Greek Life has been portrayed in media as a place for party animals to go and only have fun with their friends, partying every night. However, it is a lot more than that. Greek Life does a lot of community and philanthropy work, helping the campus and community in more ways than one. One of the fraternity chapters, Lambda Chi Alpha, hosts many different events every year to raise money for different foundations and the community.
Every year, the men of UW-Whitewater’s Lambda Chi Alpha chapter hold a watermelon bash event to raise money for charity.
“We do watermelon bash every year for the Movember Foundation, which is a charity that helps men’s mental and physical health,” said Evan Mallon, the philanthropy chair for Lambda Chi Alpha. “Overall, it provides a good cause for the community.”
The Movember Foundation was founded in 2003 to help men’s mental and physical health, especially prostate and testicular cancer and suicide among men. Their event runs through the entire month of November and encourages men to have a mustache throughout. Since they were founded, they have raised over $837 million.
The watermelon bash is held to raise money for this foundation, and they do it in an exciting way. The event is set up with teams of five competing in different events. This year, the events included a watermelon eating contest, weight guessing, darts, where the teams try to stick as many darts as they can into a watermelon, shot put, bowling and archery, where the teams throw watermelons off a balcony and try to hit a target.
“I came out to the watermelon bash to support Lambda Chi Alpha,” said Chloe Shroeder, a member of the Delta Zeta sorority. “I liked the watermelon eating contest because it was fun watching women in my sorority eat watermelon.”
The most popular event was bashing watermelons. This event allowed participants at the bash to place a watermelon on a stump and smash it with a makeshift sledgehammer.
In total, there were 10 teams that signed up, with 50 participating in the events. With over 240 watermelons, there was not a shortage to be bashed. In the end, the fraternity raised over $500 for the Movember Foundation.
This event is just one of many philanthropy events that Lambda Chi Alpha holds. Every semester, they also hold a food drive, where they go around to the communities of Whitewater, Milton and Jefferson to collect food for Feeding America. They also hold smaller events such as teeter-totter, a barbecue bash and more.
There is no shortage of philanthropy and community events put on by Greek Life. You can usually find something going on every other week, either on campus or in the community.
