After spring break, for many students, it feels as if the semester has finally begun to wind down a little. That is not the case for the chapters of the university’s Greek life organizations. 

Every year, the fraternities and sororities come together to celebrate Greek Week, an annual tradition celebrating the Greek life community on campus. 

Greek Week is intended to foster community and school spirit, energize the student body and create philanthropic and competitive interactions between the many different fraternities and sororities on campus. 

However, the weeks leading up to the Greek life celebration are dominated by the preparations for one contest: Airband. A dance and lip-sync competition where each group’s performance has a unique theme of their choice, the lives of many members of the Greek life community are controlled by this very competition. 

Members of the university’s fraternities and sororities spend countless hours practicing, giving it their all to see who will come out on top in the end. This year was no different. 

While the competition brings both the fraternities and sororities together, they compete in separate categories, which results in two distinct winners. 

Judging for the competition involves a variety of criteria including choreography, costumes, creativity, energy and execution of the performance in addition to each chapters’ philanthropic efforts and level of sportsmanship.

Following the performance, the points are tallied with the highest scoring fraternity and sorority announced as the winners afterward. 

Among the sororities competing, Sigma Kappa won the competition for their third year in a row. Angelina Velardi, a senior communications major, and Elise Mungovan, a junior communications major, served as co-chairs of Sigma Kappa’s Airband performance. 

“Usually I am very nervous, but this year, I felt more confident,” Velardi said. “I don’t mean to win necessarily, but just to perform, because we were proud of what we put together, and we were just so excited to show people, especially with us going last, what we’ve been working on.”

For their theme this year, Sigma Kappa chose to choreograph a routine based on the 2005 Tim Burton film, “The Corpse Bride.” Initially, the Airband co-chairs wanted to make their performance based on the second installment of the “Wicked” film series, “Wicked: For Good.”

“We wanted to make a good Broadway version of ‘Wicked,’” Mungovan said. “We were going to be Elphaba and Glinda because it made sense to us. We ended up not getting it as our theme, but ‘The Corpse Bride’ was our second option. The lead characters were cool and it had kind of an eerie story.”

In the end, Velardi said there was one thing she felt her fellow Sigma Kappa sisters had been able to learn from the experience. 

“I was talking to the new pledge class of girls,” Velardi said. “A lot of them were in the technical section this year. I saw them all talking in a little circle, and I remember saying, ‘You guys are friends.’ Like, the sorority is huge, and I feel like so many little groups happen from your dance section, and then, it becomes something much bigger. So, I feel like friendship is definitely learned throughout the process.”

Among the fraternities dancing in the competition, Sigma Phi Delta won the competition. Charlie Sizer, a senior mechanical engineering major, and Michael Romano, a sophomore leadership major, served as co-chairs of Sigma Phi Delta’s Airband performance. 

“We were just so proud of everybody, and we were just so happy that it came together so well,” Sizer said. “There was only one place to go. In the back of my mind, I was like, ‘If I don’t get first, I’m not going to be happy.’ Like, all the guys were feeling the pressure and saying, ‘The only place that we can go is up.’”

For their theme this year, Sigma Phi Delta chose to choreograph a routine based on the 1994 Disney animated film, “The Lion King.”  After a second-place finish last year with a routine based on the superhero, Superman, the brothers of Sigma Phi Delta entered this year’s competition with a desire for something a little different.

“We wanted to pick something with a bunch of different characters in it,” Sizer said. “Last year, there were just two people. We wanted to do something different, and then also something that was like a musical that everyone knows that we could take songs from.”

Once the competition was over, Romano explained that he felt the entire process had brought his chapter and fellow fraternity brothers closer than previously thought possible. 

“We scheduled so many practices, I mean we practiced roughly four to five times a week, and then leading up to the competition, we practiced twice a day,” Romano said. “We were with each other for about five to six hours every single day in that final stretch. We already are a tight-knit group of guys, but I felt it just brought us even closer together as a fraternity.”

For many, what felt like a lot of hard work and endless hours of preparation only proved to be an incredible opportunity for growth and unity. For many participants like Romano, the experience highlighted that the true value of the competition lies in the strengthening of the bonds that define the university’s Greek life community.