The 2011 Greek Week festivities conclude Monday night when the winners of the Greek Life competition will be announced.
The preliminary rounds of Fling, the annual skit competition were held Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights, with the five highest-scoring groups moving on to finals Thursday. Each year, the skits revolve around a different theme, Greek Week Director of Communications Kelly Nelson said.
“We try to decide on themes we think people will like and familiar characters that people can work with,” Nelson said. “We decided on ‘90s sitcoms and decided to do a reunion episode of those sitcoms.”
Each of the 14 fraternity-sorority groupings had 12 minutes to perform their original skit and choreography during the preliminary rounds. The groupings were also in charge of creating their own sets.
During the preliminary round, each skit ended in a cliffhanger, which the finalists solved in the final round Thursday night. The finalists were: Sigma Chi, Delta Chi and Kappa Delta; Lambda Chi Alpha, Delta Sigma Phi and Alpha Delta Pi; Pi Kappa Phi, Beta Sigma Psi and Gamma Phi Beta; Alpha Epsilon Pi, Sigma Nu and Alpha Chi Omega; and Delta Upsilon, Zeta Beta Tau and Chi Omega.
Fling was only one part of the three weeks of events that constitutes Greek Week. According to the Greek Week 2011 Rulebook, 5,250 points within seven different categories were available to each grouping. The Blood Drive, Fling, Service and Special Events were each worth 1,000 points.
After massive changes to the blood drive in 2010, groupings did not have to make donations in order to get full points, Director of Blood JT Schmalfeld said. This year’s blood drive collected 1,719 units of blood, less than previous years when donation was required but higher than in 2010.
“We hope that with future partnerships with other Mizzou student organizations, such as our partnership this year with Hispanic American Leadership Organization, we will be able to raise just as many units from willing donors as we did in the years when points were attached to the act of giving,” Schmalfeld said.
This year’s Greek Week theme, “Pillars for Purpose,” aimed to bring the focus back to the core values of Greek Life, Nelson said. The five pillars, or standards, of Greek Life include brotherhood, sisterhood, leadership, scholarship and service.
“The pillars aren’t something that a lot of people associate with Greek Life,” Nelson said. “Our mission this year is to strive to live up to those pillars and make our own Greek community as well as the outside community aware of what our values are and what we are trying to achieve through these events.”
Another major change required each grouping to complete a Greeks Giving Back service project.
“We assigned them to come up with their own service project that would directly benefit their beneficiary,” Nelson said. “It was kind of up to them last year if they went to the location of their beneficiary, but this year we made it part of Greek Week as part of the service section.”
The groupings had to come up with an idea for the project, get it approved by the steering committee and work with their beneficiary to iron out the details. The projects ranged from landscaping an organization’s site to hosting a poker tournament benefitting the organization.
“I think it made it more obvious to Greek students who aren’t the liaison or aren’t the most involved that Greek Week is about service and about giving back and I think that’s a major change,” Nelson said.
Some groupings went beyond the requirement by having extra events or sending extra people to the organizations to help out. For example, Lambda Chi Alpha, Delta Sigma Phi and Alpha Delta Pi, who were paired with Ella’s Hope, handed out Autism Awareness Month ribbons.
“I think it’s really great for the beneficiaries because they get to know the people in the chapter a lot better and form relationships with them this year,” Nelson said. “I really hope they continue to work together in the future.”
