Final Day (sorry its late, oops!)

The last day of the conference was really eye opening. I went to a lot of sessions that I enjoyed. The first one was another Panhellenic focused one where we learned about the updates going on in the NPC world. I learned how important it is to the NPC to keep women and men separate when it comes to governing boards and keeping IFC and Panhellenic separate. I was also told about some judicial changes that were made which was interesting to learn about, especially since they will definitely affect me throughout my Panhellenic career in the near future.

The second session I went to was by the far most helpful. It was all about how to highlight your Greek leadership on a resume. The professor really capitalized on a lot of good points that I never would have thought about. I think its really important to understand how to appropriately utilize the leadership experiences we all have through Greek life. We have such unique opportunities as Greek leaders that can potentially be helpful and set us a part from the rest of candidates when it comes to landing a job and it would be a shame to not be able to properly use it for that reason. I emailed the professor asking him to send me the PowerPoint so I can share it with my chapter because it was very, very helpful information.

I joined Emma, our current Panhellenic President, and our Greek Adviser, Maribeth to meet with our area adviser. Ours was not present at the conference so we sat in with a different one but was able to share things going our in our Panhellenic community at BSU. We helped other chapters with some of the issues they are having by telling them things that have been working for us, such as the Murder Mystery Party that was held a few weeks ago.

The final session was very serious but I did enjoy it. Two women shared their stories about their experience with sexual assault. One girl was kidnapped by a stranger during high school and another was attacked on campus by someone she went to school with. What I found intriguing about the conversation, was that neither of these women were Greek when this happened. The one who was attacked in high school was never Greek. The one who was attacked on campus, joined Greek life 3 weeks after her attack. She said she never felt more safe anywhere other than a Fraternity house. This just further proved to me what we've been trying to show people: that Greek life is not the problem when it comes to sexual assaults. Yes, it happens within Greek life on some occasions but people are always so quick to judge when it comes to this topic and Greek life. Just because we are Greek does not mean we fall into the stereotypes of being alcoholic, crazy party-goers who drug girls and take advantage of them and haze their new members. We are some of the most distinguished leaders on campus who take our academics and reputation very seriously. We joined a sorority or fraternity to better ourselves and our community and surround ourselves with people who value the same things that we do. Greek life is not the problem, however we are trying to become a part of the solution.