The University of Rhode Island completed its annual spring Greek Week this month that began April 6, where fraternities and sororities raised just under $250,000.
Greek Week included a series of athletic and entertainment-based events, that were meant to raise thousands of dollars for both local and national charities. This tradition has been going on for almost 75 years.
This year, the week started off with a chariot race, followed by many other activities, such as bubble ball, tug-of-war, three-legged race and garbage pong.
“We had an event called ‘Wear letters Wednesday,’” said Amanda Gonzalez, vice president of philanthropy and service. “We got a bunch of Allie’s donuts and if a chapter member comes up wearing a letter you give them a donut and at the end of the day the chapter that sent the most people got Greek Week points.”
The biggest events were “Mr. & Ms. Greek Week,” which was a pageant competition amongst various chapters. Tau Epsilon Phi (TEP) won Mr. Greek Week and Alpha Delta Pi (ADPi) won Ms. Greek Week.
The final two big events were “Greek Sing,” which is an acapella singing competition, and “Lip Sync,” which is a crowd-favorite dancing competition. These events were held on Thursday, April 11 and Friday, April 12, respectively. The winners of the lip sync competition were Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Sigma Delta Tau.
At the end of the week, the chapter pairings that collected the most Greek Week points were Kappa Delta, Phi Kappa Psi and TEP. They were followed by Sigma Delta Tau and Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Phi Sigma Sigma, Tau Kappa Epsilon and ADPi, respectively.
This year, Greek Week raised a little under $250,000. This was the most amount of money URI has raised for Greek Week so far.
“We did the fundraising a little differently this year,” said Laura Creese, president of URI’s Panhellenic Association. “All of the money that is raised for Greek Week goes into each chapter’s RhodyTHON teams. So the Children’s Miracle Network was our main benefactor there.”
Since the RhodyTHON board had the event before Greek Week occurred, donations were closed off right before Greek Week began.
“They did that because we kept fundraising throughout Greek Week last year, but the total amount fundraised was announced at RhodyTHON last year, and they ended up raising $250,000 more throughout Greek Week ,” Creese said. “Since Greek Week followed RhodyTHON, that amount was never really accounted for because they wanted everything to be in before they made the big announcement reveal thing at RhodyTHON.”
Creese said that the fundraising aspect is the most important part of Greek Week.
“Definitely the most important part of Greek Week is the fundraising,” Creese said. “We push it really hard every semester. Last semester, during our Philanthropy Week, we raised the most that we ever have. We built a school that broke ground a couple weeks before. Philanthropy is one of our core values and that is definitely something that URI Greek life is good at.”
According to URI’s Greek Life website, there are a total of 23 Greek organizations on campus, with 13 fraternities and 10 sororities. With more than 3,000 active members, the Greek community comprises approximately 20 percent of the school’s overall population.
