I think the real motivator that Runzel and Chatz provided is the opportunity for students to signal their dislike of Justin Beiber by donating.

I'm not sure, at the very least this could be inverted - they caused a situation where many groups of students would tend to pressure each other to donate in order to avoid the negative utility that would come from acting against their peer group.

If every student is signaling their dislike by donating, donating becomes the status quo. In that case, donating wouldn't be a status raising action, but not signaling would deviate from the status quo, which is perceived as high risk so you're willing to pay to avoid that. In the end, everyone but the groups for which the signaling is status neutral is at a net loss.