The Interfraternity Council brought together multiple WSU fraternities to contribute to the Movember week cause on Monday. The annual event encourages spreading awareness on the topics of men’s mental health, prostate cancer and suicide.
“Men in general just don’t open up as much as possible because it is not normalized enough, and that’s what we are trying to work on,” junior Brett Eilts, Interfraternity Council (IFC) president, said.
The IFC held a beard auction with a professional auctioneer where participants could bid on shaving their fraternity brother’s beards into the design of their choice. But walking around with an unusually shaped beard serves a greater purpose than providing some laughs.
“The whole idea is that when people who don’t normally have a beard suddenly have a patchy one, people ask about it and you can segway into a conversation about men’s mental health,” sophomore Will Dirnbeck, IFC scholarships and retention coordinator, said.
Fraternity members did not hold back in giving the participants eye-catching facial hair. A notable design of the night was a tic-tac-toe board shaved into junior Carlos Martinez’s beard.
“I think it’s worth it,” Martinez said. “I thought they would make it look a lot worse.”
Promoting men’s mental and physical health through a fraternity event gives the IFC an opportunity to encourage awareness in an environment where students already look to their fraternity brothers for support.
