Ellie Meyer is a typical Wake student. In this case, ‘typical’ equates with being super-involved while still keeping up a rigorous course load. Ellie has chosen the service route for all of her extracurricular involvement. Ellie takes ‘service’ to a whole new level. She serves Wake students through planning Student Union events, serves underprivileged communities by helping spearhead Nourish International, and serves cancer patients through all of her endeavors benefitting the Brian Piccolo Cancer Research Fund.
Ellie joined Student Union her freshman year, as the excitement of the members at the activities fair was infectious. After attending a few meetings, she was put on the Springfest and Family Weekend committees, and she found her love for planning these events for the student body: “I need to be busy,” she says. “And Student Union is like a family – everybody supports you.”
Ellie was then given a chance to come up with her own event ideas for the next fall. Thus became the idea for ‘Frightfest,’ a fun celebration of Halloween with a big dinner, games, trick-or-treating, a haunted house and more.
“I noticed Halloween isn’t very big on campus,” says Ellie. “People were always saying they were going to go to Chapel Hill. I thought, ‘I don’t want to go somewhere else. I want to celebrate here.’ ”
Much to Ellie’s surprise, what started out as an idea for a one-day event turned into a week-long affair. “It was the first year of Frightfest, so of course there were some kinks, but no one [in Student Union] said anything negative,” says Ellie. “They all gave me positive feedback.”
Ellie’s committee meets once a week to talk about ideas for fun events for the Wake study body. Ellie gave me a preview of one of their upcoming events, Tie-Dye Palooza, at which people can tie-dye anything from shirts to pillowcases on the Quad between classes or on their way to the Pit. This is just one example of the fun-spirited atmosphere that Ellie and her team want to further bring to campus.
Not only is Ellie in charge of SU events, but she is also the secretary for Nourish International, an organization that added a Wake chapter this year. According to its website, www.nourishinternational.org, “Our mission is to eradicate poverty by engaging students and empowering communities.” So what does this mean exactly? “We aren’t trying to wipe out poverty and hunger by donating resources. We’re sending students on ventures to different areas of the world, where they teach the locals basic, necessary skills for a month.”
Next year, Ellie will become president of Nourish International at Wake. “My job will be to create partnerships with the areas where we send students and continue to foster those relationships,” she says. In fact, this summer Nourish International will be sending four Wake students to Peru for four weeks, which is a huge accomplishment since the group has only been on campus for a year. “I’m impressed that we were able to raise that much money,” Ellie comments.
On top of it all, Ellie is the Brian Piccolo Chair for her sorority, Delta Zeta. This fall, she served on the executive board for Hit the Bricks and pushed for big-time DZ involvement with the event. Her work paid off, as DZ snagged third place in the sorority division, “which has never happened before,” Ellie laughs. “But I like the idea of the Brian Piccolo Fund because it’s closer to home than, say, the Red Cross. The people who come to talk to us about it know Wake Forest and are passionate about the cause.”
Though we all occasionally moan and groan about how demanding Wake can be and curse our countless meetings and study sessions in ZSR, Ellie Meyer handles her numerous responsibilities with an uncanny grace, showing us that not only can we do it all – but that we can do it to better serve our community.