The start of the academic year is filled with events allowing different clubs and organizations the opportunity to gain new membership. Brockport’s Greek life put a spin on this tradition with a “Welcome Back Bingo — Meet the Greeks Edition.”
Event Coordinator Bridget Terpening organized the evening in a way to not only bring other Greek organizations together, but to allow them to talk about their individual groups.
“It’s just normal bingo,” Terpening said. “After a couple rounds, we’re going to have someone from each organization come up here, give a little spiel about what they’re about and what their philanthropies are; then, we have a bingo board just for that. As they’re talking, the audience is going to listen and check everything off.”
Senior Seamus Snow is a part of the Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity. Snow said that events like these are important to show potential pledges how enjoyable Greek life is.
“You want to just talk to people, meet new people,” Snow said. “A saying a lot in Greek life is ‘recruitment, 24/7 or 25/8.’ And I think that’s misunderstood, because it’s not always just going up to kids at events like this and just saying rush, but just setting an example is showing that you’re actually fun to be around, and then letting that speak for itself in terms of wanting to join.”
While Greek life may be portrayed as just a means of having fun, there is a lot more that it entails. Sophomore Erin Jones (Delta Phi Epsilon) said it’s not all that social media paints it out to be.
“The way other sororities and fraternities are, like across the country, gives Greek life a bad rep even though we truly aren’t anything like it,” Jones said. “It’s an important way to not only make friends, but also be involved in the community and get leadership skills. We were able to help beautify Brockport and cleaned up around the streets of Brockport, which was really rewarding to be able to see how much trash we picked up and the impact that we were helping out with.”
There are many misconceptions to what Greek life can look like. However, events like welcome back bingo allow students in organizations to correct wrong assumptions and introduce students to new opportunities.
