In a move to create unity among Loyola’s fraternities and sororities, all Greek organizations airbanded together for the first time.
“In the past, Greek Week has intended to include all three councils, but it hasn’t always been successful,” said Heather Roundtree, director of Co-curricular Programs. “It would just get planned by a few individual members. and there hasn’t been a very unified feel around Greek Week.”
To help remedy the situation, co-curricular brought four Greek students to a national leadership conference that was held in St. Louis, Mo. The conference’s focus, helping fraternity and sorority members increase unity on college campuses, changed the perspective of the students who went, according to Roundtree.
“They came into the Greek Week committee meeting, and said, ‘Let’s stop our planning as we have been doing it for years,'” said Roundtree.
The new focus for these Greek leaders was to figure out a way to plan a Greek Week that was reflective of the unity in the Greek Week community. With approval from the committee, members of the National Panhellenic Council, Inter-Fraternity Council and Panhellenic organized one of the first joint events of Greek Week: Airband.
“Airband is pretty much a competition where each Greek organization comes out and does a dance or a skit,” said Uriel Carrasco, new Phi Beta Sigma member and music industry business sophomore.
Carrasco said that he enjoyed participating in the event, despite his limited preparation time beforehand. “We did a stroll-off, and I tried to learn the stroll 10 minutes before the show.”
In addition to Airband, Carrasco said that he enjoyed Greek Week as a whole for the interactions it allowed him to have with the other Greek organizations on campus.
“It’s not just all the white fraternities and black fraternities doing their own thing; everybody gets together just to have fun,” he said.
Field Day is the last event of Greek Week that divides fraternity and sorority members into teams that compete in various games in the Peace Quad.
Despite the changes made to the way this year’s Greek Week was organized, Roundtree said all the organizations met their goal of being more unifying and inclusive. “I think that was part of the reason it was successful, because people bought into it and they knew it was important,” she said.
Though Roundtree has various other plans to increase communication between chapters and their leaders, Carrasco pointed out that Greek Week had something that all Greeks could enjoy. “Food always brings people together,” he said. “If you’re bringing food, I’m going, because free food is good food.”
Hasani Grayson can be reached
