My Non-Linear Story

So obviously my home page for my beat would be about Towson's Fraternity and Sorority Life. I think in the "trunk" of my home page I would just summarize what Fraternity and Sorority Life is like at Towson. For example, I would list all of the different chapters at Towson and maybe an upcoming Greek event or maybe a recent past one.

In all of my "branches" I would have a different link for each chapter. In the new page for all of the chapters I would describe each chapter including membership and their philanthropies. I would also have a FAQ branch.

Worthy of Two Minutes??

For my slide show I decided to interview Mark Savage. Savage is a junior at Towson University and is in the fraternity Zeta Beta Tau. Being involved with Fraternity and Sorority Life may be very overwhelming to many students but Savage still finds time to do what he loves best - talking. I don't mean talking like talking to his friends or random people but talking on his radio show.

Every Tuesday at 1pm Savage hosts his radio show aka "The Savage Show" which airs on iTunes and maybe somewhere else (that's something for me to find out!) I'm going to be there with him this Tuesday while he records his show to get great photo ops, interviews and natural sounds. I think it's pretty cool that he has his own radio show and I think this is definitely worth my two minutes.

Students Rock Out for a Cure

Tau Kappa Epsilon, a fraternity at TU, recently hosted their first Rock for the Cure concert in PAWS where they raised more than $500 for their newly chosen philanthropy, St. Jude's Research.

During the event the fraternity also held a date auction where the brothers were auctioned off to students in the crowd. The brothers ranged from $5 to $45! The brothers were also auctioned off with gift certificates.

C.T. Sartory was quoted: “There is nothing worse than seeing a young child stricken with an illness that’s incurable, so we are going to do anything we can to raise as much money and as much awareness for that as possible. You can bet that this won’t be the last event that TKE does here.”

I agree with everything that the reporter stated. She gave important facts including how much money was raised, what went on at the event and what their new philanthropy is. However, I think it would add more to the article to get a quote from someone who attended the event. Maybe to see why they attended the event and what the thought of it. I also think it would have helped the article if the reporter explained exactly what St. Jude's Research is. There was a quote from a member of TKE about it but it didn't go into enough detail I felt.

Walk for a Cause

Greeks, Towson students, parents, grandparents and Towson University families all came together to walk for a cause from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. Relay for Life raised over $45,000 for the American Cancer Society this year. Click on the link below to go to my homepage where you can listen to the audio clip about Relay for Life and how it affects people at Towson.

Click here to listen!

Dancing the Night Away...

Students from all over the Towson University community came together on a Friday night to raise money for the Children's Miracle Network.

Check out the story here!

Potential Audio Clips...

I could only think of two ideas for an audio clip right now but I'm not sure how I feel about them:

1. I could interview people in Greek Life participating in Relay for Life.
2. I could interview people in Greek Life to get their opinion on housing. Before interviewing them I could give them pros and cons about having on campus housing. I could also show them other campus housing because I know that would definitely sway my opinion.

Frat Row Finally at Towson?

For years, Fraternity and Sorority Life on campus have been wanting Towson to approve Greek housing on campus. Finally, Towson is looking into building a Frat Row according to The Towerlight.

Pan-Hellenic Association has first dibs to Greek housing on campus. PHA consists of the eight active sororities: Alpha Gamma Delta, Alpha Xi Delta, Phi Mu, Phi Sigma Sigma, Kappa Delta, Alpha Phi, Alpha Omicron Pi and Zeta Tau Alpha. The article explains that Towson is in the works of finding a company to partner with them in building a Greek village.

Vice President of Student Affairs, Deb Moriarty stated in the article: "I get the sense that the student interest is pretty high. Greek Life is certainly one of our growing sub-groups of student organizations on campus."

I agree with the article. I believe that if there was a Greek village at Towson, even more people would be interested in Greek Life. Fraternity and Sorority Life is growing at TU and will continue to grow. By having a Greek village, it will encourage more people to get involved and hopefully will help each group to strengthen their philanthropy events, community service projects, etc.

I think a good way to improve this article would have been to get a few quotes from people in a sorority or fraternity. It would have helped to get their opinions on how they think a Greek village may or may not improve Fraternity and Sorority Life on campus and if they think that housing is a necessity.

