Instead of deciding for themselves, the members of Phi Iota Alpha at Boston University reached out to the community through social media to find out what topics students would like to see addressed in the fraternity’s next documentary.
“I really hope that with this documentary, we show something that will incline people to do more,” said College of Engineering junior Edgar Puesan, one of the brothers. “We’ve shown a documentary about the lack of clean water, and it really got people to go out there and do more.”
Phi Iota Alpha, BU’s Latino fraternity, shows documentaries to the community as an educational tool to spur people into action, said Michael Isaza, a brother who is an ENG junior.
“The fact that we asked people to pick the movie has a lot to do with the numbers of people that we want to show up and watch the movie,” said Armando Merino, a brother who is a School of Management senior. “We are trying to give people what they want.”
The post on Facebook allowed students to vote for one of five options including social, political, education, environment and sports, he said. According to the votes so far, students prefer a documentary focusing on social issues.
“I think it’s smart because they get more people to come and participate, they feel more involved so they will come out [to see it],” said Stephanie Semet, a College of Communication sophomore.
Showing a documentary is only one of the many ways Phi Iota Alpha tries to make a difference in the community, said Phi Iota Alpha President Jonathan Orrala, a Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences senior. They also work with the United Nations Children’s Fund in the fall for the Trick-or-Treat project and during the spring on the Tap Water project.
“We work on the Tap Water project because we want to bring awareness to the water that is being wasted and what we can do to get involved,” Isaza said.
Phi Iota Alpha focuses on activism and bringing pan-Americanism to the BU community. It only has 10 brothers, but they are still a strong fraternity, he said.
“We do accept everybody even if they are not Latin American,” Orrala said. “I am from New Jersey, and I lived in a Latino-based community, so I wanted to find people like that here.”
Merino said he never thought of joining a fraternity until he found Phi Iota Alpha, which allowed him to get involved with a Latin American community.
“I feel like this frat is a family and normally I would’ve never thought of being in one cause all of the frats that I saw were like the ones in the movies like ‘National Lampoon,’” he said.
The brothers also participate in a community service project to help Latin American children in Chelsea with homework, Merino said. They are very involved in bringing attention to education, he said.
“I voted for education [for a documentary] because I feel like that’s the most important topic on the list,” Isaza said.
Past documentary screenings have had large audiences and they hope to bring even more this year, Orrala said.
“It can be difficult because we have to get the copyright from the documentaries to show them, and that can get expensive,” Merino said.
Two of the documentaries mentioned in a brainstorming session were “Waiting for Superman” and “The Human Experience,” Orrala said.
Puesan said he was able to find a community concerned with important issues with Phi Iota Alpha.
“I was able to find the role model and family that I was looking for here,” he said. “I really hope that with this documentary, we show something that will incline people to do more.”
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