As part of T-Mobile’s promotion for the new Motorola CLIQ phone, the company is offering a cash donation and a free Weezer concert for the school that wins the most votes in their Facebook-sponsored “CLIQ Challenge.” For each vote a school receives, T-Mobile will donate $1 to the school, up to $25,000.

At publication time, UCF ranked 12th place with just more than 3,300 votes. Despite being the third-largest school in the country, UCF ranks behind much smaller schools, such as Grand Valley State University.

“We just need organization if we want [Weezer] to come here,” said Campus Activities Board student director Lisa Cunningham. “It’d have to be a big SGA-OSI-CAB collaboration. The more passionate people will be about it, the better we’ll do.”

Cunningham said CAB is making a push to promote the event through fliers, word of mouth and event announcements.

Despite promoting the contest, Cunningham said CAB may not receive the cash donation if UCF were to win and that the university is unaware of how exactly the cash donation would be allocated.

Florida State University leads the challenge with more than 9,500 votes – more than 2,000 votes higher than the second-place school, the University of Florida.

Notable in UF’s push for second place is a famous Gator phrase in the name of its Facebook promotion event: “Beat FSU.” Taking UF’s lead, UCF students may not be voting for the concert as much as they’re voting for pride.

“I think people want to make a name for themselves and put UCF on the map,” said freshman psychology major Cindy Charloff. “We’re not going to do it with football, so we might as well do it with Weezer.”

Freshman industrial engineering major James Weschler said he agrees the concert would promote pride and that if properly promoted, the school’s size would give UCF the votes needed to win.

“I can see pride being a factor,” Weschler said. “I think it builds pride to promote and get some spirit out there.”

Voting is done through T-Mobile’s Facebook application at www.facebook.com/tmobile. Voting lasts until midnight on Nov. 30, and the winning school will be announced Dec. 2.

Weezer is working with T-Mobile to promote its new album, Raditude.

Tickets for the Weezer concert are expected to be limited and will be offered first to those who voted in the contest.

Source: Central Florida Future, by Mike Balducci, November 22, 2009. Photo courtesy of Weezer.

[UCF Today: The UCF Facebook fan page has more than 30,000 fans.]