Photo by Forster Goodrich

Alpha Xi Delta performed “Camp Rock” at the 2024 Airband.

Marquette Greek life was busy this past weekend performing and competing in Airband — an annual lip-sync competition — which was centered around the theme of “movie musicals.” 

Maggie Carrol, a junior in the College of Nursing and president of Panhellenic council, and Jonah Lucas, a sophomore in the College of Business Administration and a member of the Marquette Men’s Basketball team, hosted Airband. The event was a two-hour performance from Marquette’s seven sororities and four fraternities.  

Each sorority/fraternity performed their own five-to-eight-minute dance and lip-synched to the mash-up of songs they chose to raise money for their chapter’s philanthropies.  

The winning sorority and fraternity got to take home $100 dollars to give back to their philanthropy. The money donated from the projected 700 people who attended was given back to a local non-profit, Safe & Sound, that gives back to improve safety across 12 Milwaukee neighborhoods.  

Bridget Witticker, Marquette alum and executive director of Safe & Sound, attended as one of the judges. Five judges from Panhellenic council scored each chapter based off four distinct categories: originality, creativity, costumes and lip-synching ability. 

Bella Derosa, a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences and vice president of scholarship & service on the panhellenic executive board and a Kappa Delta member, said she was involved in the planning process and got to perform with Kappa Delta.  

“It’s just really fun getting to do something super exciting and very out of my comfort zone just for service,” Derosa said.  

Felicity Gresnick, a sophomore in the College of Business Administration and vice president of Kappa Delta Learning & Development, said she loves the overall mission of Airband and how creative each fraternity and sorority gets.  

“It’s just such a fun experience overall and I’m so glad Marquette does it because it brings everyone into one place and it brings people outside of Greek life into see what we do and what our philanthropies do,” Gresnick said.  

Gresnick said she loves how Airband allows Greek life to dance for service and a good cause. 

“The overall goal of Airband is to obviously raise money for our philanthropies for each chapter and panhellenic philanthropies, but it’s also for Greek unity and to have a good time together. We show off our individuality among the chapters and how we are all different, but we all come together for the same cause,” Gresnick said. 

Alpha Xi Delta kicked off the night with their performance of “Camp Rock,” whose philanthropic focus is supporting children and teens experiencing foster care or homelessness.  

Up next was, Delta Tau Delta with the performance of “Mamma Mia” in beach shirts and sunglasses. Alpha Omega Epsilon, a sorority which promotes the advancement of female engineers, came to the stage with their performance of “Descendants.” 

Not only were there various costumes for each performance, but all chapters included props to their dances.  

Sigma Phi Epsilon performed an upbeat number to a childhood classic, “Madagascar.” Members wore safari animal onesies and tails. Kappa Delta took the audience to the 1950’s with “Grease” and Pi Beta Phi brought the audience to the current time in light of the release of the “Barbie” movie.  

The Delta Chi men performed a mash-up of childhood TV shows such as “iCarly” and “Victorious.” 

Maddie Anderegg, a sophomore in the College of Health Sciences, said she attended to support her friends and enjoyed watching each performance.  

“All the performances were so fun I loved it, all the fraternities were really funny, and I was very impressed,” Anderegg said. 

Alpha Chi Omega rapped to “Lemonade Mouth” and Sigma Phi Delta flapped their wings to the songs from the movie “Rio.”  

As the night ended, Alpha Phi wore Marquette Basketball jerseys to perform their version of “High School Musical,” and Sigma Kappa closed the night out with a performance from “Pitch Perfect.”  

The winners were announced at the end with Kappa Delta receiving first place for “Grease” and Delta Chi’s performance of TV shows theme songs.  

Chris Magnus, a sophomore in the College of Business Administration and a member of Delta Chi, said he was proud of the months practice his fraternity put in.  

Caroline Donahue, a sophomore in the College of Health Sciences and a member of Kappa Delta, said she is so proud and happy to have done Airband two years consecutively now.  

“Doing it again, it’s just such a great way to really make that bond with your sisterhood there’s really nothing else like this that you could do and it’s so much fun just to get with your sisters and these are memories for a lifetime,” Donahue said. 

This story was written by Mimi Sinotte. She can be reached at [email protected]