Greek Week meets mixed student reviews

This year, Greek Week took place from Sept. 16 to 20, and it underwent significant changes following the departure of Rachel Drennen, former coordinator of Greek Life and Orientation.

Drennen left the University over the summer, and the responsibilities of planning Greek Life were handed to Director of Student Activities Robert Turning. The program consisted of a wide variety of events, including a trip to the Orioles game, a dance-off and a tailgate hosted by The HOP.

Due to these transitions, there was some difficulty in communicating and organizing this year’s events.

“Greek Week planning began before school ended last spring... Going into it, most of the space had already been reserved,” Turning said.  “Students come up with all the events. My role is to help navigate Hopkins, as far as the event planning [goes], so [I’m] reserving the space [and] making sure the facilities requests are put in.”

Turning gained this responsibility midway through the summer, while he was engaged in planning orientation. He received Drennen’s Orientation responsibilities, as well as the obligations that she had regarding Greek Week.

He commented on some of the difficulties he faced in organizing Greek Week; when he first faced the task he was unaware of all the events that had been planned and the small unexpected occurrences that could factor into the planning process closer to Greek Week. For example, Insomnia Cookies had not come to Hopkins until later in the summer, and the store’s presence unexpectedly affected Greek Week.

“These [are] things we’re finding out as we go along, and then all of a sudden it’s a panic,” Turning said.

Two of the organizers of the event, Jared Wang of Beta Theta Pi and Lindsay Kiernan of Kappa Kappa Gamma, commented on the organization as well.

“It was really tough because we found out towards the end of the summer that Rachel had left and it was her vision to do this,” Wang said.” And also our contact was Rob Turning, who was running Orientation... It got very tough. It was really tough on Rob, too.”

There were many gaps in communication regarding the programming as well.

“No one really knew what we had or what was going on,” Kiernan said.

Wang agreed.

“We weren’t really sure about our budgets and what events had been planned... I think we’re trying to pave the path. We realized that a couple weeks ago when [we] were scrambling to figure out events, and we realized that this is not going to be the best-planned or the best-executed [Greek Week]. We were trying to plan events with two weeks’ notice,” Wang said.

There were other changes in Greek Week regarding programming. Whereas individual sororities and fraternities had sponsored events such as the Kappa Cook-Off or Mr. Phi Mu in previous years, this year’s organizers decided that Greek Week should be more about all the sororities and fraternities uniting. Events such as the cook-off will still attract large crowds throughout the year.

The key events this year included a Greek outing to the Orioles game, a dance-off and a tailgate sponsored by The HOP.

“It’s really great because it brings out the Greek community to plays games and get points for their sororities and fraternities,” Simi Matta, director of co-sponsorship for The HOP said. “It is a lot of fun.”

The tailgate event was held on Sept. 20 on the Freshman Quad. It gathered many students, who came together to eat and listen to music.

In the past, it was possible to win Greek Week by contributing the largest amount of philanthropic donations. This year, there was a winner of Greek Week as well as a winner of the philanthropy portion of Greek Week, a system that was designed to make the competition as fair as possible. Sororities and fraternities also had the chance to win their respective dance-offs, held to showcase original choreography.

The event’s planners also had a discussion about the involvement of the multicultural sororities in Greek Life. They had a limited presence in the events this year, but all the events were planned so that an unlimited number of Greek groups could be present.

“What I can surmise from the event planning that happened throughout the spring [is that] the events that make up the totality of Greek Week are events that any chapter, regardless of size, should be able to participate in,” Turning said.

However, the multicultural Greek groups were not heavily represented because of their low numbers. The groups have a large emphasis on different cultures.

“They have an advocating group,” Turning said. “Now I will say one of the challenges that the multicultural groups face is that they are just smaller in number... It is more of a challenge for them to be in attendance at all of these meetings.”

In the past, the multicultural sororities had more of a presence in Greek Week.

“Last year, we did this thing called penny wars, where each sorority and fraternity had their own jar,” Melanie Brown, a member of Delta Xi Phi, said. “I think we had done it previous years. Last year we came in second. We had already told the Greek Life coordinator that we would be doing penny wars again for Greek Week this semester.”

However, some of these plans fell through. Greek Week was initially intended to take place in October, which is when Brown had believed it was taking place, right up to the week preceding Greek Week.

“In the past, they have been invited and have not been big on attending,” Wang said. “They were included in all of our invitation emails.”

Kiernan believes it is difficult for them to compete because of the difference large in membership.

“We made them boxes for the donations,” Kiernan said. “They did not really participate in many of the organized events like the dance-off.”

The turnover in the event’s director this summer contributed to some of the miscommunication.

Kappa Kappa Gamma and Sigma Chi won Greek Week, and Pi Beta Phi and Beta Theta Pi won the philanthropy portion.