Alpha Phi’s 2nd annual Pie-A-Phi event went off with a bang as people lined up to pie members of various organizations on campus. All proceeds go to the Alpha Phi Foundation, which seeks to advance women’s lives through life-changing scholarship and grants, leadership programming and women’s heart health research.
Respiratory therapy junior Vanessa Molencupp, Alpha Phi President, went into detail about the event and how it supports the Alpha Phi Foundation.
“We raise money for women’s heart health. It is the number one killer of women worldwide and it’s under researched, as well as harder to detect in women than in men,” Molencupp said.
The sorority raised around $800 last year and aims to reach $1500 by the end of the week.
Molencupp described how Alpha Phi raises money for the foundation.
“Go Red Week is our annual philanthropy week that we do in the spring each year. This is our 2nd annual Pie-A-Phi and our 2nd annual Pancake Phist,” Molencupp said, “Pie-A-Phi is super fun. We get out in the MSU community and have people pay to pie Alpha Phis and some special guests”
This year’s special guests included members from other Greek Life organizations, along with the Redwine Honors Program, MSU Cheer, MSU football and the Bridge.
“We really want to increase the impact that Greek life has on MSU as a community. Some of our members that are in honors or in cheer, we had them reach out to their team to see if anyone would be interested to get our name out and Greek life out as well. And it has been super successful,” Molencupp said.
In order to increase Greek involvement in “Go Red Week,” Alpha Phi created a competition between the other Greek organizations.
“Each organization at MSU has an opportunity to gain points all throughout the week. The winner at the end of the week will receive a donation to the philanthropy of their choice,” Molencupp said.
Not only is the money raised during the week going to philanthropies, but it also funds 73 different Alpha Phi scholarships for their members.
“We also give back to our members. We have 73 different scholarships that we offer to our members,” Molencupp said, “And we have a bunch of different programming and leadership development that we offer for our members.”
The foundation also bestows the “Heart To Heart” grant each year to a hospital that has done groundbreaking work in women’s heart health. This year’s finalists are The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri and UTHealth in Houston, Texas.
Alpha Phi aims to strengthen its community interaction. It has members in various organizations across campus who work with the school to host their philanthropic events.
“We strive to increase awareness for our philanthropy and women’s heart health as well as MSU engagement in total,” Molencupp said.
