Student Life at Puget Sound

The time of the year is upon us again for Greek life recruitment. Those of you reading this who are non-Greeks are probably really sick of hearing about it, and those of you who are Greek are probably just ready for it to be over. As a recruitment counselor, and a member of a sorority, I am ready for it to start so I can meet the women going through the process, and also for it to end so that I can start getting to know the new members of my chapter. Tomorrow is the first day of sorority recruitment (and the last day to register for it) so with some inspiration from thought catalog, I thought that I would make a list of the reasons that I think everyone should consider participating in Greek recruitment.
**Note: this is primarily focused on the sorority side of things because I have never participated in fraternity recruitment.

1. Meet new people.
   
   Not only is there an opportunity to meet your recruitment counselors and other people in your group, but you will also be meeting probably at least 10 people in every chapter. Even if you never talk to some of people again, maybe one of them will become a new friend, who ever says they have too many friends? The answer is no one.
2. It’s the first week of classes.
   
   You probably don’t have much homework to do yet, so what could you possibly be doing on Saturday and Sunday morning/afternoon that is better than meeting a bunch of new people? Even if you do have reading or other homework to do there is down time between visits to the different chapters; this way you can do your work, and also meet new people. And if you don’t have work to do we will have Friends playing in the background, so you can watch Ross’ failed relationships for hours.
3. You might be invited to join a chapter.
   
   Going through the recruitment process is not really about meeting new people, it’s more about meeting them so that you are able to find a group of women with whom you think that you will be able to become a better version of yourself. I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true. When I accepted my bid I had extremely mixed feelings because even though I didn’t think I cared about the process, but I also felt upset that I wasn’t invited to join my first choice chapter (which I didn’t realize was my first choice until I wasn’t invited to join that one). Even though I didn’t know it at the time accepting that bid was one of the best decisions that I have made in college, since accepting my bid I have met a ton of women in all of the chapters, and I have had a ton of leadership opportunities. I could not be more proud to be a member of my chapter.
4. Joining a sorority is like a semester long birthday.
   
   When you join a sorority there are a lot of gifts associated with being a new member. On bid night the active members will be completely overwhelming, but they are super excited to meet all of the new members and to give you things, which is precisely the reason that they are so overwhelming. On my bid night we all got a few new shirts in addition to some other fun things. Throughout the semester there is big reveal, where your big sister gives you a ton of things for a whole week, and initiation, where your big also gives you things for a whole week. Basically the whole semester is centered around the new members, and that usually involves giving them things. And at the end of the semester the graduating seniors will down things to new members, so you can get even more stuff. Who doesn’t love stuff?
5. It’s the beginning of a lifetime membership.
   
   Joining a sorority is not only during college, it is a lifetime membership. While it might seem like a big time commitment to spend a weekend going through recruitment; that is a minuscule portion of your life in comparison to the rest of the time that you will spend as a member of a new organization. By committing to one weekend, there is the possibility for so many benefits that will last the rest of your life.

So, if you haven’t already done so I highly encourage anyone who is not currently a member of a Greek house to sign up for recruitment and consider joining our community.

Sorority recruitment link: https://secureapp.icsrecruiter.com/ICS/GM/v3/Pan/Web/Enrollment/RegistrationV3b.aspx?UID=PGTSND

Fraternity recruitment link: https://secureapp.icsrecruiter.com/ICS/GM/v3/Ifc/Web/Enrollment/RegistrationV3b.aspx?UID=PGTSND

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:

Much like my last post, I am still a little bit behind, this hopefully won’t be a trend for the entire semester. Last Friday (the first Friday of school) was one of the best days of the Logger year: Log Jam. All of the clubs and organizations have booths for students to learn about all of the activities that campus has to offer. The best part about it is all of the free stuff. And the sub caters with food that is good and hasn’t been sitting in a warmer for hours before we actually eat it. One of the coolest parts is that this event is open to the whole community, so professors and neighbors to the university will bring their kids to the event.

For Greek life, Jane, our director of recruitment, had this awesome idea to go around Log Jam with this big white board and markers, and ask people to write down their values, and then we took a photo of them with their values. The message that we wanted to get across was not only that Greek organizations are values based, but that a lot of the values that we have are similar to the values that people have outside of Greek memberships. Even though it took some prodding to get people to participate, once they had that marker in their hand a lot of our participants put a lot of thought into what they value most. We had a good range of participants, from new students, to professors, to Greek life members, and even general community members. To see the whole album of photos visit Panhellenic’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.358290237586284.82340.112911375457506&type=3.

This week marked the beginning of my last year at the University of Puget Sound. It was a bit of a whirlwind, as the start of the semester always is. But this post isn’t going to be about that, it’s going to be a retrospective post about new student orientation. My intention was to write this post over a week ago, as orientation was happening, but in stead I was relishing the fact that I had nothing to do before the semester began.

