Virginia Tech, 2006
DSF: Tell us about yourself and what made you choose Virginia Tech.
JM: I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, which is right outside of Washington, DC. I have a little sister who is a freshman here at Virginia Tech and another sister who is about to be 12. I went to small Catholic schools my whole life, and really knew the same group of people and had the same group of friends since I was young. I then came to Virginia Tech because I wanted a big ACC-type atmosphere in a college.
DSF: What are you studying on campus and what year are you?
JM: I am majoring in finance and English, and am a senior, but won’t be graduating until next fall.
DSF: Talk to us a little more about your involvement on campus aside from the Fraternity.
JM: One of the main things I am involved in is new student orientation. I was an orientation leader this past summer, which is a pretty big time commitment and a prestigious position to get at the school. Over 500 people apply, and only 20 people are selected. For a job, I work as a tutor in the athletic department. I also coach a U-7 soccer team in the area with another Fraternity brother for community service. I do Habitat for Humanity and am on the Recreational Sports Advisory Board, which comes up with ways to promote health and fitness around campus.
DSF: Tell us more about the new student orientation work you do.
JM: Our orientation program is actually highly extensive, and is a long process. The people who are selected take a class once per week for the second semester that covers leadership theory, team building, and many other topics.
When it comes to the job, we work from around 6 am until 1 am Monday through Thursday. There are four orientation sessions per week for three weeks, so 12 total sessions. We get a new group of about 20 students per day, and we’re with them throughout the day taking them through many activities, including team building exercises and activities that allow them to get to know one another. We are also answering questions about Virginia Tech. Basically you’re a team leader, engaging them and allowing them to grow and become comfortable with their choice to attend Virginia Tech.
It’s a tough job because of the hours and the work you do, but it is really rewarding.
DSF: Tell us about an organization called Men of Respect that you helped start on campus.
JM: I was a founding member, but I since have moved on and focused my time on the orientation work and other things. The other founders and I were approached by someone in the orientation area, and he wanted to create an organization in conjunction with the Women’s Life Center here. Basically, he wanted to start a club of men who worked alongside the women in the Women’s Life Center to promote things like anti-domestic violence programming, respect issues throughout campus, and essentially just men who conduct themselves with high integrity, good moral values and chivalry.
Basically, when he gave the presentation, it was a situation where I said ‘this is exactly what we embrace as a Delta Sig Chapter,’ so I would have felt like a hypocrite if I hadn’t joined. So I helped start it, but I got away from it because we weren’t doing that much. In addition, I figured that since we were doing the same things through Delta Sig, I would promote it more through the Fraternity.
DSF: Talk about your time playing intramural sports, and the chapter’s dedication to them.
JM: We are very involved in the intramural sports with the chapter. We won the Hokie Grail last year, which is the award for the organization that is the most involved and most successful in the sports here at Tech. We were pretty proud of that, because the size of our organization makes it tough to win. We take our sports pretty seriously. We love flag football, basketball, softball and soccer.
In high school, I played basketball all four years, so that is my main sport, but here at Tech I am involved in flag football also. I am really into sports, and ultimately, I would like to get into a sports-related profession after I graduate. It has just always been my passion. I like to stay involved, and think that fitness and staying healthy is really important, even essential, for youth and college kids’ mental and physical health.
DSF: Tell us about your tutoring that you do with the athletes.
JM: I got into tutoring my sophomore year because I needed a part-time job. One of the things I am looking toward getting into after college is teaching for a few years in the Teach for America Program, so I wanted to get involved with that somehow. Tutoring was the perfect position in the athletic department.
I tutor mainly in English, which is my major, and also Geology because most of the athletes end up taking Geology as their science. So, they have desperate need for Geology tutors. I tutor any scholarship athlete that needs it.
DSF: Also, in your involvement with Habitat for Humanity, you went on an Alternative Spring Break. What was that experience like for you?
JM: I was brought up on community service as a kid. I can remember being back in first grade, and my mom taking us to the retirement home every week. She was always going to soup kitchens and stressing the importance of community service. It has always been engrained in me, and coming to college that didn’t change at all.
I had volunteered for a number of things as a freshman, and then for Spring Break my sophomore year, I had heard about all of the trips to New Orleans and other places. Three Fraternity brothers and I went to Dulac, Louisiana, which is the southernmost bayou in Louisiana. We went through New Orleans and saw it, and it was extremely powerful because even after two years, it was still absolutely destroyed. It was amazingly rewarding to make a difference to one or two people, and to see the impact that we had.
We’re here in Blacksburg, which is about as isolated as you can possibly get in the middle of mountains, and we aren’t really exposed to things like that. So, traveling halfway across the country to a place that was truly ravaged was amazing. I tried to go back last year at Thanksgiving, but I couldn’t make it work because of my schoolwork.
DSF: Tell us about your fraternity experience now. Explain what positions you have held within the chapter.
JM: I started off immediately after my pledging semester as the Athletic Chairman for the Fraternity. I did that for my first full year as a brother, and then served as ELD for a year. After that position, I have served as the president, which is my current role.
DSF: How has the Fraternity impacted you throughout your college career? How has it been a positive force?
JM: This will be a long answer… (Laughs) It has impacted me tremendously. When I talk to people, what I like to say is that I love being a Hokie, but I am even more proud to be a Delta Sig. Delta Sig really is college to me.
