For the brothers of Sigma Phi Epsilon, this year was a great year. Our 32 brothers have created friendships that will last the rest of their lives while maintaining the highest fraternity GPA on campus. We had plenty of momentum heading into the second half of the spring semester when it suddenly came to an end. The Coronavirus outbreak sent UMass and schools across the country into online classes, with the entire campus community being sent back home in order to stay safe with their family. While most of greek life on campus has thrown in the towel for the year, the brothers of Sigma Phi Epsilon have stayed committed to keeping the great fraternity experience alive during this pandemic. 

This effort has been successful through the use of virtual meetings that have created a real-life fraternity experience in the safety of brother’s homes. We have started bi-weekly virtual chapter meetings in which our e-board is able to highlight what is going on with the chapter and alumni are able to give presentations as well. Another aspect of our fraternity experience has always been the idea of sound body, so brothers have been meeting up for virtual workouts twice a week in order to stay in shape during the crisis. Finally, brothers have been able to hang out through video games in order to have a similar type of strong brotherhood we have achieved this year.

Maybe our greatest effort though is reaching out to alumni to check-in during this crisis. Our brothers are actively picking up the phone to reach out to local alumni in order to get to know their situation and see if there is anything we can do to help out during these tough times. We have overall seen quite positive feedback from this practice and our brothers look forward to future calls with our alumni.

Despite the crisis at hand, the brothers of Sigma Phi Epsilon are devoted to maintaining a strong fraternity experience. We hope that everyone is safe while practicing social distancing and handwashing in order to stop the spread of COVID-19. We look forward to seeing everyone as soon as possible and getting back to normal, but for now, our fraternity is still alive as an online fraternity!