Brotherhood and a Global Pandemic

It was Sunday, March 8th, 2020 at around 5:45 PM ET. Most of the brothers were in the Beta House library in the latter parts of the chapter meeting. One of the exec members asked a question to kickstart the Beta Roundtable, a tradition that aims to allow everyone to express how their week went and what they are looking forward to. Chapter and the Roundtable were slightly different that day. As always though, the diversity of the brothers and their experiences/engagements were front and center, from Career Fair Committee to research to teaching to Rocket Team to intramurals to Latino Cultural Center (LCC) to Muslim Students Association (MSA) to MIT Cru to DormCon to IFC to Admissions to literally dozens more. Brothers shared the highs and lows of their week in addition to anything that is going on in their life at the Roundtable. It is always refreshing to connect with the brothers after a long week of lectures, midterms, office hours, and stress.

On March 8th though, I distinctly remember many of the brothers starting to mention the words “coronavirus” and “covid” and the like, notably not “pandemic.” Many brothers were upset that they could potentially miss out on Beta events, such as the important Installation Ceremony that I and others were helping plan for our chapter in April. In addition, many brothers were also disappointed and worried about not helping out the incoming first-years as part of Campus Preview Weekend, which had been cancelled the previous week. The conversation at the Roundtable clearly showed the growing concerns of COVID-19 and the human decency/brotherhood of the chapter. Everybody was selfless. To put into more academic lexicon because MIT :), everybody was trying to maximize the social welfare of EVERY single person in the chapter and their utility functions.

This notion gained much more traction after The Email came out regarding the campus eviction amid the pandemic. Notably, the brothers made every effort to connect with each other and make sure that EVERY single person in the chapter was attended to and was feeling ok-ish. I remember the Beta Slack workspace beaming with brothers helping out other brothers with advice on whether to apply for an exemption, storage concerns, transportation issues, chapter logistics, and literally everything else. It was a clear display of the values that I joined Beta for: Mutual Assistance, Integrity, and Trust. Brothers were even offering up their houses and other places for other brothers to stay if needed, such as for one of the international students in our chapter from UK. This is why I believe in Beta. This is why I know Beta cares for everyone. This is why I am proud to be a Beta.

Later that week, it was photoshoot time to capture and internalize as many on-campus memories as feasibly and humanly possible. It was certainly an emotional time as no words can do justice, thus no attempt at it is warranted here.

Fast forward to the remote environment, quarantine, and the weird weeks following the campus de-densification, the negative chaos of the external world was met with positive chaos of the internal world of Beta Theta Pi. All of the brothers started to ramp up their efforts to unite the chapter as much as theoretically possible. It was obvious that during this era of social distancing, EVERY Beta brother needed EVERY other Beta brother. Thus, the incredible brothers worked together to maintain togetherness via many many many ways. The primary methods included our Slack Workspace and the Discord Server. From chatting about daily life happenings to posting advice to planning birthday surprises to working out to talking about politics/coronavirus to posting wins/losses of the day to receiving important announcements, the Beta Slack became an even more prominent “town square.”

Everyone started to utilize Discord to casually chat, work, and hang out at all times of the day, including the typical 1 AM- 5 AM MIT subtime when psetting is a real thing. Also being MIT students, the Beta brothers went extreme in uniting the chapter as much as possible with Minecraft server, Snapchat group, Zoom hangouts, virtual chapters, virtual Beta Roundtables, virtual jamming sessions, virtual food competition, and much much much more! As Vice President of Communications, I can certainly say that the engagement and inclusivity at ALL of these Beta events once things went remote has been extremely exceptional! Nowadays, we also have had events like Smash Tournament, Mathematica software tutorial, LaTex tutorial, Solidworks tutorial, etc. and have played games like Among Us way too much. In a Positive Chaos Way :) !

Overall, I am appreciative of the continuation of the Beta Brotherhood and the diverse, inclusive, fun, engaging, interesting, numerous, calculated, energized, and fire events, despite going virtual. Beta is a great community to be part of and I would not want anything else to help me last remote semesters!