Greek Life

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Relay for (Greek) Life

April 25, 2012 in Jeanie's Blog by Jeanie Nguyen | 2 comments

There’s an overwhelmingly negative connotation associated with college Greek life, which fairly arises from the too frequently heard about news articles of hazing gone wrong. Although the behavior concomitant with such tragedies are inexcusable, it isn’t the defining factor of Greek life. The Greek system still exists nationally and I believe the reason it continues thriving lies in the fact that there are endless (literally! The alumni networks are as massive as whales!) positive influences it can have on a member’s life.

I can personally attest to these benefits – connecting to a new support group, feeling more connected to campus, and expanding study groups – and that’s why my involvement in Harvard Greek life progressively dives deeper. This semester, I’ve been transitioning into my new role of Panhellenic Council Vice President of Philanthropy! Although I hate admitting that I have a natural tendency to snap at good news, I love the new opportunities my role avails to me – like participating in Relay for Life, an incredibly inspiring and national event to support those fighting cancer.

Three male fraternities and three female sororities exist at Harvard (although not officially acknowledged due to the institution’s rule against recognizing single gender groups): Alpha Epsilon Pi, Sigma Chi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, and Delta Gamma, respectively. Over the course of these last few months, representatives from each group met with me to organize fundraising events for the annual Harvard Relay for Life. Each year the Harvard Greek Team raises thousands of dollars for the amazing cause through personal appeals as well as creative ways, some of them exemplified below:

Pie Cancer in the Face: AEPi (Alpha Epsilon Pi) held an event where people could purchase a pie to throw in a brother’s face. Who needs dignity when cancer is looming as a threat? Haha, the boys definitely took pies in the face like the manliest men I’ve ever seen and raised over $300 in the span of four hours! Bonus points for the pun too!!

Date Auction: The Cambridge Queen’s Head (a restaurant/pub) located in the basement of Annenberg (the freshman cafeteria commonly referenced to as the Great Hall from Harry Potter) graciously donated their stage to the Harvard Greek community to hold a date auction for two hours. Twenty generous and studly fraternity brothers of Harvard volunteered themselves to be auctioned. Girls across campus (even some graduate students!) came to bid for a magical hour with these men, 100% of proceeds going directly for Relay for Life. The “Date Contract” read that the men had to be at their utmost gentlemanly behavior…but we’ll just see how my two dates go before we get excited. Yes, I did buy two. Hey now, it was for charity!!

BBQ: HUDS (Harvard University Dining Services) has some of the best programs!! Check out the stellar grade HUDS (and Harvard in general) got! On weekdays from 11am-2pm, HUDS serves prepared sandwiches, hot entrees, fruit, etc. in the Cambridge Queen’s head for upperclassmen too lazy/too busy (usually the latter in our defense!) to return to their upperclassmen House (dorm) for lunch – this is colloquially termed “Fly-By.” You can also request a brown bag to be prepared from your own dining hall when you know you won’t have time in between lectures, sections, and meetings for lunch! Another way HUDS ensures students stay nourished is by providing cookout food. The philanthropy chairs of each fraternity and I wanted to hold a BBQ before and during the Relay for Life event so we gathered students’ ID numbers and submitted them into HUDS who then provided us hamburger patties, hotdogs, condiments, buns, fruit, chips, and basically everything else we could ever dream of asking for. The BBQ was a hit and people even donated money in exchange for some BBQ! Sorry for not having any pictures 🙁 I was too busy grilling … or at least supervising the grill! 🙂

Overall, the events leading up to Relay and Relay for Life itself was successful! I had a blast working behind the scenes in my first Spring Philanthropy event and can’t wait for the one in the fall, which I’m hoping to organize with Cradles to Crayons. I can only hope that my last round of midterms (yes, I did have a midterm on the last day of class), presentations, papers, and final exams go just as well!!!

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Oh, hi there!

March 19, 2012 in Kate's Blog by Kate Meakem | 4 comments

It has been WAY too long.  Some of you may have been wondering where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing.  My answers to these questions are, “I don’t know, and EVERYTHING!”

