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Called off Dustin VanHunnik I The Volante
Mathias Kowang and Dylan Charles, members of the Coyote boxing club, practice in their gym on Cherry Street Monday night.
TKE Fight Night fundraiser canceled after 10-year run Rachel Newville
T
Rachel.Newville@coyotes.usd.edu
his year, Tau Kappa Epsilon had to cancel its famous TKE Fight Night, an annual fundraising event the fraternity has held every year for a decade. Nick Hoflock, TKE’s president, said the event was canceled as a result of scheduling conflicts. “Every year we go through a guy in town, and I don’t want to put it all on him, but it was kind of his schedule is hard to work with... he had something come up with the day that we could get into the new basketball arena,” he said.
When the group found out there was a problem with the Sanford Coyote Sports Center schedule, Hoflock said it was already too late to book another venue. Jody Harnois, the Coyote boxing club coach, said everyone involved is unhappy with the situation. “I’m pretty disappointed. We’ve been doing this a long time, but there are certain things that can’t be avoided,” he said. “We had a tough time lining up the venue. We were a little late getting started this year.” Junior Austin Roemeling, a political science and biology double major, has been a part of the Coyote boxing club since his first year
at USD. Roemeling has participated in the past two TKE fight nights, and said he’s disappointed he won’t get to box in the event this year. “TKE fight night is an amazing event. It’s great we get to raise money for charity, it’s really fun for people to participate and watch,” he said. “I know people who have watched in the past that have really liked it and were looking forward to the next one.” Roemeling said the club spent the fall semester trying to recruit boxers for the event. “We were trying to get people interested and coming to practices, because the coach doesn’t like it when people come like a month
See TKE, Page A3
Greeks raised a combined $130,000 for charity in 2015-16
USD alumna to lead efforts addressing S.D. child abuse
Chance Mullinix
Chance.Mullinix@coyotes.usd.edu
Mason Dockter
Mason.Dockter@coyotes.usd.edu
Every year in South Dakota about 4,000 children experience sexual abuse. This was one finding of the Jolene’s Law Task Force studying child abuse in South Dakota. The task force was established by Gov. Dennis Daugaard in 2014. A key recommendation made by Jolene’s Law Task Force was for the state to set up a center to further study the issue and make recommendations for how to address it. Carrie Sanderson, a USD alumna who previously worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, has been named the first director of USD’s Center for the Prevention of Child Maltreatment. The center is housed in the health sciences department. The reason the center is within the health sciences department, Sanderson said, is the nature of child abuse and its effects. “We’ve determined, and the research has shown, that childhood maltreatment is a community health problem,” Sander-
beforehand because he wants people to know what they are doing and be safe. So first semester we were just trying to recruit people and get them to practice,” he said. “It was pretty early into the second semester, maybe a month or so, and things just weren’t coming together.” Harnois said part of the scheduling conflict was because they wanted to hold the event in the SCSC. “The TKEs had their heart set on doing it at the new basketball facility and that just wasn’t going to work out with their schedule. If we’re going to do that we need to
Mason Dockter I The Volante
USD alumna Carrie Sanderson has been chosen to lead the new
Center for the Prevention of Child Maltreatment. The center has a 10-year plan to address child abuse in South Dakota. son said. “And so the university is partnering with the state of South Dakota, through the legislative process, to develop this center as part of the department of health sciences. And this is a real opportunity for the university to be on the ground floor of creating a statewide program that would branch to all different areas of the health sciences community.” The task force has a 10-year plan, which Sanderson will be working with as a part of the center’s mission. One of the key goals is to gather information about child abuse and then distribute the information across the state. Another is to work with “mandatory reporters” of child abuse, like nurses and police officers, who are legally required to report abuse,
and to provide them with more education. Sanderson noted there could be even more child sexual abuse in the state than was found by the task force. “That is a benchmark number – it’s a low number,” Sanderson said. “It’s likely that there’s additional abuse that’s happening that either wasn’t reported or we didn’t have information from the agencies coming in yet.” While sexual abuse is one of the most high-profile and talked-about types of abuse, many kinds of abuse commonly occur. “We also know, through our research, that sexual abuse does not happen on its own, there are other types of abuse See DIRECTOR, Page A6
While most Greek chapters may be stereotyped as encouraging a raucous party lifestyle, an often overlooked aspect of fraternities and sororities is their intensive fundraising efforts. All 12 USD Greek houses are active in the community, raising money for the respective charities they support. In the 2015-16 school year, fraternities and sororities raised more than $130,000, and put in almost 40,000 hours of community service, according to Laura Roof, director of USD sorority and fraternity life. Pi Kappa Alpha led all fraternities, and raised almost $40,000, while Alpha Phi topped all sororities, raising more than $33,000. All amounts were self-reported. Roof said charity involvement is one of the four pillars for all houses. “It’s one of values, giving back to the community,” she said. “In general across the board, with all sororities and fraternities, that is something we hold very strongly in that value set is giving back to others.” The other three pillars are leadership, brotherhood/sisterhood and academics. Charity is something that fraternities and sororities are not usually known for, Roof said. “People don’t hear about the great things fraternities and sororities do,” Roof said. “They only hear about the parties and trouble
they get into. But the Greek life is all about finding lifelong friends and being active in school and the community.” While USD doesn’t require fraternities and sororities to support charities, Roof said many Greek houses themselves require a certain number of hours to be donated. “Some individual organizations will put parameters on their membership to encourage them to do some sort of philanthropy or community service,” she said. “Typically it’s not a quota set on dollar amounts, because we understand it can be hard asking other people for money. The general low-ball is five hours, the highest I’ve heard is 15 in a semester.” First-year Macy Halverson, a marketing major and director of philanthropy of Alpha Phi, helps organize fundraising events for the sorority. Halverson said the requirements for Alpha Phi fundraising have changed since last school year. “We used to require seven hours donated,” she said. “Now, we require members to attend three events. Members can choose which events they want to go to, instead of requiring them to go to certain ones. The hours have definitely gone up because of the change.” Recruits often take into account which charity is supported by a fraternity or sorority when See GREEK, Page A6