Iowa State’s annual Greek Week event is undergoing various changes this year due to feedback from greek students and new restrictions on having high schoolers at events. 

Greek Week is a 62 year-old tradition in the Iowa State greek community. Maggie Gehrls, Greek Week general co-chair said the main goal of Greek Week is to unite the greek community.

In previous years, an event called Greek Getaway was put on during Greek Week. Greek Getaway is a weekend long event for high school students interested in greek life at Iowa State. 

This year, Greek Getaway will be the weekend after Greek Week and will not be an overnight event. This is because sorority houses can’t have high school students stay overnight in their houses anymore, said Gehrls. 

“I understand why Greek Getaway is no longer during Greek Week, if we are going to have a couple hundred high-school students at ISU there is going to be a large amount of liability that Iowa State just isn’t going to be able to cover,” said Benjamin Rohloff, Greek Week community service co-chair. 

Because Greek Week and Greek Getaway are no longer during the same week, there will not be an alcohol ban for the whole week according to the Office of Greek Affairs website. However, all events happening during Greek Week are dry and anyone caught under the influence at an event will face punishment from Iowa State Police and the Office of Judicial Affairs. 

According to Gehrls, one of the biggest changes to the event will be that all activities for Greek Week will take place during one week from March 23-30 with the Polar Bear Plunge on March 28.

In the past Greek Week activities have taken place on weekends as well. 

“We hope this will allow the greek community to have more fun and relax, rather than everything being so competitive,” said Brent Sexton, Greek Week general co-chair. 

Consolidating all Greek Week activities to one week hasn’t been the only change this year. In the past, chapters have been able to choose the other chapters that they will pair with for activities, but this year pairings were randomly selected, said Gehrls.

“I think at first this scared people, but we’re all really close in the greek community so it’s worked out well,” said Gehrls.

Rohloff said that the major changes to Greek Week this year are because of what his fellow greeks asked for. Certain events have been removed due to poor attendance, in hopes to increase enthusiasm from the participants.

Rohloff said he still thinks greek recruitment will continue to grow and thrive even without the weekend-long Greek Getaway event.

“Anytime you change something, you are going to face some opposition, but overall the changes have been accepted pretty well by the greek community,” said Sexton. 

Most of the changes were out of the Greek Week committee’s control, so they are doing their best to look at the positives, adapt and move on, said Rohloff. 

“There is an excellent group on Greek Week so it makes it easy to work together,” said Rohloff.

All greek chapters will have the opportunity to compete in sporting events, community service and other miscellaneous events.