So to catch you up from the beginning:

Last time I posted, I talked about joining the Officer team at the Phillip Brooks House Association – a student-led 501c3 nonprofit based on Harvard’s campus that supports more than 85 programs, 1,400 student volunteers, and 10,000 low income people in the Boston area.  Since then, I have come to know a team of twenty amazing individuals who are devoted to public service and making the world a better place.  I have learned from their ideas, their passions, their anxieties, and even after only three months, I feel that I have come to know and trust these people explicitly.  The other thing I can honestly say about PBHA – I have learned more in my three months as an Officer than I have in my entire time at Harvard.  Not that classes here aren’t amazing or anything, but if you read on you’ll see what I am saying.

Over January break, we all came back a week early to go through NPMI (Non-Profit Management Intensive), where we learned about everything from budgeting to meeting facilitation, from student development to strategic management.  To say this was a crash course would be an understatement.  This week culminated in a final Officers Retreat we took in Maine, where we were greeted with plenty of snow, plenty of hot chocolate, plenty of Apples to Apples, and plenty of meetings.

Me in a PBHA van in Maine! photo cred: Alan Silva

At the same time we were putting our new found skills to the test by planning Cabinet Retreat – a meeting off campus with all of the directors of the 85 different programs for an entire day.  This is the largest thing I have ever organized.  It also involved me writing my first ever training, leading my first ever training on Volunteer Management, speaking perhaps in front of one of largest audiences I have ever spoken in front of, and writing the largest check I have ever written for the rental of the space: Hibernian Hall.

But the day finally came on January 28th when we bussed everyone over to Dorchester, and it went GREAT!  Better than great, in fact.  The facility was everything we had hoped and more, our fledgling Officer team put its heart and soul into making sure everything ran smoothly, and the feedback from directors was overwhelmingly positive.  This was by far my proudest moment since stepping onto Harvard’s campus a year and a half ago.

 

A picture I snapped on my phone of Cabinet Retreat!

But with that accomplishment behind us, we now faced the obstacle of scheduling.  As I have said before in one of my blog posts, scheduling at Harvard is a nightmare.  Even friends are forced to stop each other on the sidewalk and write in dining hall meet-ups into their phone calendars.  So to try to schedule three major meetings a week (two of which I lead with my co-chair Winnie) was soooooo stressful.  In the end we got it down, and let me say, leading multiple two-hour meetings a week teaches you a thing or two about flip charts, agendas, and organization.

Since January, our team has done so much and led so many tough conversations – we have organized another Cabinet meeting and we have our third one this Thursday night, we have talked the need for Programmatic Quality Standards, and Director Accountability, we have organized Director-Officer Teams (or DOTs) to grab dinner together and create more community among volunteers, and we are in the process of creating a new database and hiring a new Deputy Director.

In short, PBHA has taken over my life – but in so many positive ways!  I can think of nothing I would rather devote my time to, and I feel so blessed to be surrounded by so many great people who are devoted to such a great purpose.

Other things I have been doing include serving as New Member Director for my sorority on campus – Kappa Alpha Theta!  We run our Recruitment process at the beginning of second semester, and it was so much fun to meet so many awesome girls and bond with the other women in my sorority.  Our very own blogger Jeanie is in Theta with me, so we were sure to take a picture for you guys!

Jeanie and me during one of our rounds of recruitment!

Since Recruitment, I have been leading meetings for the new members to introduce them to Theta!  It has been amazing (and yes, I have brought my PBHA meeting facilitation skills, flip charts and all, with me to Theta meetings).

The final big activity I am doing on campus is serving as a Fundraising Director for Harvard University Women in Business.  So far this semester, we have devoted our fundraising efforts toward the New York Trip that we sponsor every year for Harvard women to visit some of NYC’s top companies.  Soon, we will be switching gears to the effort I am directing – Intercollegiate Business Convention fundraising.  IBC is a HUGE conference HUWIB hosts every fall for women’s business organizations from colleges across the country.  I will be sure to write more about it in the future, when my blog post isn’t so long 😛

Finally, I am still volunteering for my original PBHA program, Elderly 1-2-1, and of course, I am still a student at Harvard taking classes (though it sometimes doesn’t feel like it)!  This semester, I decided to take only three classes – History 97, which is my sophomore tutorial, History 1433: American Populism, which traces American history through a Populist lens, and Economics 1010b: Macroeconomics.

