The Oldest College Newspaper in Pennsylvania

The Lafayette

The Oldest College Newspaper in Pennsylvania

The Lafayette

The Oldest College Newspaper in Pennsylvania

The Lafayette

Let’s speak Greek! Student group formed to increase Greek Life conversation

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By Bunny Lebowski ‘15 | Trophy Wife

scoff greek food

Several students feel that Greek Life is not the center of enough conversations on campus and therefore have decided to form a group to improve Greek Life’s prevalence.

“Our studies show that Greek Life currently is the focus of about one out of three conversations on campus,” President of Greek Life Under-discussed Taskforce (GLUT) Trent Dickson ‘15 said. “Our goal is to improve Greek Life’s saturation of conversations to the level of 50 percent by the end of the fall semester. Ultimately later down the road, we would like Greek Life to be mentioned at least once per sentence.”

GLUT conducted extensive research to measure the frequency of Greek Life discussions. By planting recording devices around campus and counting the number of times key words were said they determined the most common topics of conversation were:

1. Complaints about the weather

2. Complaints about food

3. Greek Life

4. What happened after blacking-out last night

5. Number of likes on Facebook/Instagram Topics such as current events, politics, and education did not make the list.

GLUT plans to foster more Greek-centered dialogue by infiltrating some of the most commonly discussed subjects on campus. Vice President of GLUT Britany Vainer ‘16 commented, “I’m glad we did the study otherwise we would have wasted our efforts on topics like politics and world news which turned out to constitute less than one percent of all conversations at Lafayette”.

Bon Appétit has agreed to work with GLUT. In order to steer more food-based conversations towards Greek Life. Bon Appétit is going to label their food with Greek-related terminology. For example, French fries will now be labeled French Phies, Oatmeal will become Oathmeal, and Romaine will be Bromaine.

Professors and administrators have also agreed to support GLUT by renaming a few common expressions. TAs are now going to be referred to as Class Bigs. The add-drop period for classes will be known as Course Rush Month. Declaring your major will be phrased as Pledging your major. The class of 2018 will not be receiving college acceptance letters, but Bids instead. Lastly, lab periods will be called Science Chapter. “We wanted to choose words that fit,” explains Dickson “For example, labs are long and boring but you have to go to them so Chapter was the obvious choice”.

Surprisingly, the data shows that non-affiliated members talk about Greek Life just as often as their affiliated counterparts. Vainer elaborated, “The study shows that non-affiliated students most often discuss how Greek organizations divide campus and their second most common topic is why they didn’t want bids anyway.” GLUT plans to target Greeks and non-Greeks equally.

“We go to Lafayette, so we should only talk about things going on here on campus” says Jonny Eirheed ‘17 about the GLUT movement. “Talking about Fraternities and Sororities is, like, really important, so I support GLUT’s plans”.

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