To build community throughout Greek life, the Interfraternity Council is set to hold an end of the semester banquet that welcomes all fraternity members who are welcome to bring a date to the event.
“Previous years with the IFC and the fraternity community, there is not a lot of community wide events,” out-going IFC President, Ethan Hawks said. “We have Greek week, homecoming and what not, but a lot of time when chapters come together it’s rare. So, I wanted an event that all the chapters could come together and meet each other.”
Building community is prevalent throughout the Interfraternity Council current executive board as well as the incoming executive members.
“It allows all the chapters to come together and govern themselves,” Hawks said. “So, Interfraternity Council is made-up of delegates and presidents and execs. from various chapters.”
The IFC is a congregation of members from all fraternities on campus. Overall the IFC works to create a sense of community throughout the fraternities on campus and hopes to continue this with this year’s banquet.
“This is the first year we’ve done it, but I think it would be a good idea to keep doing it in the future,” out-going IFC Vice President of Programming, Clay Fenster said. “We wanted to do something that is a little different either like a formal or something so we thought that a banquet would be a good way to get them all together.”
As a whole, the Interfraternity Council wants to achieve larger, long-term goals. One of these is fraternity community growth.
“I know from my goals from when I came into the position was to just overall growth of the community,” Hawks said. “We have a lot of administrative support to grow and we’re looking to reach a thousand fraternity and sorority life members by 2020.”
Self-governance is also a goal of the IFC.
“It’s also to get the fraternities self-governance because in the end that is one of their greatest goals,” future IFC Vice President of Standards, Skyler Everitts said.
The IFC works to obtain the goals each executive team put together during their retreat at the beginning of their terms. The current officer team works specifically to obtain their goals, which change with each executive board.
“IFC’s goals are to educate, collaborate, and advocate for the fraternity side of Greek life,” Fenster said. “We kind of just want to get our name out there and help out with the community.”
The banquet itself is an exciting topic amongst former and incoming board members as they work to bring the community together.
“Since I’m on the incoming board I actually didn’t have any say in the initiation of it but as a President of fraternity who holds a vote on the legislative body,” Everitts said. “We saw it as a good way to show the entire community together.”
New council members have yet to establish their goals and the continuation of the banquet as an annual event. The results and feedback of this year’s banquet will affect the continuation of the event.
“I think another one of my goals that goes along with this banquet was just an overall encouragement of more community and that’s why we tried to put more effort into the BBQ and the banquet and what not,” Hawks said. “More of a sense of we’re all in it together and that I and the exec. team work for the chapters.”
