Greek Week to combine fraternities and sororities

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Greek Week to combine fraternities and sororities

From April 10 to 13, Hills- dale College’s fraternities and sororities will compete in their annual Greek Week events, with a twist — they’ll be competing together.

Fraternities and sororities have most recently held the series of field events separately, during different weeks, featuring different events. This year, as part of a slew of changes, Associate Dean of Women Rebekah Dell suggested the weeks be combined, a return to the traditional collaboration between houses.

“It’s Greek Week — not just sorority week,” she said.

Junior Amanda Rubino, PanHellenic Council president, said the change was proposed to make the event more fun.

“There’s really no reason why they should be separate,” she said. “Together, it would be a lot more fun.”

The goal of the activities is Greek unity, Rubino and Dell said. The combination of fraternities and sororities will support that ultimate cause.

“It is one of the rare times when the whole Greek system comes together,” Dell said. “It’s also a time to strengthen the bonds within the houses — we didn’t want to ruin that aspect either.”

PanHel approached the Inter-Fraternity Council to suggest the change in February.

Junior Kurt Masciovecchio, chair of the men’s Greek Week, said IFC accepted the offer.

“I’m happy they’re bringing it back together,” Masciovecchio said. “It will be really cool.”

The sororities’ Greek Week will feature traditional events such as relays, volleyball, and soccer, but in a shortened format, lasting only three days to accommodate campus and Greek events already planned for the semester. That means there will be no “Super Saturday,” traditionally a day of smaller events including wheelbarrow races, egg tosses, limbo, and hula-hooping.

The fraternity’s Greek Week will be four days, with an interruption in the week’s activities for Delta Tau Delta’s formal date party.

“It’s a little hectic,” Masciovecchio said, laughing.

Each day will feature a big and little event. Rubino said the process of deciding which items to come and go took a bit of planning.

“We met in the middle,” she said, adding that the egg toss was one of the first to go. “It wasn’t really a big point of contention,” she said.

“We’re going to take all those little events and pick and choose the most popular ones and scatter them throughout the week,” she said.

The fraternities’ week feature different events, like dodgeball, basketball, tug-of-war, and corn- hole, Masciovecchio said.

In addition, a co-ed activity is planned for each day. A different fraternity will be paired up with each sorority for these events, which are swimming, volleyball, and dry-land relay races.

Pairing an odd number of fraternities to an even number of sororities was tricky.

“It was a little bit of a logistical nightmare,” Dell said.

A committee in charge of the coordination finally decided that each fraternity would compete twice during the co-ed events.

“We drew names for the other two events,” Rubino said. “One fraternity is going to have to sit out for one of the events.”

The co-ed events will be scored separately from the fraternity and sorority events, and a winner announced for each of the two former categories, and a joint team.

“I think all houses are pleased with the final decisions,” Dell said.