who is responsible for that person’s morale and monitors his or her energy level. Some moralers give their dancers piggyback rides just to spell them.

The whole time, there is this incredible ebb and flow of activity among the 15,000 other people who are making this work. There are a bunch of kids running around with squirt guns, playing music and doing line dancing and all sorts of other things. The stands are filled with student organizations like fraternities and sororities cheering their team down on the floor and making sure they do not get physically or psychologically exhausted. The arena is pumped up with noise and cheers, so when you walk in it is totally chaotic and doesn’t make any sense.

But as you immerse yourself in it, you begin to realize what is going on: these youngsters are being broken down slowly — and then are being brought back up emotionally, so it is like an incredible bond with everyone on the floor. That’s when you start to understand it.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

By the second day, couples are starting to fall apart from fatigue and cramps. Volunteers — massage therapists and physical therapists — give rubdowns, tape their ankles and put ice on their knees. Later there is a pep rally at which the football team, the volleyball team and the golf team perform skits to entertain the crowd and make sure nobody crashes and burns before the big reveal — the announcement of how much money was collected.

Before that happens, there is a tribute to the Thon kids who did not make it the previous year, and that gets really emotional. Families give testimonials about how their child’s cancer was diagnosed and how the charity helped them. Over the years, the students have bonded with some of the young cancer patients and their families. Sororities and fraternities have “adopted” some of them, like Tucker Haas (Slide 15), who led cheers this year perched atop a big buddy’s shoulders.

Later, a band gets everybody psyched for the announcement of how much money was collected. This year’s take was more than $12 million, nearly $2 million more than last year. The place goes crazy.

Why do they do this?

It is considered an honor to dance, to be out on the floor. When they are freshmen, sophomores and juniors, most of these students work as volunteers at Thon. They have responsibilities like feeding people, keeping morale up, monitoring the acts that are onstage. They sleep in shifts, although most of them get only two or three hours of rest before they start working again.

For seniors, being chosen to endure this agony is part of a ritual. What they get out of it is an incredible personal bond with each other and a real emotional and psychological lift.

It is graduation into adulthood, but a responsible adulthood, caring for other people. It is the kind of thing you hope your children get in college. That is why I think Thon is unique and why it has continued to be so successful and so large. It does not stop when people graduate, either; hundreds of alumni plead to be able to go back on the dance floor.

The last year was a rough one for Penn State, with the child sexual abuse scandal that took down the football coach, Joe Paterno, and led to the conviction of his former assistant Jerry Sandusky. Granted, Thon had been raising money and doing good works long before any of that came to light. But it may be more important now because students need to be reassured that they were good people who do good things.

The fact is, Thon probably has more to do with Penn State students than football does. They are not looking to make someone an all-star; they are doing charitable work. And it wasn’t just one student, it was thousands doing that.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

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