TCU students and faculty slurped up pink and green jello shots and mojitos at the Alpha Kappa Alpha mocktail event Tuesday evening.

It had been almost two years since the mocktail event debuted, but Alpha Kappa Alpha brought it back to showcase the importance of responsible drinking on TCU’s campus.

“We have to educate our campus and people on it about alcohol and safe consumption and also be able to identify if our friends have a problem or if there is some mental issue that is driving their alcohol use,” junior speech pathology major and member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, Marli Pieternelle, said.

In efforts of mimicking an actual cocktail experience, Alpha Kappa Alpha chapter members served TCU students and faculty two different virgin alcoholic beverages, cupcakes and fruit.

“We had a mock mojito and it had pink limeade and some mint leaves to make it more mojito like and then we also had mock jello shots,” Pieternelle said. “We had watermelon and green apple flavored jello and then we added some sour patch kids to make it cute and sweet.”

As the crowd enjoyed their food and drinks, TCU’s Director of Alcohol and Drug Education Sparkle Greenhaw, cued everyone to gather around to participate in an open discussion about the significance of knowing the adverse issues of drinking irresponsibly and being able to recognize alcohol abuse in friends and loved ones.

“Alcohol can have immediate effects that causes people to experience health issues, medical issues and at the very worst, death from alcohol,” Greenhaw said. “And then also some people have a genetic predisposition to develop a problem with alcohol and drugs so we want to help that off before it happens.”

Alpha Kappa Alpha will continue it’s event one mocktail at a time to provide even more essential information about alcohol to the TCU community.