Panhellenic Pride and Greek Service Week will cap off a successful semester for the organization.
Last week, from April 3 to April 7, Panhellenic hosted different events for sororities ranging from "T-shirt Tuesday" to a visit from "Girl Code's" Carly Aquilino on Friday.
Melissa English, who serves as the organization's VP of programming, coordinated the daily events and said she was thrilled with their levels of attendance and participation.
"The point of Panhellenic Pride Week is to make people proud of being part of the Panhellenic community, not just being proud of their own chapter," said English.
Greek Service Week is next, lasting until April 14. Greek life will host a blood drive and a "can-struction" event at which different chapters will compete to build the best sculpture out of canned goods. The winner receives $200 for their philanthropy. At Greek Spring Clean on Saturday, they will team up with almost 20 community partners in Oxford and Cincinnati, with 450 people expected to participate.
The Greek community has raised tens of thousands of dollars over the past semester for various causes. Delta Zeta's Puttin' on the Hits (POTH) is their largest event and helped amass over $18,000 for the St. Rita School for the Deaf in Cincinnati.
Panhellenic's VP of community service and engagement, Misha Mathur, has been impressed with sororities' philanthropic efforts in the last few weeks.
"People have been doing really, really well with their numbers, and the participation has been awesome, so it's been really fun this semester," said Mathur.
Recently, Kappa Delta's Paint Brawl event generated over $4,500 for child abuse prevention, Delta Gamma's Anchor Splash over $5,000 for the visually impaired and Zeta Tau Alpha close to $4,000 for breast cancer prevention.
Panhellenic is also enacting other changes in their organization. Increasing accessibility during the recruitment process is one priority.
During recruitment this January, Miami sororities offered bids to 962 new women, according to the Cliff Alexander Office of Fraternity & Sorority Life. VP of recruitment Tatiana Pavloff said they have aimed to make the process as unrestricted as possible for anyone with disabilities who wants to participate.
"We have, really, in the past couple years made it a huge effort to make everything accessible for women," said Pavloff. "So, actually, next year it will be 100 percent accessible, which we're super excited about."
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This means Panhellenic will be hosting all events at wheelchair-accessible locations and taking all disabilities into account during the events leading up to recruitment and the event itself.
Erin Sullivan, VP of standards, said they are also increasing efforts to enforce social regulations.
"Over the past year it's gotten so much better," said Sullivan. "I don't think anybody has socials without registering now, so it just adds to the safety of the fact that we know it's happening."
This Thursday, Panhellenic will host a "perfect party," a model for the ideal Greek life party attended by sororities' executive boards (and their plus-ones, to ensure their message is spread as much as possible).
Panhellenic is also already planning for events next year. Currently, Mathur is working with Shane Mart, IFC's VP of community service and philanthropy on a Greek-wide (encompassing Panhellenic, IFC and NPHC) philanthropy event for fall 2017.
They also plan to include other clubs and organizations on campus, and all proceeds will go to the Booker T. Washington Community Center in Hamilton. They're aiming for October, and the event will likely be a 5K or something similar. Along with Mathur and Mart, new sorority and fraternity members have also assisted in planning.
"I'm sometimes amazed at how much they can do and pull off, because it's honestly phenomenal," said Mathur. "I have never planned a philanthropy event for my sorority, I've only advised, but what they do -- it's amazing."
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