Greek Life Gives Back: How Montclair State’s Sororities and Fraternities Make Change During COVID-19
By Ariel Rogg
The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t been the easiest on Montclair State students, with most classes meeting online, clubs and activities struggling to stay active and a loss of socializing with friends and classmates on campus. It’s clear that many of us are feeling lost and isolated from the rest of the world and it’s uncertain when things will actually get back to normal.
Even though things seem more quiet, there’s definitely one group of students that isn’t staying silent: Greek Life.
There’s always a lot of stigma surrounding what it means to be in a sorority and fraternity, as many people might associate membership with nothing more than parties or hefty fines. In reality, Montclair State’s Greek community has picked up the pace with community service, donations, philanthropic activities and events that not only bond their own organizations together, but benefit the campus and local community as a whole.
Taylor Roberto, a sister of Delta Phi Epsilon and the Greek Leadership Team’s current Vice President of Programming, was responsible for organizing the annual Greek Week, where different sorority and fraternity organizations competed in fun events, like Family Feud and basketball. Along with these events, however, was a record-breaking effort of collecting food donations and cans for our very own Red Hawk Food Pantry.
In past years, Greek Week consisted of a “quarters and pennies” event that was easy to rig and sway the win from one organization to another. Roberto completely eliminated this aspect of the week as she wanted it to be fair for everyone involved, and was really hopeful that her canning initiative would be successful this year.
“Honestly, the canning was what I looked forward to the most,” Roberto said. “Not only does it benefit [you] in winning Greek Week, it also benefits such a great cause and such a great place.”
Based on the needs of the Red Hawk Food Pantry and the kinds of donations they were looking for, Roberto designed each day of Greek Week to be a different “themed” canning. Each day, the different Greek organizations would collect cans matching the theme for that day, which ensured the pantry would receive the food they needed.
Across six different Greek sub-councils and 44 individual organizations, more than 2,700 cans were collected for the Red Hawk Food Pantry in the span of one week. Roberto was completely blown away by the overwhelming amount of support and donations offered by each Greek organization.
“I had not expected to collect that many cans at all,” Roberto said. “This was one of the top years of collecting the most amount of cans, and it really just shows how as a Greek community we can all come together and make that happen for the Red Hawk Pantry, which gives back to the students at Montclair. It’s really about our community impacting the greater community at Montclair.”
Associate Director of Student Involvement Julie Fleming, who is also currently filling the role of Greek Life Coordinator, says that the coordinator of the pantry Sonja Sellman was thankful for Greek Life’s contributions.
“I would say [she] was very grateful and very overwhelmed,” Fleming said. “Then [she] told us to stop because they also had donations from other places and had nowhere for us to put everything!”
Because there was such an overwhelming amount of donations and the Red Hawk Food Pantry couldn’t support it all, Greek Life decided to contribute the remaining cans to a local soup kitchen in Montclair called Toni’s Kitchen.
“We overwhelmed our own pantry with so many donations, which is a good problem to have,” Fleming said. “It’s a problem but it’s a good one. So the solution to that is we’re going to be sharing the rest of these donations with the community.”
Greek Life’s acts of service this year go further than just one week, as all of the individual sororities and fraternities have been working harder than ever before to support their philanthropies as well as benefit our local communities. One National Panhellenic Conference sorority, Theta Phi Alpha, chose Eva’s Village as their local philanthropy for this semester. Eva’s Village is a non-profit and social service organization based in Paterson, and their goal is to provide resources for people struggling with poverty, homelessness, and hunger. These resources include halfway houses for women and men, apartments, clinics, a kitchen, education, shelters, and more.
Theta Phi Alpha’s Philanthropy Chair Caroline Marinari was the sister behind choosing to support Eva’s Village.
“Because of everything that’s happened this year, many people have lost their jobs and have been out of work or shelters aren’t able to provide as many resources to those who need it,” Marinari said. “It’s important to continue donating so that more people are receiving help and have a bed to sleep in and meals to eat everyday.”
