Greek Week kicked off this past Wednesday with events hosted by Phi Delta Theta and Pi Beta Phi. Greek Week allows for fraternities and sororities to get involved with other greek organizations in the spirit of friendly competition. Events for the week will continue through Oct. 20.
Throughout Greek Week, greek organizations accumulate points based upon participation and fund raising efforts. The fraternity and sorority who each accumulate the most points wins funds toward a formal.
“We are going to put forth as much effort as possible towards participation in every greek week event, and honestly, we are just going to have a blast with it because that is what its for — to make sure that brothers have a good time and that greek organizations have a good time too,” Hank Strmac, public relations chairman for the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, said. “It is worthwhile to the greek community as a whole. It’s an opportunity for greek organizations to have friendly competition between each other and that friendly competition encourages positive relationships.”
Students have the option of purchasing Greek Week Passes for $15 to gain admission to the four most popular events: Phi Mu Presents Hopkins’ Most Eligible Bachelor, Pi Beta Phi Lip Sync Night, Kappa Cook-Off and Alpha Phi Ivy Games. Individually, general admission tickets at the door of each of the events are priced at five dollars apiece.
Pi Beta Phi’s Lip Sync Night was held on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in Mudd Hall. The event involved greek organizations forming teams of up to seven members to perform a lip-sync rendition of a song released from 2000 to 2005, the designated time period for the event. A panel of three judges rated the performances, each giving the acts a score of between one and 10. Donations, in the form of tips to specific organizations, were added as further points, with every five dollar donation equalling one point.
“Lip syncs are really big at a lot of Pi Phi chapters across the country. We thought it was an opportunity for our chapter to start a small-scale event, and eventually we hope it will become a large one that involves not just the Greek community, but will be expanded to include the whole campus. It’s also just a lot of fun to participate in and to watch!” Madalyn Vershay, president of Pi Beta Phi, wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
Approximately 200 people gathered to watch the event, which raised over $800 in tips and entrance fees. The proceeds go to Pi Beta Phi’s philanthropy organization Read.Lead.Achieve, which is dedicated to enhancing literacy and education across the United States and Canada.
Among the sororities who participated in the lip-sync event, Alpha Phi garnered the most points with their rendition of Kanye West’s “Gold-Digger.”
“I had so much fun at the event, I think Pi Phi picked an awesome event to do,” sophomore Kira Finkel, who participated in the event for Alpha Phi, wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
According to Finkel, Greek Week provides a great opportunity for people to interact with people outside of their greek organization.
“I think it’s important that Greek life can come together and put aside their letters, even if it’s just for a week, and have a lot of fun doing dumb stuff like lip syncing to early 2000 songs,” Finkel wrote.
As for fraternities, the Beta Theta Pi fraternity won the highest score from the judges but lost in overall amount of points to Sigma Chi, who succeeded in raising enough tips to put their score over the top.
Pi Beta Phi’s Lip Sync Night is just one of many Greek Week events held throughout the week. Other events range from sports tournaments to community service.
“Greek week is an excellent event. As a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity it gives us the opportunity to take a much needed break from school and connect with other Greek members who we might not usually see,” Michael Hatfield, Beta Theta Pi’s vice president of brotherhood, said.
