The Duke Panhellenic Council Executive Board announced over the weekend that many of their members were “incredibly shocked” to find out that despite a packed schedule of spring philanthropy events, none of the sororities had completely solved the causes they set out to aid. Developments at Duke reflect a larger sentiment of disappointment as sorority and fraternity chapters across the country grapple with the limited impact their events reportedly have on their respective causes.
“What do you mean, my sorority’s philanthropy—where you get to pie me in the face—didn’t solve childhood illiteracy?” asked one sorority girl sitting in front of Monday Monday in a VMS class told her black-clad friend. “Are you trying to tell me that all that work and all that shaving cream didn’t actually eliminate illiteracy in the contiguous United States and Guam?”
The confusion amongst chapters is widespread. One sorority sister from an unnamed, lower-tier sorority told Monday Monday she was unsure how their philanthropy—which spent most of its budget on t-shirts, pancake mix and an event photographer—didn’t actually solve childhood cancer.
“My chapter ended up donating like $272.69 to the Duke Children’s hospital, so this is news to me. I can’t believe my efforts—the t-shirt I bought, the article about cancer that I shared on Facebook and the text I wrote to my mom to put some money into my account for a latté and to donate $5 to the 5K run—didn’t completely eradicate childhood cancer.”
Many sororities had reportedly spent “months” curating philanthropy t-shirts, creating Facebook events and concocting elaborate schemes to get students to donate to their respective causes, in addition to garnering hundreds of likes on Instagram. However, few sororities reported ever actually interfacing with the causes they championed so hard on social media.
“Man, nothing gets likes quite like a picture of me holding a sick child, or saying I’ll get a tattoo of a heart on my butt if enough people donate to my sorority’s heart health drive,” said one anonymous sorority sister, whose Instagram feed is rife with vain selfies juxtaposed against priggish photos of her with Kenyan children on a $20,000 safari she took with her parents and the guy she hooked up with at Spring Fling.
Administrators and directors of Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life (OFSL) at Duke have been quick to point out that individual chapters would have a much greater impact if they actually just went out into the community to try to improve it, rather than making a t-shirt and holding some sort of elaborate sports tournament.
“It took me a while to figure out that one sorority hosting a softball tournament wasn’t supposed to be symbolic of the 1 in 3 women who ended up being battered—in many cases, by bats, themselves,” anonymous OFSL office worker told Monday Monday in an anonymous meetup by the abandoned apartments on Central Campus. “I really thought that one and the volleyball event raising awareness for people who will never be able to play the game because they can’t see the ball were supposed to be some sort of elaborate joke.”
Shock wasn’t just limited to sororities, however. Many fraternity brothers were equally as surprised to find out their philanthropies weren’t efficacious at solving the problems they were intended to, no matter how hard they forced it.
“What do you mean, the profit share I attended at Chipotle didn’t solve world hunger?” said, like, six fraternity brothers, in unison. “And the guac was extra, too. That sucks.”
Many of these men and women were also surprised to learn that not only did their philanthropy events not completely eradicate the causes they championed, but apparently their eight-week DukeEngage trips weren’t as effective as they thought.
“I spent most of my time in Cape Town hiking and marveling at how cheap the alcohol was. But it’s hard to believe my internship about the impact of apartheid and its residual effects on the cultural dynamics of South Africa didn’t eliminate racism,” said one former member of DukeEngage Cape Town.
Meanwhile, many other equally important but far less sexy causes in Durham are painfully aware of why Duke students are uninterested in raising money or providing aid. Many of these causes are looking to mimic the success of Greek philanthropies in an effort to raise awareness and Facebook likes about their respective needs.
Durham’s homeless veteran population is reportedly pooling together all of their resources and drugs to spearhead new event initiatives. The Durham NAACP chapter has already begun a GoFundMe page to crowdsource funds to create t-shirts the next time the pervasive system of institutionalized racism in the United States inevitably rears its ugly head.
A member of the NAACP chapter at Duke told Monday Monday, “Maybe if we handed out comfort colors t-shirts at Black Lives Matter protests, then rich white college kids would actually go.”
One anonymous Vietnam War veteran, an amputee, who is currently calling an underpass near the Durham Bulls ballpark his home until he handles his debilitating cocaine addiction, told Monday Monday that he was “honestly surprised” he hadn’t been approached about participating in one of these philanthropies.
“I was an actual army lieutenant who fought in the war,” he said while feeding his dog some roadkill he found in those spooky, non-gentrified parts of Durham. “There’s so much potential there for a great Greek philanthropy event. I’m thinking something in camouflage, or maybe even dodgeball to simulate the bullets I tried to dodge but inevitably couldn’t in the war.”
Written from atop a U-Haul at a darty outside of the Barn.
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