Penn students took Jell-O to the face for charity on Friday night.
Keeping with the Year of Games, Alpha Phi Omega hosted an Inception-like game show to support Doctors Without Borders.
Alpha Phi Omega, a co-ed service fraternity, hosted “Pennception,” a game show within a game show.
Over 100 Penn students gathered in the Hall of Flags on Friday night to take part in what College junior and United Minorities Council Chairman Chris Cruz called “the mother of all game shows.”
Teams of five participated in six levels of gaming including Quizzo and Human Tetris in hopes of winning the grand prize, a Nintendo Wii.
Teams were also given slips they could use to make another team do a certain task. Cruz’s team decided to trade in some of their slips to make a competing team walk in a circle like chickens for laughs. During a round of Quickly Reading Things, a representative from each team had to read a tongue twister in 30 seconds without messing up any of the words. Those who failed got Jell-O smeared on their faces by APO President and College senior Omar Khan.
Participants donated $8 and audience members donated $5 to the event, which raised roughly $700, according to APO member and College senior Christian de Luna. All proceeds went to Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian organization that provides healthcare services on an international level.
APO invited student groups from around campus to compete, including the Penn Philippine Association, which took first place. “You got to go ham for that Wii,” said PPA participant Julius del Rosario, an Engineering senior. The PPA team was team number 11, but the crowd did not find it coincidental that they won on 11-11-11.
While the PPA may have taken home first place, most of the teams consisted of APO pledges. Each team picked a creative name to represent themselves, such as team captain and College sophomore Zack Dorsen’s team, “Pledgeception.”
None of the teams who participated actually knew what they were getting themselves into when they arrived. “We’re recruiting followers. When we recruit them we have to tell them, ‘You’re going to help us but we don’t know how,’” said Pledgeception member and College and Wharton sophomore Kevin Hershey. “It’s kind of like a surprise because apparently the followers are going to be involved, too. We just don’t know how,” added Pledception follower and College freshman Jennifer Rong.
Khan said, “The reason we didn’t tell anyone is because we wanted to go with the theme Inception-Pennception. We didn’t want to give the APO members an unfair advantage [either].”
