Raising Money While Finding Our Frat Prince

The Mr. Fraternity Pageant is our annual male pageant and an event that the entire JMU community gets excited for each year. On Sunday, March 30^th brothers from each fraternity competed for the winning title. This year it was “The Frat Prince of Bel Air” themed so contestants strutted their stuff in 90’s wear, evening wear, participated in a question and answer segment, and showed off their best talent. The contestants did an awesome job impressing the audience with their jean-on-jean outfits and bright attire! In the end though, there can only be one Frat Prince and the first place crown went to a brother of Delta Tau Delta, Nathan Gallagher.

Nathan accepting his winner's basket!

It's an event you have to see for yourself!

Beautiful escorts

Our contestants lined 

Thanks to Alex Foley for taking such great pictures and especially to the two hard-working girls that planned this event, everyone seemed to have a great time! 

Here’s a little about the action that went on behind the curtain:

What was the most difficult part about planning Mr. Fraternity?

Rachel Petri:

The most difficult part about planning Mr. Fraternity this year was presenting about the event to each fraternity. Erica Zimbelman and I had to go to each fraternity's chapter and find a member who wanted to participate! It was challenging at first to communicate with everyone about the event.  However, once we presented the fraternities were genuinely excited and many men volunteered right away to be a part of it! 

Erica Zimbelman:

For me the most difficult part about planning Mr. Fraternity was getting everything together before the event and making sure everything was ready so the event could run smoothly because there were just so many different pieces and aspects put into planning and putting on the event.

What was your favorite part about planning it?

Rachel: My favorite part of planning was definitely coming up with a theme.  I love the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and was so excited to plan an entire event based on the '90s.  We made a '90s playlist for music, came up with '90s decorations, and thought to make a '90s outfit round during the pageant. 

Erica: I think my favorite part about planning it was working with Rachel and having fun planning this event to help our sorority and raise awareness and money for JDRF.

What were you most nervous about?

Rachel: At the event, I was most nervous about making sure everything ran smoothly.  Luckily, I had several AST women helping me with music and lining up the men so I wasn't alone in getting everything set up. 

Erica: I was most nervous that on the day of the event something would go wrong and getting up on stage and talking in front of everyone.

What was your favorite part about Mr. Fraternity?

Rachel:My favorite part of Mr. Fraternity was definitely seeing the talent portion! Some of these men came up with very creative talents.  We had various types of dancing and even someone who could catch grapes that were thrown at him from 12+ feet away! 

Erica: My favorite part about Mr. Fraternity was knowing that everyone enjoyed the event that Rachel and I worked so hard to put together.

What are you looking forward to most for next year?

Erica: Next year I'm looking forward to hopefully being philanthropy chair and getting to put on another awesome mr fraternity pageant and hopefully raising more money and awareness for JDRF and getting AST out there.

And the results?!..

Rachel: We collected over 60 school supply items at the door for the Pine Mountain Settlement School and raised over 2,000 dollars for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, JDRF through ticket and Tshirt sales!