Over 4,000 Austin area elementary school students invaded the Darrell K Royal stadium at UT on Friday in celebration of their exemplary scholastic aptitude and good attendance. The fraternity members of Delta Epsilon Psi and another 57 registered student organizations braved the thousands of enthusiastic, sugar and pizza-induced children by coming together and hosting the event.

For the last 13 years, Delta Epsilon Psi has teamed up with the Neighborhood Longhorn Program to hold “Project Come Together.” This year the fraternity and its recruited student organizations put on a giant field day and carnival for 15 Austin elementary schools to reward them for their hard work and motivate them to go to college. The event concluded with UT Football players David Ash and Jaxon Shipley signing autographs for the kids.

“Delta Epsilon Psi presented the idea of Project Come Together as a way to connect student organizations on the UT campus and unite them with one day of service,” said Sonny Bhatka, vice president of the fraternity.

Originally the Neighborhood Longhorn Program had been holding a similar event called Spring Jam for around seven years until Delta Epsilon Psi came around.

“During our second annual Project Come Together, we got together with the Neighborhood Longhorn Program and merged the two ideas of, ‘Hey, let’s do this service event with the kids and get them together,’” said Bhatka. ”Last year we had approximate 3,800 students. This year we have 4,200.”

Bhatka said because of the growing numbers of the event, they moved Project Come Together to the stadium for the first year. They previously held it at Gregory Gym and Clark Field, and Bhatka said he only hopes to see it grow further by maximizing the amount of participating student organizations to 100.

Amar Emamin, UT alum and program specialist for the Neighborhood Longhorn Program, was actually a member of the program from third to eighth grade and said it encouraged him to attend UT as well.

“It exposed me,” said Emamin. “I remember going to this same event, Spring Jam, in third grade. It’s interesting seeing this whole evolution.”

Emanin said that when he was in the program there were only 1,000 students. Now the Neighborhood Longhorn Program serves over 6,000 students by offering them incentives such as free UT baseball tickets for accomplishing certain academic goals.

“We’re all about motivating children to get to college, and we feel the best way to motivate them is to expose them to it,” said Emanin.

The best part though, he said, was seeing how excited the kids were at Project Come Together.

“A lot of these kids have never been to the stadium, much less a football game,” Emanin said. “So for them to just see the whole field… I mean, they see on TV, ‘Oh, that’s where the Longhorns play,’ but now kids are playing catch where people have won game and made touchdowns, so it’s cool.”