You might think of Greek life and
immediately think about parties, fraternity houses or
blonde chicks always fixing their hair during classes,
but the reality is something completely opposite from
what the mass media portrays.
Greek organizations are
more than a social organization to have a good time. Don’t get me wrong: we do like having fun, but we also
know our time and place for play and business.
A Greek organization is essentially a business. You run
meetings to make sure that every member knows their job
within the "business." You have dues for the members to
pay, but those dues pay bills that the "business" acquires. In all businesses, you have things such as
insurance, housing bills and dues to higher
authorities.
Each Greek organization is governed by a
national organization. The whole national organization
is divided up into "chapters" where each chapter
represents a different branch at a different
college or university. Each chapter must submit paperwork to report how
many members they have, service projects they
participate in and individual information that
the national organization demands from its chapters.
Each national Greek organization must follow specific
guidelines from collaborative councils of several
national Greek organizations for the betterment of the
Greek society. Three major councils govern all
Greek organizations: National Pan-Hellenic Council, Inc., North-American Interfraternity
Conference and National Panhellenic Council.
NPHC represents
historically black-established community-service
fraternities and sororities. Founded May 10, 1930 at Howard University in
Washington, D.C., NPHC consists of nine
International Greek fraternities and sororities. For
more information, visit the Web site
www.nphchq.org
The National Interfraternal Council, aka IFC, is part of the North-American Interfraternity Conference.
Established for the betterment of fraternities, NIC represents 64 national Greek
organizations and is headquartered
in Indianapolis, Ind. For more information, visit
www.nicindy.org.
NPC gives guidelines to international and national sororities
on conducting recruitment and hosting various activities
throughout the Greek year. For more information, visit
www.npcwomen.org.
Each Greek organization participates in service projects and
activities throughout the year. We have 13 Greek
organizations on UAM campus and I will be highlighting
each group throughout the semester. I will also be keeping up with the
Greek activities throughout the semester so that you may be able to participate
or come be a supporter for your favorite
organization. Robin Barker, director of Student
Activities, is the Greek adviser for our campus.
Feel free to go and ask her any questions that you might
have about Greek life. Her office is in the Gibson
University Center beside the Cafeteria.
I hope that you find the information that I provide each week to be
helpful in
understanding the Greek community.
Next week will be the IFC recruitment. This will include the
fraternities of Phi Lambda Chi, Tau Kappa Eplison, Sigma
Tau Gamma and Kappa Alpha Order. The schedule for the
recruitment follows:
Monday - Phi Lambda Chi in the Gibson University Center Capitol Room at 6 p.m.
Tuesday - Sigma Tau Gamma in the U.C. Caucus Room at 6 p.m.
Wednesday - Tau Kappa Epsilon in the U.C. Caucus Room at 6 p.m.
Thursday - Kappa Alpha Order in the U.C. Caucus Room at 6 p.m.
Feel free to come to any of these recruitment activities
during next week for more
specific information about each fraternity.
Have a comment? Please e-mail us.