Oh, and before I forget, other great news this semester – I moved into a single (pictures to come when my room isn’t quite so messy)!

That’s all folks!  And don’t worry, I will be posting regularly from now on, so check back!  I’ll leave you with a picture from my spring break at home in Pittsburgh!

Me at Fort Duquesne in Point State Park, Pittsburgh

 

 

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Finding Theta

February 1, 2012 in Jeanie's Blog by Jeanie Nguyen | 1 comment

Sorry I’m not going to provide mathematical evidence supporting String Theory; instead, I’m going to scandalously skim the social scene at Harvard College.

There’s an enormous misconception that Harvard is awkwardly social, if not antisocial. Personally, I strongly disagree, unless my own idiosyncrasies have blurred my perception of what is socially acceptable. I shamelessly admit, however, that before arriving at Harvard, I worried that students wouldn’t be able to distinguish the fun concomitant to studying/learning with the fun concomitant to all things non-academic. I feared that all my conversations would revolve around academia and that my needs for discussing the Kardashians would never be satisfied. But let it be known that my experiences at Harvard have not only exceeded my expectations academically, but also have satiated my celebrity gossiping desires. (Most of the time) we’re just normal people who love to dive into books as much as social events – and this even applies to those who live(d) in Massachusetts Hall where only a handful of hand-picked freshmen live, rumored to be the best of the best and the creamiest of the cream of the crop!

I’ll defend the claim that some of the best things are simply stumbled upon – that’s how I found Theta (Kappa Alpha Theta), the first Greek-letter fraternity for women (and at Harvard!). Some of my pre-college friends were surprised that I was rushing Greek life freshman spring semester, but it made perfect sense to me! During the later years of my high school career, I became actively involved with the scholarship program Distinguished Young Women of America (formerly known as America’s Junior Miss) and I quickly became obsessed with this community of beautiful, driven girls. A paralleling community was definitely lacking my first semester of college, especially after coxswaining for the men’s heavyweight crew team. I was definitely in need of a community where I could more closely relate (and boy bash) with, which drove me into rushing the Greek scene.

 

Finding Theta, Thinking Theta & Loving Theta

 

There are three sororities as Harvard (although Harvard doesn’t technically acknowledge single gender groups): Kappa Alpha Theta (Theta), Delta Gamma (DG), and Kappa Kappa Gamma (Kappa). After a hectic and crazy fun week of rush, I pledged loyalty to Theta and have never looked back!! I’m obsessed with these girls because I can rely on them for everything from wisdom and support to humor and dance choreography! Granted sisterhood is a part of every sorority, I chose Theta because I specifically felt that Thetas weren’t only involved all around campus and the Boston community, but they were leaders in the activities they were involved in – leading Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) volunteer programs, Women’s Leadership Conferences, and so SO much more!! Joining Theta has made me feel more connected to both a new community of strong, young women and the Harvard community itself because by staying up to date with their lives, I’m more informed of Harvard’s plethora of opportunities. Theta is what catalyzed my interests in my secondary of Global Health and Health Policy as well as pushed me to race in my first (and definitely not last) half marathon!! My sorority sisters definitely have an extremely influential role in my major life decisions and I hope that it stays this way because with their guidance, I’m more comfortable with taking risks and challenging myself. Don’t take this post as an enormous shameless plug for Greek life at Harvard or any other university because it may not be your personal cup of tea – I guess what I’m trying to say is that your interests and activities in high school may translate into unexpected ones in college so don’t be too weary of giving a chance to things you were once opposed to.

Some girls who have Thought Theta

This week is Rush Week for the sororities so it’s my first time on the “other” side of rush. I’m having an absolute BLAST getting to know my sisters better and I’m so excited for our new members to become a part of this family as well!

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