On Thursday Oct. 17, San Diego State’s Kappa Sigma fraternity served the Student Veteran Organization a spaghetti dinner in an attempt to lessen the financial strains of the partial government shutdown.
Kappa Sigma President Dillon Roark spoke during regular SVO meeting at the organization’s house Hardy Avenue.
“Kappa Sigma decided to step up and take part of something for SVO,” Roark said. “We wanted to cook dinner for them to show support and let them know that the community will help them even when the government can’t get their act together.”
The idea of serving the SVO members came from Andrew Lovick, who is a member of both Kappa Sigma and SVO, while the shutdown was ongoing. Once the dinner was planned, they followed through even though a bill reopening the government and refunding veteran services was passed in Congress and signed by President Barack Obama.
The members of SVO were appreciative of the fraternities generosity.
“It’s a new thing for me to see the Greek community to reach out to the vets,” SVO member Colby Smith said. “I thought it was really neat.”
The SVO meeting was attended by the Associated Students’ student diversity representative for SVO, Canae Washington, who spoke about the strain the shutdown had put on the veterans. Many veterans depend on federal financial aid for tuition assistance, as well as housing assistance, and the federal closure had placed several veterans in difficult financial situations.
“It was kind of interesting being in SVO at that time,” Washington said. “They really held up… everyone was pretty hopeful.”
Washington added the veterans were worried about how long they would have to continue without jobs.
“They didn’t have jobs, and they didn’t know how long they would be unemployed and so it was difficult,” Washington said.
According to Roark, Kappa Sigma is slowly trying to come back to campus with philanthropic events such as last nights dinner. Roark said his fraternity feeds the homeless on a weekly basis downtown at the Embrace homeless shelter.