On freshman move-in day Greek life always plays a special role in helping move new students into their residence halls. We call ourselves SWAT, or the Student Welcoming Assistance Team. It’s a courtesy that is offered to the families by the Greek community. Though this is hard work for all of the SWAT volunteers, and they work up a sweat, especially this year in the 90 plus degree weather, it is a great opportunity for our community to get our name out to the new students and their parents. The free muffins and pizza, help to keep our volunteers around as well.

In addition to move-in day festivities Greek life also helped out with other orientation activities throughout the week. On Monday and Friday the Panhellenic and Interfraternity Councils sponsored hypnotists for the evenings’ entertainment. Following the shows the council members lead tours of the fraternity and sorority houses for students who were interested in learning a little bit more about our Greek community. For me the house tours were a particularly eye opening experience because it was the first real time that I was acting in my Rho Gamma role. It was both difficult and extremely exciting to be able to answer these girls questions about all of the houses and the community as a whole. The whole week made me very excited for my recruitment duties in January.

This past weekend the Panhellenic and Interfraternity Councils traveled to Costa Mesa California for the West Fraternal Leadership Conference put on by the Association of Fraternal Leadership and Values (AFLV) and the National Cultural Greek Leadership Conference (NCGLC). Thursday morning we met in the sub parking lot at 4:45 to start our journey. After an eventful flight we arrived in California and waited near baggage claim at LAX for Moe to get a van. During the time we were waiting we were able to really immerse ourselves in the Los Angeles culture through people watching and added commentary. After some vanning, In-and-Out, tweets, delirium, laughter and more vanning we arrived at the hotel in Costa Mesa to relax and enjoy a little sun before the evening’s programming. It seems like we brought the PNW with us, it rained most of Friday, so I think it was alright with everyone that we were inside attending sessions all day. Later Friday night the weather improved, and we went to a Dodgers game:

The gang outside of Dodger Stadium; photo credit: Hannah Whisler

Saturday we had sessions all day, followed by an awards ceremony, and a failed ice cream excursion that ended with gas station ice cream bars.

It was so great to have the opportunity to discuss the importance of our Greek values and to learn how to talk about them more regularly in my chapter and community. Interacting with Greek students from large California universities, like UCLA, or even Washington State was interesting, and I admit a little intimidating as well. I don’t think that those other councils knew how to deal with us, between having a campus smaller than their Greek communities, and our constant laughter over who knows what (usually with a tweet and a Moe pun immediately following and contributing to said laughter, and probably followed by more laughter). Something else that was pretty awesome was exposure to the concept of cultural fraternities and sororities was awesome, since we don’t have any chapters on our campus, the concept of cultural Greek organizations is new to me. I was amazed by the passion and dedication that all the other students had for their chapters, their councils, and their universities. We also got the opportunity to meet David Stollman and TJ Sullivan (student affairs speakers extraordinaire and co-founders of CAMPUSPEAK).

Our University’s councils from last year are absolutely amazing, they applied for several awards during their term, and it paid off. The Panhellenic Council won the West Fraternal Panhellenic Council Community Involvement award and the West Fraternal Legacy award, and the Interfraternitiy Council won the West Fraternal Interfraternity Council award; further more our Greek community was recognized for our academic achievements for the past semester. Being at this conference, I have never been more enthusiastic about being Greek, especially on our campus. Here are the councils with the awards:

Both Councils with Moe after the Awards Ceremony; photo credit: Jane King

So, my name is Lindsay Schommer. I am currently a junior here at Puget Sound, I’m majoring in psychology and minoring in Spanish. I am a very proud member of the Greek community, and I suppose that is the reason that I was asked to write these journals/blogs for the university. Earlier this year I was featured in a poster campaign by the Greek honor society, Order of Omega, to advertise recruitment, and that being Greek on our campus isn’t exclusive, and doesn’t mean that you can only be Greek. Here is the poster that I was on:  (Photo credit: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150575215201754&set=t.645435154&type=3&theater)

Currently I am serving as the Vice President on the executive board of the Panhellenic Council. I know that probably sounds like gibberish to most people who are unfamiliar with the inner-workings of Greek life (probably sorority life more specifically). So, basically the Panhellenic Council is a board of 7 officers from all of the sorority chapters on campus. We work closely with the men’s Interfraternity Council to put on events for the whole Greek community, and run a Greek Community Standards Board, and we run recruitment. As a part of this board I am going to be disaffiliated from my chapter starting next semester and lasting until the end of formal recruitment next January in order to help young women with the recruitment process. That is the reason that I will not be talking about my affiliation specifically in any of my posts. But I hope that I will be able to provide some insight into the happenings of our Greek community.