Special Olympics of Hammond hosted the first bake-off as part of Greek Week, which featured a variety of themed cupcakes from the five movie genre groups: family, comedy, action, romance and horror. The competition also included tailgating with crawfish and music in Greek Village before the baseball game versus Tulane.
“It’s definitely new,” said Adrienne Renfrow, a junior majoring in family studies, member of Theta Phi Alpha and intern for Special Olympics of Hammond. “Special Olympics was approached by this group of students from the University of South Florida. They wanted to come see what we do, find out more about the community, and I said, ‘Why not show them how great Southeastern’s Greek Life is?’ So [Special Olympics] asked me to try to prepare some events for them to get involved with the community, and I said, ‘Why not a crawfish boil?’ Special Olympics has been great. They provided the crawfish, the T-shirts and most everything, and they were our judges for the cupcake contest. Everyone gets really into what they do here, and people have gone above and beyond.”
The Cupcake Bake-off was judged on appearance, taste and creativity. The best overall cupcake was created by Cast 4: Romance, which consisted of Alpha Omicron Pi, Sigma Tau Gamma, Theta Xi and Zeta Phi Beta. The runner-up cupcake was by Cast 5: Horror. Both of these teams earned points toward Greek Week for their winning desserts.
“There were some good ones,” said Samantha McMillan, a representative of Special Olympics Hammond who helped judge the cupcake competition. “There were some bad ones, and there were some unique ones. They were all good though. Best effort. [The winners] were good.”
Kelli Gatti, the Greek Week Chair for Alpha Omicron Pi, was delighted for her team’s win in the bake-off.
“The first thing we did was go on Pinterest and find the best cupcake recipe,” said Gatti, a junior majoring in marketing. “Then we doctored up a cake box. One of our girls made a homemade icing that her mom taught her. We made little stick signs that said, ‘Thank you’ and ‘Zeta loves this’ and ‘Sig Tau loves Special Olympics’ and stuff like that to incorporate Special Olympics in our theme, which is romance. It’s really nice to have that because a lot went into it, so it’s good to come away with a win.”
The campus visitors felt welcomed by Southeastern’s Greek Life and enjoyed being able to join the Greeks for crawfish knowing their cause was supported.
“I like the fact that I’m not really familiar with Greek Life, but that they’re coming together and bringing service to the community and raising awareness,” said Marisol Silva, a visiting student from the University of South Florida. “We were out there today getting people to know about the ‘r’ word and why we are campaigning against it. A lot of Greek people were like, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re having an event today. We’re all for that.’ We just want to show our presence. Our message is that a small group of people, no matter what size, can impact change, and that’s what I like seeing about the Greeks today is that they are coming together. They may just seem like they’re having fun and eating, but there’s a message behind it.”
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Special Olympics judges Greek bake-off
Sara Patrick
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March 19, 2013
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