The campaign, “I Have a Choice,” runs from Oct. 26 to Oct. 30, and Delta Zeta chapters nationwide sponsor the campaign every year.
“You have personal accountability, you have accountability for the people around you, and you have accountability for your organization as a whole,” Kuerschner said. “I think ‘I Have a Choice’ gives you that sense that you really do have that choice to continue to keep yourself accountable.”
Kuerschner began to list the choices she hoped to discuss during the week. Every student has the choice to go home before getting too drunk, help a friend in trouble, leave an uncomfortable situation or not drink at all, Kuerschner said.
The first event of the week sought to put these choices into action, Kuerschner said. Delta Zeta organized a “mocktail” party, or a sober cocktail party, Monday night.
“Obviously, a big part of greek life is social events, so an issue that comes up is how to have those social events while making them safe if we’re going to choose to continue to do that,” said Alexis Blevins, Delta Zeta vice president of programming. “There has to be a line that’s drawn.”
Delta Zeta invites a different fraternity to its “mocktail” party each year. This year, it invited Sigma Chi to attend.
“Recently there’s been a lot of focus on having more of these sober events,” Reese Dorger, president of Sigma Chi, said. “I think there’s a lot of value in these events in the long run, especially if it makes people safer and more comfortable.”
Delta Zeta followed the sober cocktail party with a talk Tuesday from Sarah Cohen, the senior assistant director of fraternity and sorority life for the office of student life and learning. The event centered on the theme of accountability as well, specifically how it relates to alcohol, Cohen said.
“I am actually a Delta Zeta, so I’ve seen ‘I Have a Choice’ grow at the national level and be something Delta Zeta chapters across the country have been able to use to help promote a safer environment,” Cohen said.
For the rest of the week, members of Delta Zeta will be handing out brochures and hanging fliers and banners throughout campus in support of the awareness campaign. Though the IU chapter of Delta Zeta has been sponsoring the event for years, this is the first time it has moved from an internal event to a campus-wide campaign, Blevins said.
“We want to make sure students across the campus understand how to use alcohol, and it’s something that’s really prevalent nowadays on campus,” Kuerschner said. “And I think it’s important to realize that within the greek community, we are starting to make these changes and these choices.”
The transition to a wider campaign for the “I Have a Choice” week was difficult and required a much larger effort from everyone in the sorority than in previous years, but its success within the chapter in the past pushed them to expand their efforts, Kuerschner said.
“It’s tough to bridge that gap from greek to non-greek students, and I don’t know if there’s an easy way to change that,” Dorger said. “But it can’t hurt to start with events like these.”
