There are not many more creative ways to celebrate the remaining warm days of fall on campus than with some Jell-O tug-of-war, which any DU student could find on Driscoll Green this past weekend.
The Delta Zeta sisterhood held their annual Turtle Tug philanthropy event on Saturday and raised a total of $2,016 for a number of philanthropies that they support.
The event, which began at noon and lasted for a few hours, raised approximately three times as many proceeds as the previous year’s event, according to Delta Zeta Philanthropy chair Jordyn Voegele, a sophomore from Littleton, Colo. studying Hospitality Management.
The Turtle Tug consisted of a main tournament in which teams played tug of war, trying not to fall onto a tarp covered in Jell-O that sat ominously between them. Groups of friends could sign up before the event for a fee of $10 per person, which gave them access to a bracketed tournament where they played tug-of-war against other teams.
While waiting for their turn to play, students could buy turtle grenades, small Jell-O turtles, to either eat or throw. Additionally, this year there were chips provided by Qdoba and energy bars provided by Kind.
“All of the food coming in is new. That didn’t happen last year. Last year it was very basic. Just the tournament and that’s it. We’re hoping to make it a bigger event this year,” Voegele said.
The attempt to make it a bigger event was a success, according to Voegele, as turn out at the Turtle Tug far exceeded that of past years with almost 200 participants; about 25 teams registered with five to six students on each team. In previous years, only 10 to 15 teams have participated and all have been from Greek life.
Teams were sporting everything from Greek letters to decorated t-shirts to superhero costumes, showing off their team spirit.
“Teams get so into it. They even have matching shirts,” said Zoey Chapman, a sophomore business student at DU from Chico, Calif.
Voegele described a few of the sorority’s national philanthropies that this effort’s proceeds go towards.<br >
“One of our philanthropies is the Painted Turtle Camp, a camp for chronic and terminally ill children to be able to go to summer camp and feel like normal kids, but also still get treatment and medicine that they need to stay healthy,” said Voegele.
Voegele also talked about Gallaudet University, the only university in the world with undergrad programs for deaf and hearing impaired students.
“We were able to actually donate enough money to build them a vibrating dance floor. It vibrates so the kids who can’t hear the music can still feel the beat and dance,” said Voegele.
Voegele added that Delta Zeta supports the Starkey Foundation, which provides cochlear implants to kids whose families have difficulty affording the implants.
“What’s really cool is that they actually have a partnership with Build-A-Bear, and you can build bears and then give them little hearing aids and send them to Starkey and Starkey gives them to these kids who also have these cochlear implants,” said Voegele.
In addition to the national philanthropic efforts, the sorority reached out throughout campus to encourage the entire school to become involved in the event. As a result, many of the teams were composed of non-Greek clubs and organizations. According to Chapman, these included the Clarion, members of various a cappella groups, the DU Grilling Society and PLP, among others.
“One of our main goals was to expand it to non-Greek kids, because I think that one of the biggest things we have at this school is a separation between Greek life and other people,” Voegele said. “We’re big on trying to get other non-Greek organizations to participate.”
According to Voegele, many Delta Zeta chapters across the nation participate in the tradition of the Turtle Tug, putting on the philanthropy event at different points throughout the year. The DU Rho chapter has individually been putting on the Turtle Tug as one of their major philanthropy events for about four or five years and, according to Voegele, this has been the most successful year yet.
“I’m most excited to see all of the planning and hard work coming to life and seeing how well it works,” Voegele said.