"Attacking" my Feature Story

I think I'm going to take the "Trend Story" approach to my first feature story for my beat. Tigerthon is a very popular event at other large schools (including Penn State) but is called a different name, obviously. Many Greek organizations at these schools are very involved with the event.

I plan on interviewing the President of Panhel (the president of all of the sororities) to get her input on the event and how Towson is trying to make it a bigger event. Also, I want to ask her how Greeks are trying to get more involved in this popular event. There will also be many other sorority and fraternity members at the event so I want to get their opinions on the event as well.

Ideas for my Feature Story

At first I wasn't sure what would be a good story to cover for my first feature story but then I remembered a very important event going on at Towson this up-coming Friday: TIGERTHON! According to Towson's website, TigerTHON is a 12-hour community service dance marathon held on campus to raise money for Johns Hopkins Children's Miracle Network. This year TigerTHON will begin on Friday, February 27 at 5:00 p.m. and last until Saturday, February 28 at 5:00 a.m.

Towson's Greek Life is required to attend this fundraising event and participate with another Greek Life group of the opposite sex in dancing. I will be at TigerTHON the entire night so I plan on taking pictures, interviewing a few different people from Greek Life and potentially getting a video of groups dancing! This will definitely be a very entertaining event!

It's That Time Again...

The beginning of the semester only means one thing for Greek Life at Towson: time for recruitment. For this blog I'm going to focus on the sororities of Towson University. Each fall all eight sororities participate in the formal fall rush. However, in the springtime, depending on if each sorority met quota or not, they may have a formal or informal spring recruitment.

This year only four sororities participated in spring rush. Alpha Gamma Delta, Alpha Omicron Pi, Phi Sigma Sigma and Zeta Tau Alpha were the four groups that decided to add more women to their sorority.

Spring recruitment began on Friday, February 13th, where all the Potential New Members (PNMs) were able to go to the University Union and meet all of the sororities at Table Night to get a feel for a first impression of each different sorority.

"We didn't participate in spring rush this year because we met quota in the fall," sophomore Jenny Balsamo said. "Recruitment is very stressful so it's nice to be able to take the semester off."

Each sorority got the option to choose to hold their events on or off campus. They also were able to decide if they wanted to just hold their parties over Valentine's Day weekend or hold events throughout the entire week.

*Originally posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2009.

Towson's Zetas Recognized Nationwide

Okay so it's a little cliche that I'm talking about my sorority for my first beat but the semester just started, so there hasn't been a whole lot of Greek news in The Towerlight. Themis is the nationwide magazine for sisters, alumni and parents for Zeta Tau Alphas across the U.S. Each ZTA chapter sends in updates, photos and achievements to the magazine in hope that it will be published in on of the four issues sent out each year.

In the Winter 2009 edition Iota Delta (Towson's Zeta chapter) was recognized for their amazing dedication and efforts shown at the 1oth anniversary of the Redskin's Think Pink game. 70 members of Towson's ZTA attended the game at FedEx Field on October 12. At the game more than 42,000 Think Pink ribbons were handed out to Redskins fans thanks to the ZTA sisters.

I agree with the reporter that what we did was remarkable and very inspirational but I think it would add more to the article if there was a quote from one of the Zeta sisters. Philanthropy events mean a lot more to us than people would expect and hearing a direct quote from a sister about how the day affected her would probably be more heart touching to the reader. There is a picture of someone places the pin on someone's chest but I think a more effective picture would be one of the sister's interacting with the fans before the game. Seeing how many people supported us and our efforts to help fight breast cancer is ultimately breathtaking.

*Originally posted on Tuesday, February 9, 2009.

My Beat!

The beat I chose to select for this semester is Towson University's Greek Life. I'm in a sorority at Towson, so this is a topic that is of interest to me. Not only do I have to be aware of what other Greek organizations are doing on and off campus, but I must attend all mandatory events for their philanthropies.

My beat will not only cover my sorority, Zeta Tau Alpha, but all other sororities and fraternities on campus. I feel like this beat topic is the best choice for me.

*Originally posted on Sunday, February 8, 2009.