While other schools dedicate an entire week to their Greek Week, Whitman’s greek system will be holding Greek Weekend. The weekend will kick off today, April 16 with a movie on the Phi lawn and end with the greek football tournament on Sunday, April 19.
“Greek Week, or technically Greek Weekend for us, is something that a lot of greek systems do across the nation to promote unity between their own houses as well as with the independent community on their respective campuses,” said sophomore Kate Newman, vice president of Programming for Panhellenic Association.
“The purpose of Greek Weekend is to bring all the different houses together, so every house participates in all the events together — the sororities don’t have their own separate events, and neither do the fraternities,” said Newman.
Greek Weekend has been a tradition, and though some events are open only to greeks, other events like the dance-off/ eating competition on Friday will be open to everyone, even though the participants will be greek. The Barefoot Formal on Saturday night will also be open to everyone.
“I think Greek Week gets the Greek system to be united for once. There’s always a little bit of tension between all the groups, and this allows us to put aside our differences and come together to be greek, and show the Whitman community that this is what the greek system is,” said junior Albert Lee, vice president of the Interfraternity Council.
“In the past years, it’s definitely been a low-key event. Attendance has been low and no one really cares because it’s lame or because no one knows what’s going on. That’s usually another big problem that we have,” said Lee. “We’re going to try and advertise this as much as possible to make sure people know, and get them psyched up for it.”
Planned by both Panhellenic and the IFC, Greek week is a collaborative effort between all the greek groups on campus, with every group contributing and participating.
“I think the girls get more into the dance-off, and we’re pretty serious about the football, but I think for the most part there is actually pretty equal participation,” said Newman.
On Thursday, a movie will be projected on the Phi lawn. Friday will be the traditional dance-off between house teams and an eating competition, which used to be a cook-off. Saturday will be a day of service within Walla Walla and Satu r d a y night will be the all-c a m p u s B a r e f o o t formal on the Reid side lawn with performances by Danger Mermaid, Red Light Blue Light and the Raptivists. Greek Weekend will conclude with a greek football tournament on Ankeny.
