Going Greek looks different for everyone who does so. There are many routes that one can take to join, different organizations and leadership opportunities within them.
One such opportunity is Panhellenic Council, a group of Greek women from each of the four organizations whose goal is to help women wishing to join Greek life, and all of those already in Greek life. At least, it is supposed to.
“I think a lot of people looked at Panhellenic as just a recruitment tool, that we’re there to get all of the potential new members of the freshman class ready for recruitment to happen that third week into February,” Promise Henry, the current President of Panhellenic, said.
This year, the Panhellenic Council is trying to redirect this assumption towards sisterhood events intended to unite all four Greek sororities, and an understanding of the support they are there to provide.
“We are really trying to shift that dynamic this year. Bring in more sisterhood events amongst our four organizations in the fall. While they do not have a new member class, bridging the gap between the different organizations and showing them that even though we are in different chapters with different letters, we are still an inclusive Panhellenic community of Greek women,” Henry said.
Prior to this year, the Panhellenic Council consisted of the President and five Vice Presidents that would operate independently of the four organizations. This year, the council has decided to add subcommittees to expand the opportunities they can provide.
“We can only do so much because we only have so much time. That is a very small number [of people] to do a lot of things here on campus. [Adding subcommittees] allows us to make a bigger difference on the Panhellenic community and kind of program more and reach more people than if it was just the five of us,” Henry said.
Despite Panhellenic’s stated goals for this year, not every organization feels represented within the council.
“I am a senior very involved within my chapter. I don’t feel like Panhellenic supports all of its members well. I think the subcommittees, especially the leadership of the subcommittees, favors one organization heavily,” an anonymous source said.
As an organization dedicated to supporting all Greek sororities on campus, the Panhellenic Council aims to represent all of them equally.
“It can be very hard when you’re your own organization, that if you face something going wrong internally. People might feel like they have to handle that problem completely alone. Panhellenic is here to be a supportive governing body, we just want to make sure that four of our organizations feel loved and valued and supported,” Henry said.
This goal has not been achieved.
“One organization has pretty much complete control over the Panhellenic governing body. Perhaps those leadership roles should have been more evenly distributed across all sororities. We just don’t have equitable opportunities, and it seems like there are a lot of biases and personal preferences involved in selected leadership,” our source stated.
Panhellenic aims to be inclusive, representative and overall a resource to its members. But, when not all of your members feel this way, have you done the job, or have you lost sight of the goal?
