Every fall the Greek community has a week of philanthropic, scholastic, and interfraternal fun. This is what we call Greek Week. Fellow blogger and IFC PRogrammer, Brendan Witt, spent a lot of time over the past several months planning this week long event. This year our programmers did a fantastic job of balancing fun and competition, and words cannot express how excited I still am to have seen so many people from every chapter participating in all of the events throughout the week.
The first day of the week we have a BBQ on Greek Row, and provide free grilled food to our community members. We had a great turnout, college students don’t turn down free anything, especially food. It was great to see people interacting with people outside of their chapters, and we got to spend time outside on a sunny day listening to music and eating.
For our day of service we had people go to several different locations around Tacoma to help out for a few hours in the afternoon. I went to the Tacoma Rescue Mission, and my group worked on weeding and cleaning up some flower beds. We also had people go to Puget Creek Restoration and also to St. Leo’s Food Bank. Here is my group:
Every year we hold one of our Greek Week events at a sporting event to show support for our fellow Loggers. This year we attended the football game against Whittier, unfortunately the men didn’t win, but there was fun all around. During half time a member from each chapter participated in a “Dress Like a Logger” competition in which they dressed up how they think a Logger should dress. Later that evening we held the knowledge bowl to test our chapters knowledge of trivia. The Greek honor society Order of Omega created the questions for the competition, and our very own Moe Stephens was the host al á Alex Trebek, I think that he definitely enjoyed his role.
Sunday was the big day: Greek Olympics. This year we brought back the chariot races, it was interesting to see what the houses came up with to race with, and some chariots were definitely better and more stable than others. Other events included a relay that our Panhellenic Council programmer thought up; it included teams of 5 where 4 people spun in circles, ran to one end of the field, picked up a water balloon in their mouths, carried it to the other end, and then their teammates did the same thing; after the 4 finished successfully the last person ran to the other end, strapped a belt with a kleenex box (filled with 3 pingpong balls) to their waist, then they had to shake 2 of the 3 pingpong balls out of the box. We also had a three-legged donut eating race, tug of war, a frisbee toss, inflatable sumo wrestling. Here are some photos of the competition and hilarity that ensued:
Greek Week always ends with a speaker. This year we had Mindy Sopher as our guest speaker. Her talk was interactive and prompted members from each chapter to share what their values look like in everyday life, helping us to realize why fraternities and sororities are still relevant. Perhaps one of the most moving parts of the night was when the men of SAE all stood up and recited their creed, “The True Gentleman.” It was so moving to see them all stand up and recite that in unison. To conclude I would like to issue congratulations to Alpha Phi and Phi Delta Theta, our Greek Week winners this year. Also here is a photo of Panhellenic and IFC at the Greek Week Speaker:
