Panhellenic Spirit?
 

Does your campus have a lot of Panhel spirit? By this, I mean that girls don't speak ill of other sororities, you like to do things with other sororities and you tend to not have that competition [except in recruitment, of course!].

Boys, feel free to go off on IFC spirit if you like.

I wonder if there are really any campuses like this?! Competition makes people get really ugly. We were civil to each other at my campus, and I had friends in other sororities, but there was very little panhellenic unity. We had an extremely strong adviser that kept us all in check, however.

I think that on my campus it's always been more of a struggle to get Panhellenic and IFC working on the same page with larger events. But other than that, the three sororities working together was never a problem. Could it have happened more? Yes. Was there still some talking about the other sororities behind closed doors? I'm sure it happens with all of the orgs.

But we still support each other. My chapter holds a pageant every year for our philanthropy, and members of the other sororities usually participate and/or attend. And the ASAs have a date auction every year and we make sure we go to that. And I know that two years ago we had 2 of our members participate. We would try to help with fundraisers when we could. We would all mesh well at all-Greek events. And we don't completely ignore each other around campus. I always made sure to say hi to other girls, even if I didn't know them, if they were wearing letters and so was I (didn't want to say hi if I wasn't, because they'd probably wonder "who the hell is that girl?" haha).

I always wished that the sororities worked together more, though, when it came to recruitment. Again, it is a "competition", so to speak (probably more so on my campus because of the very small interest in Greek life in general), but I think that the orgs could have worked together more to promote Greek life as a whole, and not just each individual sorority.

Our chapter just joined our campus' Panhellenic, and we couldn't be more pleased with the reception!

Yes, there is gossip between chapter and yeah, there are stereotypes. But, I feel (at the moment, at least) that we really do have a lot of panhellenic spirit. Everyone goes to everyone's philanthropies, we have an all-campus sisterhood event, etc.

There is competition, but for the most part, it isn't a problem!

On kind of a tangent: I've noticed that the most friendly and pro-panhellenic groups on our campus are the top-tier sororities. Do you notice this at your campuses too? Do you think this is just because they don't feel they need to worry? Or do you think that's part of the reason they are top tier?

Just wondering!

We stick together on IFC just to fight off the larger powers.

Depending on what kind of guy you are on campus depends on if you hang out with other fraternities or only your own. If you work with IFC and/or ASG, you're bound to have alot of high level friends that you go out to the bar with.

We used to. We don't anymore. Maybe among individual members, but not as a whole. That's my take, anyway.

We didn't used to have much panhellenic spirit on my campus. Recently as an advisor I've seen panhellenic camradery improve... but a lot of that I think has to do with the leadership. One of the key members of panhellenic has family ties to some of the other groups on campus and for that reason I think sincerely cares about every group's success. I think it takes someone who sincerely believes in the cause (not just as a PR ploy).

I feel like my university has really good Pan spirit. The greek life staff really hypes it up. We are encouraged to talk to PNMs about our friends in other sororities, we even had a Pan slide where we had alot of Pan unity goin on in all of our sisterhood videos this year during recruitment.On a scale of 1 to 10 i would say that we have around an 8 for Pan unity/spirit.

Well, Panhellenic is a pretty new idea on my campus since my chapter isn't that old. I'm not really sure how we're doing. It was pretty good since recruitment just ended. Hmm...I dunno!

This is just my personal observation - YMMV. At UF, plenty of sisters have friends in other chapters, but as a Panhellenic whole...I'd say the amount of "No matter the letter, we're all Greek together!" spirit is sitting securely between 'no way' and 'no how'. It's a shame, really - the Greek community could be so much stronger, and do so much more good, if they tried to get along!

It was more common to cultivate a Panhellenic atmosphere when I was in school than what I see today. We really worked at it, though, at least the nine sororities who were in the one hall. The other two were close in their own ways.

As someone who was on Panhel longer than not, the more everyone works at realizing that, once you're out of school, it's not ABC v. XYZ, it's Greek v. Uninformed People, the easier it is for everyone. Competition should stay in its own particular times, like Greek Week, Homecoming, Recruitment - not 365 days of the year.

Do you feel that Panhellenic spirit is important when it does not relate to recruitment? How?

On my campus, the sororities are a lot better at being 'panhellenic' than the fraternities at being 'interfraternal.'

There's a certain level of professionalism among most of the fraternities, but rarely, if ever, do you see a group of guys from different chapters hanging out.

It's much different for the sororities. Usually, girls have good friends from other chapters because those girls hang out with the same fraternity.

Same with my campus. The guys all seem to be 'whatever' about what the other fraternities are doing. It's rare to even see them talking to each other at all. And usually when they are, it's to work on planning an all-Greek event. But even with events like these, it's usually the sororities that take over most of the planning.

Again, Panhellenic could be more unified those 345 days of the year when it's not Greek week or time for recruitment... but we all have friends and/or acquaintances in other sororities. The fraternities tend to keep their distance.

Well, recruitment is 365 days a year. Even if everyone decides to "play nice" during formal rush, it doesn't help if a girl thinking about Greek life goes to a party and hears a girl from a sorority saying "those bleeping XYZs are such whores!!" This is why LOTS of women are turned off to rush.

And it's important as far as showing the administration and faculty that this is a community - not just an excuse to compete and/or drink.

Don't get me wrong, I've had those moments when I came home and yelled "those bleeping XYZs!!!" because of this or that drama that went down. But I did it in the privacy of my home, not in public. In the heat of the moment you lash out at someone's affiliation sometimes - after you calm down you realize that's silly.

I think a lot of collegiate members don't think about that. Tearing down members of a rival organization makes everyone look bad, because in the eyes of many non-members, we are all the same.

The campus I advise at is fairly "Panhellenic" I believe. It is a smaller school of 6,500 students with 6 NPCs that all live in the same dormatory. There is of course healthy competition amongst the chapters but since the sororities all live together on a relatively small campus, members tend to be friends with women outside their own house.

http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2...top/news01.txt

I found this great story about the Kappas and Thetas at the University of Montana. This past December, the pipes in the Theta house burst. The Kappas allowed them to move in and share their house.

At my school it was common for individual members to be very panhellenic. I knew of dozens of cases where girls from multiple sororities lived together. In those cases, they were friends before recruitment. I'd say about 40 percent of the PNMs each year are sophomores, so they've already established solid friendships with their roommates/hallmates/suitmates from freshman year. As far as the orgs go in general, there's a lot of badmouthing and gossip. Recruitment time gets down right viscous with girls going as far as to frame other orgs for infractions. It's ridiculous.

The "top tier" sororities at my school tend to be surprisingly mean to each other, possibly because they're all competing for the same girls (we have deferred recruitment), but the rest of the sororities have their own niches, and get along really well.

I think now with the demise of a certain gossip website, we'll see a resurgence of "Panhellenic spirit."

I think some lack of Panhellenic spirit at my school is caused by general confusion as to what "Panhellenic" means. Many people don't understand why the other PHC org doesn't do winter/spring recruitment anymore and now only does formal with us in the fall. I think that's the main issue. We need to have more communication about issues like that.