It has helped me mature tremendously, as I am often reminded by my friends. It has taught me amazing leadership skills, which I know are going to help me in the future with internships and other relationships. It has helped me tremendously in being able to handle conflict resolution, come up with ideas, and solve problems on the spot.
Most importantly though, the Fraternity has given me a sense of belonging and purpose. Like I said, I came from a small Catholic school with a graduating class of only 180 people, and I have had the same ten best friends my whole life. We had all grown up together, but all went to different schools. When I came to Tech, with a class of 5,000, I really wanted a place where I could belong and fit in. The first night of college, I met the guys in Delta Sig and it felt just like I did when I was back home with my friends. It has been like that all throughout college.
DSF: Who were some of the brothers who influenced you in joining the Fraternity?
JM: There was a guy named Will Barrett who helped bring me out at first. Also, Kurt Schron helped in that effort. They were the two guys in the recruitment process itself who really stood out in continuing to be in touch and bringing me out to the chapter’s events.
Once I joined the Fraternity as a pledge, the people I got closest to aside from my pledge brothers were our group of fifth year seniors, which included Will and Kurt. I have always looked up to the older guys because I never had an older brother. Even as a freshman in high school I can remember looking up to the guys on the varsity basketball team that were the leaders. The same thing happened when I came to college.
Besides Kurt and Will, Pat McDermott, Bill Hughes and Blake Harrison really reached out to me and helped me along.
DSF: You were also involved with a recent expansion presentation at Florida State University as a Fraternity representative. Tell us what that was like.
JM: That was awesome, and was one of the coolest things I have done with the Fraternity in my four years. We went down there to present to the campus to accept our potential expansion, and it was a whirlwind experience. I left at 5 am Tuesday morning, got down to Florida State, made the presentation at 8 pm, and then left at 5 am the next morning to come home.
It was great to promote the Fraternity that has done so much for me. It was great to talk with passion and sincerity on behalf of the Fraternity to see if we could get a new chapter. I am very anxious to see if they accepted, because I’d love to go back there someday and say that I helped make the speech to the Greek Council to get them a chapter. I would love to know who came to Virginia Tech to get our group started. I owe them a great deal of gratitude.
DSF: Talk to us a little about the experience when the tragedy happened at Virginia Tech in April 2007 and how the brotherhood came together at that time.
JM: It’s really random, but last night I was going through all of my old Delta Sig documents on my computer, and I found the letter that I wrote to the National Office that was posted on the web site a couple days after 4/16. It was one of the most emotional and awful times here. It was really tough and one of the most trying times of my life.
I was in my apartment with some of my chapter brothers. We were watching the news, kind of in disbelief, and had to watch the body count go up and up. Eventually, we decided to meet at the house to make sure we were all ok, because as you can imagine, it was utter chaos. All of the phone lines were tied up, so we sent an e-mail telling brothers to get to the house to make sure everyone was safe. It occurred in the Engineering building, and we have a lot of engineers in the chapter. We all got to the house, and after a couple of hours there was only one brother missing. We all started worrying, but he eventually showed up.
It was a time of complete disbelief, terror and sadness, but if it weren’t for the brotherhood, I don’t know how I would have pulled through. As for the rest of the school, the resiliency and pride in the response was amazing. It has become cliché in the news media to talk about how we responded as a community and the resiliency that we showed. It was actually true that we weren’t going to let that define us and we helped pull each other through the times. The news kept saying that all of the students wanted to go home, but the only reason that I went home was because my parents demanded it so they could see me and hug me. Most of us turned right back around afterward and came straight back to Blacksburg because this is where we wanted to be.
As for the brotherhood, one of our brothers who is my roommate now, Adeel Khan, was the student government president at the time. He organized the memorial services, such as the candlelight vigil that was shown everywhere, and helped plan the memorial that now stands on the drill field. He also received George Bush’s highest award for civilian community service because of his actions on April 16, 2007. We had brothers involved everywhere, and it was incredible the way we rallied around each other and helped each other out. It’s something that we still remember, as we went to the one year anniversary in April together as a brotherhood to remember everything.
The other thing I need to point out is that the response we received from the other chapters nationally was nothing short of phenomenal. We received probably 50-60 letters from chapters across the country, as well as individuals offering help and words of condolence. It’s things like that – that we were together as a national Fraternity – that make being a brother remarkable.
JM: I have a lot of options open, and have not really narrowed down my options at all. I love the Teach for America idea, as I would love to do that if I can get accepted. Long-term, ultimately I’d like to end up doing the business side of sports, working with a team’s finances, payroll or player contracts. It would be great to be the president or GM of an organization.
DSF: Tell us about any advice you would give to a new person coming into college about making the most of their experience in the Fraternity.
JM: I say this every year when we get new pledges. First – be yourself. People here aren’t necessarily going to know who you are when you get to campus. That is good and bad, as it gives you a chance to completely redefine yourself if you didn’t like who you were in high school, or a chance to prove yourself all over again like you did in high school.
Secondly, I tell them that it’s what you make out of it, so get involved as much as you can. I used to tell the freshmen that if you think you can sit around in your dorm for 9 hours per day, you are going to go insane.
Lastly, I say work hard and play hard. Have balance with your social life and your academic life as well. Don’t do one and neglect the other.
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