When Delta Tau Delta fraternity was planning a car wash to raise money for charity, Brett Ward knew what needed to be done.
The first-year international business student put on a blue Speedo, grabbed a sign and headed out onto Pickens Street Sunday afternoon.
“I thought, ‘What’s a better way to draw attention?’” Ward said.
It worked. Passersby snapped photos from their cars, one woman posed with him for a picture and a number of customers said they’d noticed him.
Ward was one of 10 to 15 of the chapter’s brothers who lined the street in front of the fraternity’s off-campus complex near Patterson Hall from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, washing cars for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. In all, they raised about $300, according to the chapter’s president, Garrett Snipes, a fourth-year public health student.
The fundraiser’s success was helped in large part by some members’ willingness to bear a chilly afternoon in skimpier clothes — at least fundraising chairman Frank Pisco thinks so.
“The fact that we had guys willing to stick their neck out a little bit and go out in the street half-naked probably tripled the business we would have gotten without them,” said Pisco, a third-year public relations student who also works as an ad representative for The Daily Gamecock. “It was cool to see how committed they were to the event.”