Every year, the organizations involved in Greek Life compete against each other in a multitude of events. This year, Greek Week began Sunday, April 23 and the winners were announced on Tuesday, May 2 in the Smith Student Center.
Senior history major and alumni relations chairperson for Kappa Sigma Fraternity Seth Stinson said one of the bigger events is Greek Sing, a competition where individual members sing songs to members of other Greek organizations.
Greek Life used the Smith Center ballroom and set up the stage for the performances. Stinson said the event is open to the public, and the admission fee is a donation to an organization called Morgan’s Army. Morgan’s Army supports a former member of an SRU sorority Morgan Yoney, who had two lung transplants and multiple other operations.
Greek Sing is divided into three categories: Formal, Informal and Partner. During the Formal category, organizations take turns singing a chosen song; every member is dressed in formal attire. The Informal category features each organization performing original dances to mashups of different songs that fit in the theme. Stinson said this year’s theme was “Brought to you by the letter…”
“Each organization picked a letter and all the songs they used had to start from that letter,” Stinson said. “They were judged on music, choreography and enthusiasm.”
The final portion of Greek Sing was the Partner category; each fraternity and sorority were given partners for the week, and they worked together to come up with songs and dances, similar to the Informal category.
Stinson said there are also many sporting events that take place during Greek Week, including basketball, volleyball and swimming.
“The most important events, though, are Can Castle, Book Drive, and Penny Wars,” Stinson said.
To compete in Can Castle, members bring canned goods and non-perishable food items which are used to build castles. Those castles are then judged based on categories such as design, creativity and number of items. The food was donated to “Feed My Sheep” in Slippery Rock park.
The Book Drive is a competition to see which organization can collect the most books, which are then counted and donated; Stinson said the books were donated to the Slippery Rock Public Library this year.
“For Penny Wars, teams collect change and distribute them into buckets,” Stinson said. “The goal is to put pennies in your own bin, and silver, cash or checks in other bins.”
The money is counted, and the team with the highest number wins the Penny Wars; pennies are counted as positive and all other money is counted as negative, which is why the goal is to get everything but pennies into other teams’ buckets. Stinson said all of the money is then donated to Morgan’s Army.
“This year, we donated almost 1,000 food items, over 1,300 books and almost $4,000 to Morgan’s Army,” Stinson said.
This year, the winners of Greek Week were the Sigma Tau Gamma fraternity and the Delta Zeta sorority.
