Greek community teams up in annual Greek Week

Greek Week, a week-long series of events sponsored by IU sororities and fraternities, starts today.

Senior Lisa Sun, vice president of community involvement for the Panhellenic Association, said the yearly event is a service-based week for the greek community to contribute to both Bloomington and IU’s campus.

Events include a Red Cross blood drive, a percentage night dinner at BuffaLouie’s and a home run derby.

Sun said one of the goals for the week is to recruit volunteers and gather donations outside the greek community. Although the sororities and fraternities organized all the events and selected the organizations to benefit, all events are open to community participation.

The Panhellenic Association and Interfraternity Council of IU assembled a steering committee last March and have spent six months revamping Greek Week’s focus.

“Last year was a lot more competition-based,” Sun said. “There were a ton of activities every day. It was a very busy, busy week, and this year we tried to make it less convoluted.”

There has always been a competition between chapters to see who volunteers the most, but Sun said that is being downplayed this year.

“Every Greek Week from now on is going to be service-based because that’s one of the values, one of the pillars of all of our organizations,” Sun said.

Senior Katharine Russell is the chair of the service committee, which is largely responsible for selecting organizations to help. She said this year, the week’s events will sponsor Bloomington’s Shalom Community Center.

“We wanted to choose organizations that showed need,” Russell said. “We don’t have a lot of money to work with. We have manpower.”

Russell said the community center recently moved to Walnut Street and needs help settling into its new location.

Senior Mike Schnell, a member of the marketing committee responsible for finding sponsors and advertising the week’s events, said narrowing the focus was a better strategy because more attention on fewer events would result in a higher turnout of people.

“I was involved last year in a lesser position, and I felt like there was a lot of room for it to grow,” Schnell said. “We’re just trying to make a lot of noise and trying to get everybody excited.”