Maryland AEPi's Make Money with Dumpage!

U. Maryland fraternity fundraising with feces
By Derby Cox, The Diamondback

While using public restrooms may give some students performance anxiety, Lumpy, a 400-pound bull, had no such problem Saturday afternoon.

He had been strolling around his enclosure when he paused at a far corner of his pen, surveyed his surroundings and calmly defecated.

"We have dumpage!" a woman yelled as the 40 or so people watching burst into applause.

Why all the fuss about bovine elimination? It was part of the University of Maryland at College Park's Alpha Epsilon Pi's sixth-annual charity event Dump for Dollars. Fraternity members sold a total of 2,500 tickets at $5 apiece, each of which correlated to a randomly assigned 4-square-foot patch of land in the bull's pen in the middle of fraternity row. The owner of the square in which the bull relieved himself won $1,000.

This year's event benefited Everybody Wins!

DC, which promotes children's literacy through mentoring and book donation. The fraternity expected to donate about $10,000, said Jared Albert, the fraternity’s secretary and a sophomore criminology and criminal justice and government and politics major.

The waist-high black-and-white humped bull made his appearance around noon, roaming docilely around the pen, soliciting pats from the audience and mooing gently on occasion.

Anticipation built during the next two hours as everyone waited for the bull to do its business.
I'm on the edge of my seat," said sophomore biology major Greg Lessans.

I've never seen so many people excited about cow poo," agreed contractor Marie Sangaline, who helped bring the bull for a company called Pony to Go.

The feces finally fell a little after 2 p.m., and then the controversy started. Where did it land?
"He stood here and shat on this square and some of it bounced into that square," Albert explained.

"I was one inch away," said Jake Rothbard, a Alpha Epsilon Pi member and freshman accounting major, who lamented how close he came to having sold the winning ticket. "It feels terrible considering there are so many spots and I'm right next to it."

But talk of a split was out of the question.

"Wherever the shit falls is where the shit falls," Rothbard said.

The first Dump for Dollars took place after alumnus Ben Ruder saw a picture of a similar event in a friend's apartment. The event grew from there to become one of the largest nationwide fundraisers for the fraternity according to Marty Bock, chapter president and a junior psychology major. As for the bull, it's back to the petting zoo, a happier fate than befell last year's dumper.

"He had a bad temper so [his owners] ate him," Albert said.