I read this and I'm not surprised. PSUSigKap touched on this earlier about how SAE ran into problems a couple years back. If I remember, they had been accused of stealing from their THON budget, something like that. Considering that, I'm not surprised that they are doing every thing possible to make sure people go out and can.
As for canning itself, I went canning this past weekend for Campus Crusade. We went to a supermarket in NJ for about 5 hrs and we raised little over $600 there. We had alumni come up to us and give us money, kids give us little bits of change to people telling us to move out of their way. We weren't obnoxious about it; we had our signs and our cans, we politely asked people and we had a little bit of fun on a chilly Feb. Saturday. Altogether, with 10 people, we raised little over $1100.
Canning is something that has to be experienced to really understand. Canning is the backbone of THON and has helped us raise over $30 million over the past 30+ years. I'm proud to have canned and to have raised money for THON.
http://www.thon.org/