While CSUF finishes the semester online, Titan Comms interns are writing first-person blog posts to document this unique experience.
Coronavirus has taken a toll on everyone in society, with people having their future plans ruined due to mandatory quarantines. This is also true with Greek life on campus at CSUF, with all events suddenly coming to a halt. I’m a member of PIKE at CSUF, and can say that the coronavirus has taken away a lot of what my fraternity had planned for the semester. We lost Greek week, mixers, and most likely our formal. Coronavirus has taken a toll on all of us, and everyone is hoping things will return back to normal soon.
One big thing we lost due to the coronavirus is Greek week. Every year all the fraternities and sororities compete in a week-long series of events and fundraising, hoping to be crowned the champs of Greek week. It’s something everyone looks forward to and prepares for all year. We lost last year, so I was really looking forward to bouncing back and winning it my senior year. This year it got canceled, and members of my fraternity are not happy about it. Sophomore Tyler Vanderveer stated, “ it really sucks we don’t have Greek week this year. I understand why we can’t have it but seeing all of our hard work go to waste is just unfortunate”. PIKE has been preparing dances and skits for the last few weeks, as well as tryouts for who will participate in the field games. All of this is suddenly over now, and my fraternity is hoping that we can make up for it next year. On top of Greek week, our plans got altered with the loss of mixers and our formal.
With campus getting closed all in-person activities are now canceled, including our mixers. Every semester we have multiple mixers with different sororities. It’s one of my favorite things about being in a fraternity with us playing games, renting out venues, and overall having a great time. All of our future mixers are now canceled, and it brings questions upon fraternity members. We pay for all events upfront at the beginning of the semester using dues that we all pay. Now that all of our events are canceled, we’re all wondering what is going to happen with our dues. Will we get a refund? Has all of our money gone to waste? Senior Eddie Alexopoulos states,”I’m not sure how things are going to turn out with our dues, I guess we will have to wait and find out” One thing is for sure, and that is there is a lot of uncertainty floating around PIKE, and all of us just want things to return to normal.
With the loss of Greek week, mixers, and our formal every aspect of our fraternity is now changed. Seniors like myself are devastated with the loss of our formal, with it being something we look forward to all year. This wasn’t how I expected my senior year to end, with us losing countless events that I was looking forward to. I had a few more memories I wanted to make with my friends, but suddenly it’s all over. Weston Whittaker says “it’s a bummer losing my last formal, but it’s out of my control. There are bigger problems going on in the world than a dance.” That is very true, with everyone being affected by the coronavirus more is at stake than the well being of fraternities on campus. We’ll see how Greek life recovers as we all continue to deal with coronavirus.