Though being virtual has made things more challenging with raising money, Marinari came up with a new and creative way to encourage sisters to support the cause.
“During the semester, our philanthropic event consisted of doing a social media contest in which sisters who raised the most money would receive a gift card. Each sister had a personal link and people could click on it and donate to their page,” Marinari said. “It was interesting because you never know how well these types of things will work out but our sisters put in effort over a two week span to raise money for a great cause.”
Because of the efforts of 50 girls within the sorority, Theta Phi Alpha was able to raise over $1,530 for Eva’s Village. Several of the sisters presented the check in person to a representative from the non-profit.
A fraternity on campus, Alpha Chi Rho (and also known as AXP), has also been working tirelessly this semester to keep community service alive. Some of their recent service projects include a clean up of the Little Falls public library and a clothing drive where brothers donated bags of their old clothes. This semester they’ve been very focused on supporting one of their most notable philanthropies, the Multiple Sclerosis Society.
The Multiple Sclerosis Society is a non-profit that contributes to research and resources for the devastating disease.
AXP’s Marketing Chair and newly-elected Secretary Corey Annan explains the brevity of supporting this non-profit organization during the pandemic.
“In a time where people are losing their jobs and homes due to our world being put on pause, raising money for this philanthropy has truly never been more important,” Annan said. “People are struggling more than ever, especially people who are dealing with Multiple Sclerosis and may not be financially stable enough to fight the disease.”
Even though it is part of their philanthropic responsibility, for AXP, Multiple Sclerosis hits home much harder.
“Two of our fraternity brothers, who are also biological brothers, were affected by this as their father passed away from Multiple Sclerosis,” Annan said. “Because of this, I believe our fraternity has truly embraced the philanthropy even more in hopes of finding a cure.”
To raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society this semester, AXP hosted their “Queen of the Crows” pageant event that showcases different sorority women as contestants. In the pageant, contestants show off their talents, trivia knowledge, and formal wear in order to hopefully earn the title Queen of the Crows (as AXP’s mascot animal is a crow).
Because of the pandemic, they had to figure out a hybrid situation for the event. They did the actual show in person with the contestants wearing masks and socially distanced, but the audience tuned in over Zoom. Through fees of admission, raffles, and other donations, the fraternity was able to support not only the Multiple Sclerosis Society but their affected brothers as well.
“For Queen of the Crows, being able to raise $1,000 for the event is a big feat during such a turbulent time in our society,” Annan said. “While it’s not the most amount of money, it could be super beneficial to someone battling the disease or it could go towards research to finding a cure, and at the end of the day, each dollar contributes greatly to the cause.”
As part of being in a Greek organization on Montclair’s campus, every member must fulfill Red Hawk Accreditation. This is a set of requirements outlining events that Greeks must attend as well as the number of community service hours they need to complete.
“If there are about 600 some odd active members in Greek Life this semester, and each member does the minimum 10 hours of community service, that’s at least 6,000 hours of service from the Greek community,” Fleming said. “It’s who we are as an institution, you know? We do a lot of good for a lot of people collectively.”
As someone who graduated from Montclair State with both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and considers our campus a home, Fleming is proud to oversee the work put in by Greek organizations.
“That’s a piece of what I love about this institution, that there’s so much giving back that happens at all levels,” Fleming said. “One of the things that I was really proud of is that in this pandemic, people found ways to give back and to do service. People didn’t give up.”
The most important part of it, as Fleming describes, is the selflessness that came from the students as they volunteered.
“Part of what makes it so powerful is that a lot of our students give back to their peers,” Fleming said. “They know the stories that their peers are going through, they see the things that are happening in their communities, and they don’t sit still and do something about it.”
In pushing against the stigma of Greek Life through every philanthropic donation, community service hour and bonding event, Montclair State’s sororities and fraternities have set an example in leadership, as they strengthen not only their own community amidst a difficult pandemic, but the Montclair State, local, and far communities as well.
