Clinton talk will draw U. students

and Maureen Tkacik Here at Penn, $25 can buy you a lot of things: a smallish bulkpack, an evening on the town, a semester's worth of clean laundry or -- for one night only -- a glimpse of President Clinton. More than 100 Penn students -- some who paid $25, others who volunteered time -- will hear Clinton speak at a fundraiser tonight at the CoreStates Center. Sponsored by the Democratic National Committee and hosted by Mayor Ed Rendell, the event is expected to raise about $500,000 for the debt-ridden DNC, according to Rendell spokesperson Kevin Feeley. Feeley said 500 to 700 people will attend the arena speech by the president for $25 and $100 ticket holders. Additionally, 80 to 100 people will attend a $1,000-a-head reception with Clinton, and a few dozen will pay $10,000 to dine with him. Interestingly, more sorority sisters plan to attend the event than College Democrats, who are sending only a token group. When the $25 tickets became available, Kappa Alpha Theta sister and College senior Rachel Domers pushed the event on the listservs of the Panhellenic Council and individual houses. She organized a group of about 50 people, three-fourths of them sorority members, who will attend the event. Domers heard about the student-rate tickets from her cousin, who works with Rendell. Neither she nor her cousin expected that student interest would be so high. "[Initially] my cousin just wanted me to go," Domers said, adding that the number of interested students jumped after she e-mailed the listservs. In her message -- which was forwarded to The Daily Pennsylvanian -- Domers offered to collect checks and facilitate transportation to the fundraiser, adding that the entire event features "an open bar and open food (not bad, huh?)." "It's been completely overwhelming, the number of people that have contacted me in the last day," Domers said. The interest has exhausted her supply of tickets, she added. The College Democrats, meanwhile, are sending only a small trickle of members to the fundraiser. "It's such a spur of the moment sort of thing," said the organization's president, College senior Aaron Hall. "We expect probably about four or five [students to attend]. I'd be surprised if there were more than 10." "I'm not sure how many people want to pay 25 bucks," he added. The College Democrats found out about the fundraiser only after receiving a plea for DNC volunteers over a listserv for International Relations majors. College senior and International Relations major Allison Price -- who works for the DNC -- had e-mailed the original request for volunteers. "I don't have anything to do with the College Dems," she said. "They just got a copy of one of my e-mails." Through the circulation of her e-mail plea, Price drummed up 50 volunteers for the fundraiser. "Usually I just ask my friends, but [the DNC] needed more volunteers this time," she said, adding that the committee contacts her "whenever the President is in Philadelphia."

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