PiPhiestival

Things have been very exciting for the Pi Beta Phi chapter at Virginia Tech recently! We launched our new philanthropy this fall to raise money for literacy. We raise money for Big Brothers Big Sisters of the New River Valley, and First Book, an organization that places a book in the hands of a child in need. Pi Beta Phi’s “PiPhiestival” began on Sunday, September 25^th in the Oak Lane Greek Community at Virginia Tech with a 5v5 basketball tournament, with numerous organizations participating, raffles, and “Pie a Pi Phi”. With “Pi a Pi Phi”, anyone could pay a dollar to pie one of the sisters of Pi Beta Phi in the face with whipped cream; by “”pi-ing” sometone, each fraternity or sorority gets points for their team in order to get closer to winning “PiPhiestival”. We had a great turn out in Oak Lane and there was great sportsmanship among all of the teams participating in the basketball tournament! It was so great to see members of fraternity and sorority chapters coming out to support their representatives in the tournament! We also had so many girls from our chapter getting excited about being pied in the face, including our chapter president, Missy Coates (see picture below).

While our philanthropy is a little different from other chapter’s philanthropies in the sense that ours is typically a one-day event as opposed to a weeklong series of events, we decided to add a new twist this year – a concert! This year, we are proud to be co-sponsoring a benefit concert with the Virginia Tech Union (VTU) in Squires Commonwealth Ballroom; the concert will feature Devin Spear and Fiction 20 Down from the DC/Maryland/Northern Virginia area. Opener, Devin Spear, will be coming to Blacksburg for the show from Washington, D.C. and describes his genre of music as “Relaxica”. The headliner, Fiction 20 Down, from Baltimore, MD has been drawing attention with their reggae/hip-hop sounds, and they will be touring with the band 311 soon. Fiction 20 Down has headlined major events such as Haiti Relief – The Concert, and are therefore definitely familiar with helping others in powerful ways, as Pi Beta Phi aims to do.

We have had a great fall so far because of our philanthropy’s success, as well as getting involved with other fraternity/sorority chapters’ philanthropies! I love that our Greek community has such amazing philanthropic goals and that everyone enjoys getting involved and helping with other chapters’ philanthropies because they know it is the right thing to do.  Everyone has so much fun being together and helping out great causes in the New River Valley area and beyond! I can’t wait to see what all of the Panhellenic and IFC chapters are able to do for their philanthropies and for the community this year! Thanks to everyone who participated in “PiPhiestival”!