Students bench-pressed their way to raising more than $1,000 Sunday to benefit the Volunteers for America charity responsible for rebuilding the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina.
Sigma Alpha Epsilon teamed up with the Fusion Fitness Center for the first-ever "team bench-press competition."
Junior Evan Kalbacher organized the event along with juniors Ben Capon and Jasmin Szafransky. Kalbacher said he and his friends wanted to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina in rebuilding homes when they went last year with three other people to New Orleans for spring break. He said this year there are 39 students going.
"We just started planning earlier this year," Kalbacher said. "We used a lot of Facebook messaging as well as getting the word out to fraternities and sororities to help."
The event was free for those to watch, although there were opportunities to donate to the cause through raffles.
Kalbacher said anyone was able to participate at a cost of $20 per team. He said girls had to lift 45 pounds while the guys had to lift135. The team with the most repetitions won.
Nick DeCaire, owner and founder of Fusion Fitness Center, said Kalbacher approached him asking for help because of his past experiences with charity work.
"He knew I had organized the Main Street Mile race last semester for a charity and asked for my help," DeCaire said. "Being a National Champion Powerlifter, I had had the idea for a bench press competition for awhile and suggested it."
He said as a 2002 Delaware graduate, he enjoys being able to help out for a good cause.
"The students are a huge part of this community and I know these guys," DeCaire said. "It's just a great cause and they're going to be helping out a lot of people in need instead of going to Cancun and just partying up."
Kalbacher said he wants to be able to raise enough money so that he and his group will be able to not only volunteer, but will also be able to buy supplies needed to do so.
"The way it works is that the families usually have to pay for the supplies, so when they run out, we have to stop working on the house," he said.
Kalbacher said he hopes to return to see the family whose house they worked on last year.
"Her name was Clementine Brown," he said. "We plan on going back down to see her and see if her house still needs work because we definitely want to help her."
Kalbacher said even after a year, it's unlikely a poor family like the Browns will have their house back to normal.
"The people who have money can have their house fixed in under six months, but if there's no money then the house just kind of stays stagnantly damaged," he said.
Junior Dave Greenberger was a participant in Sunday's event and said he is going along on the trip to New Orleans this Spring Break.
He said he enjoys doing anything he can to help.
"You can't try and change the entire world, but every little thing that we all do can help," Greenberger said.
Kalbacher said the money raised from this particular event is going directly to the charity Volunteer for America. He said Sigma Alpha Epsilon, along with other Greek organizations, are also raising money in other ways through various different types of fundraisers on the side.
"We're just trying to raise as much money as we can and then decide how we're going to allocate it afterwards," Kalbacher said.
He said he wants to stress the importance of benefiting the charities to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
"Although it happened three years ago, time does not build houses," Kalbacher said. "We can't stop now because it's not going to be fixed anytime soon."
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