Promotion for Greek Week provides unity, fundraisers
Greek Week begins September 17 at USD and this year, the events are centered around unity.
Natalia Dohman, a senior medical biology major and special events chair, helps plan and coordinate all the events of Greek Week. Dohman said she is looking forward to spending time with all the Greek students.
“We tried to focus on really getting the chapters excited about Greek Week by getting the schedule out earlier so they have more time to prepare and organize teams,” Dohman said. “This year is also unique in how we are including the community by setting up a kickball game with the afterschool program.”
Greek Week gives students the opportunity to be a part of a team and work with members outside their chapter.
Laura Anderton, director of sorority and fraternity life at USD, said Greek Week is a great time for students from different chapters come together.
“Greek Week is something that happens at many universities to celebrate the sororities and fraternities that are on that campus,” Anderton said. “Sometimes there’s competitions and sometimes there’s fun gathering events but the main purpose across the nation is unity. On this campus, we identified that Greek Week could be a really great way for our new members of the Greek community to meet each other and get to know each other.”
In the past, Greek Week has mainly been composed of competition between the sororities and fraternities. But in the last few years, it has been more about all the members meeting and getting to know each other.
“I’ve been here on this campus for five years,” Anderton said. “When I first started, there were a lot of competition events. Some of them did well at building that unity and some of them did not do so well. That’s one of the things we’ve really worked hard to change in the last few years.”
Consistently, the Blood Drive and Lip Synch Battle have been staple events during Greek Week. In addition, there will also be a Greek study table and barbeque with games and bonding activities.
Katey Ulrich, the coordinator of Greek life, said the intention of Greek Week is to provide an outlet for the sororities and fraternities on campus to spend time together.
“We’re really lucky at USD with the size of our Greek community. We have four sororities and eight fraternities,” Ulrich said. “So while they’re all doing their own events all year, we want to give them one week where they can spend time hanging out and getting to know each other.”
Dohman said Greek unity is extremely important, especially during Greek Week.
“Greek Unity is about forming and strengthening bonds between chapters; by forming these bonds, we are able to support each other and hold each other to high moral standards,” Dohman said. “With Greek Unity, we are all working to help support and raise awareness for each chapters’ philanthropies.”
Throughout the week, the Greek students will be raising money and awareness for the Blood Bank, Circle of Sisterhood, and United Way Vermillion. All students are welcome to come to the events and participate or show their support to the Greek community.
Anderton said Greek Week is important because it celebrates each individual chapter as well as bring them all together.
“Greek communities are only as strong as their weakest link,” Anderton said. “I talk a lot about communities versus a system. On a system, if something breaks, it doesn’t run anymore. In a community, it’s not so. If something breaks, if something’s not right, it gives us the opportunity as a community to mend that but we still move forward.”
