IFC Cooks Up a Delicious Start to Their Semester

By: Douglas Salter

The Inner Fraternity Council (IFC) is off to a blazing start this semester after hosting The 2024 IFC Chili Cook-Off. The event was held Wednesday February 7th at the Greek Village Pavilion. It is no secret that every fraternity and their members love some friendly competition and it was as fierce as ever. After a month of school underway, this is the first big event of the semester that the fraternities could compete against one another. Every fraternity apart from IFC was invited to participate and all eight showed up, which created an all-out battle.

The rules were simple because there was only one. Each pot of chili had to be prepared by a member of the submitting fraternity. You could not buy pre-made chili, nor could you have your parents make it. In terms of creation, time, how many members helped, that was all up to the fraternities themselves. While many of the IFC based competitions are focused on athletics, the chili cook-off allowed for a nice change of pace with just as much entertainment.

“We wanted to do a chili cook-off because we thought it combined things people like,” said Head of Public Relations for IFC Holden Rogers. “Everyone loves to eat and everyone loves to eat with people they know and enjoy.”

In terms of the competition, five judges were selected to try and vote on the chili to determine a winner. The judges were from outside IFC to determine a non-biased result.

“We decided that it should be some of the members from the other Greek councils that should be judges,” said Rogers. “Each judge was told to give a bowl of chili a certain number of points for how much they liked it. Then, we tallied all the points and got a winner.”

After a very quick deliberation, it was determined that Alpha Sigma Phi won the chili competition for their amazing effort. They were praised by everyone for their excellent, and now award-winning chili. 

“The winner got a trophy topped with a statue of a bowling pot that said they won the contest,” said Rogers. “They also received a $50 Visa gift card.”

Not only was the cook-off a competition based event. After the winner was crowned, there was also a massive feast for a good cause. Anyone was invited to come up and purchase a bowl of chili for just three dollars.

“The money that we raise is gonna go right back to the fraternities by using it to pay for bigger and better events in the future,” said Rogers. “I think that the event went really well. There was a huge turn out and we sold a lot of chili.”

As the semester carries on, we can only expect IFC to cook up even more excellent events like this one.

“The main events we are looking forward to is our IFC Softball Tournament, date is still to be determined,” said Rogers. “We also have The Greek Olympics in March.”