Frat races beds to help hospital

What do you get when you add up music, food, fraternity brothers and beds? No, not the weekend party scene, but the first annual Delta Tau Delta Charity Bed Race. For the better part of Saturday afternoon, 16 five-person teams pushed beds down a cordoned-off section of 36th Street between Chestnut and Walnut streets to benefit the Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania. In the end, "Buns of Steel" beat out five other women's teams to win a $100 cash prize which they donated to the hospital. In the 10-team men's round, "Snapper" came in first. "We came, we won, we're happy," said Wharton sophomore Tak Murata, a member of the winning team. Both racers trying to replenish those electrolytes and curious onlookers trying to beat the heat took advantage of food and drink vendors on Sansom Street, which was also closed to traffic. WDRE-FM was on hand from noon until 2 p.m., offering free prizes and running short trivia contests. The fraternity continued the daytime festivities into nightfall in the form of a party, with all proceeds donated to the hospital. In total, the fraternity raised over $1,000. Wharton junior Jeff Rosen, who co-chaired the event, said he hopes to make this an annual happening. "It's just a fun event for everyone the first week of school," Rosen said. College junior Norm Hetrick expressed similar hopes. "We all got groups of our friends to do it," he said. "We wanted it to be a campus-wide thing. We didn't want to appeal to any one group." The race itself could, at times, be nothing less than terrifying. College senior Erin Doyle said her experience in the race, in which she rode on the bed while everyone pushed her down the street, was quite a thrill. "I felt like no one was there," she said. "I screamed the whole way." College sophomore Michelle Harris sympathized with Doyle's account. "It was scary," Harris said. "I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, I'm going to go flying off the back.' " Nursing sophomore Melanie Bolt had slightly higher expectations than winning her race. "I was hoping that I would still be alive at the end," she said.

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