As the Overall co-Chairs of Greek Week 2015, Sanchari Roy, fourth-year BA and PreMed from ZTA, and Kenny Lawler, fifth-year CS from AEPi, help ensure Greek Week runs smoothly. A widely popular time for the entire Greek community, Greek Week features various activities ranging from Stroll to Tug.
Technique: What are your specific roles or duties as co-Overall Chairs?
Lawler: It’s our main goal to make sure that all of Greek Week runs as smoothly as possible. We send out applications for an executive board, and we choose a board that is going to do the best they can in running Greek Week. We also communicate between Georgia Tech faculty and staff and make sure everything we’re doing is up to the administration’s approval.
Roy: We’re the Overalls for our committee, but the rest of the exec board have different roles like Events, Assistant Events, Logistics.
Technique: Has Greek Week been run differently in the past few years?
Lawler: We’ve added and taken away events based on availability and general interest. We’ve also tried to get participation and spectating numbers higher. People can go and spectate events to get points for their chapters. You sign in and get to watch the events and have fun. Usually, it’s more fun for people, and it’s better spirit when there are more people and you’re cheering on your team. It’s a lot more fun for everyone involved.
Roy: In the last two years, we’ve put more focus on philanthropy as well. From last year to this year, we’ve done more than one philanthropy, and we’ve tied it in to events like our social, [having] a philanthropic aspect like a can drive along with it.
Lawler: This year, we’ve partnered with Sting Hunger and Tech Beautification Day. We almost did a blood drive this year, but it was very late when the contacts were made, so we weren’t able to partner with them.
Technique: What would you say are the most popular events, after Tug and Stroll of course?
Lawler: Greek Sing is very popular, it’s like the Mock Rock of Greek Week. Arm Wrestling as well is probably one of most popular ones.
Roy: We have a packed house for that every year. But also the pool events: we have two relays as well as Bailout.
Technique: What makes Tug so popular?
Roy: It’s something that people train for for so long. There are workouts they start off with, then they train in actual sand pits. They eat healthily a couple months before Tug to get into shape. It’s a whole process.
Lawler: I did Tug before I was involved [in exec board]. I did it for a healthier lifestyle, to start working out again. I know a lot of people like to do the workouts. When you’re in the pit and when you’re tugging, it’s a giant adrenaline rush, so much fun.
Technique: What makes Stroll a fan-favorite?
Lawler: It’s one of the only events — it might be the only event this year — that’s collaboration: you work with other fraternities and sororities. You partner with other people and have to create a dance that’s synchronized, and you don’t know these people. They practice for a long time, and you get to meet new people and get to perform in front of a ton of people.
Roy: It reflects each individual chapter’s personalities, but it also gives them a chance to merge the different aspects of their fraternities and sororities together, what aspects of their brotherhood and sisterhood are similar. A lot of that comes out in the stroll they end up performing.
Technique: What are each of your favorite events?
Lawler: My favorite events are Dizzy Bat and Sumo Suit. Sumo Suit is a relay race where two people are in these really fat sumo suit outfits that are very hard to move in, and you have to jump over PVC pipes and weave around cones. Very funny. Tug and Greek Sing are great, and Stroll is awesome, but … you don’t really train to spin 20 times with a bat on your forehead. It’s just fun to watch. People laughing and having fun and enjoying the event are why I like Dizzy Bat and Sumo Suit the most.
Roy: Mine would probably be Bromance. Bromance is where fraternities and sororities will submit two people, usually best friends, brother and sister, big and little, and it’s like the newlywed game where you’re given questions, and you have to answer them about the other person. I also really like Super Splash. Each of the fraternities and sororities send one person as a representative, and they have to perform an act or dress up in a costume of some sort. Then they have to jump into a pool and make a giant splash. Everyone does ridiculous things; it’s very humorous, and everyone enjoys it. It’s a fun time.
Technique: What would you say is the impact of Greek Week, both on the Greek community and on the rest of campus?
Roy: In the Greek community itself, people are given the chance to come out of their comfort zones and be more open. It promotes more cooperation and collaboration among different sororities and fraternities. I think a lot of the time when you’re in your own sorority during the year, you get caught up in your own house so much that it’s a reminder that there’s a lot of other people out there. It makes people meet new people and connect with everyone else in the Greek community as a whole. On the impact it has outside, through the different philanthropies we partner with, it also gives us a chance to come outside the Greek community a little bit and allows us to represent the Greek community as a whole versus us as individual chapters.
Technique: What kind of participation do the events see?
Lawler: Off the top of my head, 2000-something people signed the waiver, so about 2300 people either participate in or spectate events throughout the week. Some people will do all of the events, and a lot of people just do the events they enjoy doing or are good at or have fun at.
Roy: I think it might have been a total of like 35 chapters that signed up to participate in Greek Week.