CONNOR HOFFMAN
Assistant News Editor
On Sunday, President Virginia Horvath’s lawn was filled with tons of children participating in the sixth annual Easter Egg Hunt. However, this year’s egg hunt was hosted by Kappa Sigma and Sigma Kappa instead of Delta Chi, which has traditionally held the event.
The Easter Egg Hunt was started in 2011 by Delta Chi and several community members. It was actually first held at the campus daycare before it was switched to being held on the president’s lawn.
Michelle Twitchell, one of the local residents that helps plan the annual egg hunt, explained that she had to wait to start organizing this year’s event due to some problems she was having with Delta Chi.
“We weren’t able to start off with the event as soon as I would have hoped to, and that’s because I had some issues with Delta Chi,” said Twitchell. “I live on Temple Street, and we have two Delta Chi houses on that street. And since the beginning of the semester, they’ve just been so disrespectful.”
According to Twitchell, members of the fraternity have allegedly trashed the sidewalks, thrown loud parties and screamed vulgarities, no matter the time of day.
Twichell explained just how her property has been affected this year.
“I’ve had stolen wreaths. My fence gets attacked. We had a porch post broken off of our steps. We’ve had trees just broken in half,” said Twitchell. “It’s horrible. You can only take so much.”
This behavior resulted in several police calls by local residents to try to stop this behavior. According to Twitchell, several Delta Chi members even gave her the middle finger randomly one day.
Twitchell said that she actually enjoyed working with the previous Delta Chi members but that she decided she couldn’t stand the current members’ disrespectful behaviors anymore.
“I’ve always loved working with Delta Chi, and I don’t know who these people are,” said Twitchell. “I couldn’t allow myself to be part of that anymore, helping somebody out that is being so disrespectful.”
While Delta Chi did not comment on these allegations, it did explain that the fraternity is still happy to see the Easter Egg Hunt go on, despite not hosting it this year.
“Every year a lucky child wins a new bike. The smile on that child’s face when he rides off is an image that stays with us all year,” said Matthew Donnelly, the president of Delta Chi. “I support any event that would award a lucky child that same feeling of happiness.”
Mark Monsegur, the community chair of Kappa Sigma, explained exactly what his organization’s goals are for this year’s event.
“The event has been very successful year after year,” said Monsegur. “For us to have been given the responsibilities and duties to handle this event [is] exciting, and we just want to maintain the success that it’s had in previous years.”
Monsegur explained all of the different materials that were required to create this event.
“First we needed to get a banner, we needed to get water for the animals, and then we had ton of eggs and candies,” said Monsegur. He further explained that they had to get about 2,000 pieces of candies and 1,500 plastic eggs.
He also said that Kappa Sigma was prepared for a big turnout this year due to the huge amount of kids it invited. Last year there had been roughly 150 to 200 kids who showed up, and this year around 700 were invited.
For the first few hours, the kids were able to do crafts or get their faces painted. The actual egg hunt went on between 3 and 4 p.m.
Even though they were not able to host the annual egg hunt at the president’s residence, Delta Chi did decide to host one in Washington Park in Dunkirk this year, according to its official Twitter account.
Twitchell feels that if Delta Chi hopes to plan future events with her and the community, the members should change their behavior.
“I’ve heard them say they like to ‘work hard and play hard’,” said Twitchell. “Well, don’t play hard if it’s going to be in my neighborhood disrupting my sleep and damaging my property.”