While many fraternities and sororities vied for the coveted Burmeister Cup, members of Sigma Phi Epsilon and Alpha Phi achieved a different goal: charity.

The pair ultimately raised $38,000 for the Thurtene carnival, $24,000 of which went directly to St. Louis SCORES, a charity that brings soccer, poetry and community to urban youth in the St. Louis area, according to senior Satyam Khanna, who was in charge of fundraising for Sig Ep.

“Alpha Phi and Sig Ep have won the chancellor’s cup for the last seven or eight years,” said Khanna. “Our overall goal was just to donate to charity, and donate a lot to charity. We also wanted to beat our own goal.we ended up shattering it by $10,000.”

The duo employed a wide variety of methods in order to accrue such a large amount of funds. Members sent letters out to other members and to their parents, as well as to alumni, asking for donations. Members also sold magazines to friends and family and stood outside Schnucks in order to raise funds. Community businesses purchased advertisement space on the program for their performance and donated gift certificates.

And, most importantly, they pinched pennies.

“”We were really tight on spending as well, which is something new for us. Our treasurer, Craig [Wilen], was able to map everything out ahead of time,” said Khanna.

“My roll was ‘every dollar we spend is a dollar we waste fundraising.’ We cut about 50 percent from last year without really compromising anything,” said Wilen.

Emilia Epperly, the Thurtene chair for Alpha Phi, echoed Khanna’s sentiments.

“Our goal every year is to donate a lot of money. We try to keep our expenses down on our fa‡ade so we can donate because that’s kind of the whole point,” she said.

Khanna felt that charity is often overlooked at the Thurtene carnival.

“Everyone in our fraternity loves Thurtene, it’s the heart of our year, but I think that the carnival would benefit the community more if we incorporate fundraising into it more. A lot of sororities and fraternities don’t donate at all, because it’s not required.”

Epperly agrees.

“They have the competition to get student groups excited and to get them to participate, but I feel like there’s too much emphasis on the competition aspect, and not enough emphasis on the charity. That’s why so many groups spend lots of money on their fa‡ade and not so much on charity. I think Thurtene should emphasize that, while it’s great to win, this is what we’re here for.”

Khanna and Epperly both noted that even they had challenges in motivating members to help donate, as they knew it would not improve their chances of winning the Burmeister cup.

“The challenge was motivation. It had to come from people’s hearts. We were raising all this money for charity, but we knew we wouldn’t get any recognition for it,” said Khanna.

Aside from the changes that could be made to the competition, both felt that fraternities and sororities could increase charity donations fairly easily.

“I would definitely hope that they would think ‘well, we could spend this much amount of money by making it more ornate, or we could donate more to children’s charity.’ I think a lot of people waste too. They don’t stay within their budget, or look around for the best price. That’s something we really tried to do this year,” said Epperly.

Khanna also mentioned that taking such a stance towards Thurtene could do much to improve Greek Life’s image in the eyes of Washington University, considering the mounting tension this past year.

“An easy thing for us to say is, ‘look, we did Thurtene carnival, and raised 30-40k every year. We can mobilize 600 people to raise money for charity’…nobody else in the school can really boast about that,” said Khanna. “I think it would look great to the administration if everyone got involved.”

“In the end,” said Public Relations Thurtene Chair Felipe Macia, “it is about the community.”

“The purpose of the carnival is not about money…[We're] most successful in our outreach to the community.”

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