Matthew Davies from Zeta Psi, Melissa Gatsik from Alpha Chi Omega, Sean Musselman from Sigma Phi Epsilon, and Jonathan Agresta from Zeta Psi.
Melissa Gatsik.
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A book of epic proportions
Greeks on campus log a record of community service.
Community service is a requirement of every Greek letter organization. Sorority and fraternity members are expected to participate regularly in community service projects and to log their activity in their chapter record books.
Flip through the UMass Amherst Greek record books for this past year, and the story of UMass Amherst sororities and fraternities unfolds.
Last spring (the numbers are still out for this fall), the campus Greek system raised more than $15,000 and contributed more than 5,000 hours for charitable organizations, In 2005, these included Alzheimer’s Association, the Red Cross fund for Hurricane Katrina survivors, Amherst Friends for the Homeless, the Amherst Family Center, Everywoman’s Center, Shriners Hospital, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, the American Cancer Society, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, the MacDowell Colony, Project Sunshine, the Salvation Army, Safe Passage, the Clothes for Education Fund, Pediatric AIDS, the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and elementary and middle schools in Western Massachusetts.
“Greek community service is just going up and up,” says Sean Musselman, a Sigma Phi Epsilon brother and vice president of activities for the Interfraternal Council. Among the high points of the year were the opening on campus this fall of a UMass chapter of Pi Kappa Phi (the national chapter is the only fraternity in the country that operates its own philanthropy); the runaway success of an inaugural Halloween Festival for Amherst kids and parents; and the flexing of serious philanthropic muscle by the smallest fraternity on campus, who collected a bundle for Hurricane Katrina victims by taking buckets door to door in the residence halls.
Through its Push America organization, Pi Kappa Phi assists people living with disabilities, says Matthew Pearlson, president of the fraternity’s new UMass Amherst chapter. Just weeks after the chapter opened in September, four members drove all night to Wexford, Pennsylvania, where they spent a Saturday working with regional brothers to build a fence at a camp for children with disabilities. In the evening, campers and volunteers joined in Halloween fireside activities. Driving back on just a few hours’ sleep, says Pearlson, “nobody was interested in complaining. We were all excited, talking about what Pi Kappa Phi stands for.” Plans include a fundraising bike ride next spring.
Halloween was also the setting for an event that brought together Greek volunteers as they hosted Amherst school kids and their parents in the Student Union Ballroom. Kids enjoyed hours of capering in costumes, pinning the stem on pumpkin, watching movies, making windsocks, and painting pumpkins. Dozens of backpacks crammed with school supplies were given out as door prizes, with all materials donated by local businesses solicited by Greek chapters.
The Halloween Festival was a smash hit, says co-organizer Kristen DeMarco, a sister in Alpha Chi Omega and vice president of activities for the Panhellenic Council. “Our goal was to have 20 kids,” she says, “but we had 60. Including parents, we had about a hundred people. And we had 100 percent participation from all chapters in all four councils on campus: the Panhellenic Council, the National Pan-Hellenic Council, the Interfraternal Council, and the Multicultural Greek Council.
“For me, the Halloween Festival was a culminating event,” says DeMarco. “Every chapter was great and did a lot of ground work. The fact that every chapter participated was a show of respect, I think, for the community work Greeks do – we are a community-service community.”
Although every semester Greek chapters individually and collectively organize or participate in major community service projects—such as Alpha Chi Omega’s Luminary Project to raise money for victims of domestic violence, Sigma Phi Epsilon’s weeklong campout on campus to raise funds for the American Cancer Society, and many chapters’ participation in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Bowl-a-Thon—the lion’s share of their community work consists of day-to-day service behind the scenes. They visit children in the hospital – reading with them and helping with homework; they write letters to U.S. soldiers overseas; they chaperone a dance for sixth graders; they collect boxes of clothes or toiletries for victims of domestic abuse; they adopt a Girl Scout troop; they coach a youth basketball team. In October, the National Pan-Hellenic Council helped provide the setting-up power for the Apple Harvest Festival, a region-wide annual event held on the Amherst Town Commons to raise money for the Amherst Family Center.
And then there are hours spent standing at the entrance of McGuirk Stadium before a football game or knocking on doors with a collection can in hand. This year, Zeta Psi, one of the smallest chapters on campus, raised more money for Hurricane Katrina victims than any other chapter on campus. “All fourteen of us went to every room in the Southwest and Sylvan residential areas, and asked people if they had any spare change,” says president Matt Davies. They collected $2,400 and secured a matching donation from Best Buy, for a total of $4,800. “We seem to have natural disasters covered. If there’s a hurricane, we’re on it.”
One of the biggest canvassing events that Greeks participate in is Shelter Sunday, organized every fall by Amherst Friends for the Homeless. This year, says Friends volunteer Tom Plaut, out of 296 people who went collecting door to door in neighborhoods, “195 were Greek students from UMass Amherst. Without them, it wouldn’t work. That’s all there is to it.”
more: UMass Amherst Office of Fraternities and Sororities