Low bass beats mixed with the final notes of marching band practice Friday evening as Sigma Phi Epsilon’s Big Ten Car Smash roared to life on Frat Row.
“I just feel like this is the epitome of school spirit,” Sig Ep brother and government and politics major Justin Garcia said over the metallic clangs of destruction. “I mean, it’s hard to resist the temptation to beat something with a big sledgehammer in the name of school pride.”
Overcast skies would not keep native students from Saturday’s opponent Ohio State University away from the event.
“I’m from Ohio, but Maryland’s better and we really want to beat Ohio State,” said senior Megan Hadley, a neurobiology and physiology major.
Beginning in June and continuing throughout the summer, Garcia and junior Christopher Frye planned the event, coordinating with Campus Recreation Services to reserve Frat Row, purchasing insurance, and finding a car from a local junkyard.
“Everything was figured out before we came back,” Frye said, “and then the last month, it’s just been finalizing it, promoting the event.”
In the last week alone, publicity for the event skyrocketed.
“Basically, the way I’ve learned in college, everything happens last minute, whether it’s a paper or anything else,” said Garcia. “About three days ago, our Facebook invites looked around maybe five, six hundred, maybe a 150 attending, but then as soon we announced ESPN, ABC, and the basketball team were all supporting us, we were at almost 3000 invites and maybe almost 1000 attending.”
The Maryland Athletics department partnered with Sig Ep and made the car smash part of their official Game Week event leading up to the Terps’ first official home football game in the Big Ten conference versus Ohio State University. Maryland may have lost of Ohio State, but the game Saturday was the first to sell out since 2008 as Terp fans came out to celebrate the Inaugural Big Ten game.
“Maryland Athletics and all the marketing materials mentioned this as an official game week event,” Frye explained. “They’ve provided us free Big Ten t-shirts; they’ve marketed on the email lists; they’ve listed it on their marketing pages; the basketball team’s coming later today. They’ve been a great support in every single way and I couldn’t be happier with the partnership.”
Other on-campus Greek organizations also cosponsored the event, receiving tickets to the event in return for earlier donations. Before the first hammer slammed down, Garcia said the fraternity raised almost $500, giving him hope that they would “easily break a thousand dollars, maybe fifteen hundred” for their specific philanthropy.
Every Greek organization chooses a group to become their philanthropic cause and, over time, the members form a bond with their cause and hold events to raise money. After many years of brothers volunteering, Sig Ep adopted the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, or NICU, at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore as their philanthropy in spring 2013, according to Sigma Phi Epsilon president Danny Wolf.
“Every single brother is passionate about this philanthropy,” Frye said.
With a promise to donate $25,000 to the NICU in the next five years, Garcia said they wanted “one more big event in the fall to really kick start our whole philanthropy event,” something different that “stood out among a lot of Greek philanthropy events,” Frye added.
Participants signed waivers and wore protective eyewear to keep flying debris from harming them. All glass and liquids were removed from the car, as required by the university when Sig Ep first proposed the idea. And, of course, you had to have fun.
“My wrists hurt, but it was really exhilarating,” said junior family science major Kristen Cabrera, whose sorority was cosponsoring the event.
In total, Wolf estimated that the car smash brought in around $850, an amount not quite as big as Garcia originally predicted. But for a controlled destruction environment for a good cause, fun is worth any price.
“You get the first swing in, you’re like ‘oh, okay, this is definitely something I like,’” Garcia said. “Two, five, six, seven swings later and you’re putting it all in there. It’s a great time.”