East Coast students step, stomp onto campus

Flashing lights, stomping feet and clapping hands filled the Livingston Recreation Center Friday night during the seventh annual “2009 Alpha Step Show.”
The Rutgers chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation’s first black fraternity, organized the event, where five fraternities and four sororities from Maryland, North Carolina and Pennsylvania gathered to create the largest event of its kind on the East Coast.
“With 2,000 attendees, we shattered our attendance record,” said Rutgers College senior Quentin Robinson, who organized the event. “It’s the biggest show we ever had.”
Because many of the attendees traveled here from other universities, Robinson attributed the high attendance to Alpha Phi Alpha’s ability to capitalize on new technology.
“[Facebook] allowed us to spread the word months prior and to better organize support groups for the competing teams,” he said.
This year was also the first year the competition featured a system known as U-poll, which allowed for individual votes to be tallied.
“We strove to get the audience more [involved]. We allowed them to personally support the teams that they had an affinity to,” said Alpha Phi Alpha Chapter President Gary White.
This year also evidenced the growth of the event through the inclusion of performances by nontraditional black organizations, said White, a School of Engineering junior.
“It’s becoming a multicultural event,” he said.
The event also tag-teamed with Alpha Phi Alpha’s “Go-to-High-School, Go-to-College” program, as 80 inner-city high school students were given a tour of the University the morning of the event to get a feel of the school, Robinson said.
In addition to the tour and attendance of the show, one deserving high school student won a $1,000 scholarship, White said.
The acts were numerous and varied.
The step performed by the winning sorority team, Alpha Kappa Alpha, centered on the theme of an insane asylum with the performers clad in business suits.
The Omega Psi Phi fraternity performance brought the audience through different periods in black male history.
The fraternity victors were the Philadelphia chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi.
“The show was so live,” said Amjad Saeed, an Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy junior. “I am definitely looking forward to next year. The performances were out of this world.”
At intermission the lights were turned on, and music was blasted, as all the greek organizations took to the floor to circuitously present their strolls.
“It was chaos to see all of the organizations on the floor at the same time,” said School of Arts and Sciences sophomore Stephen Opare.
School of Arts and Sciences Junior Dalmar Mohamod, an Alpha Phi Alpha member, stressed the importance of thanking all of the organizations and people who came out to support Alpha Phi Alpha during their 103rd anniversary.
“We told the people it would be bananas,” he said, “And we didn’t let them down.”