Greek Week, without the greeks

I've seen four Greek Weeks in my time here at Duke, and three of them have been as a part of an IFC fraternity. Yet I still have absolutely no idea what Greek Week really is. Which probably means that it's about as important as student rights are to Judicial Affairs.

Let's start with how the University explains Greek Week. The glossary of "Greek Terms" on the Web site of the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life defines it as "an annual celebration in which chapters participate in educational, social, and service events. It is a time for all Greek organizations to unify."

Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a celebration, unless if when they say celebrating they actually mean providing free food for disinterested students to pilfer in disturbingly large quantities as well as horribly unattractive free T-shirts that are used for jobs like cleaning up after my roommate's dog's overactive bladder instead of being worn. Although it might technically be true that "chapters participate in educational, social, and service events," this happens only in the sense that I "participated" in the class I skipped last week. In reality, the overwhelming majority of greeks don't even have a clue what's going on, and more than likely, none of them even care that they're oblivious.

Finally, I imagine I have to concede that Greek Week presents a theoretical opportunity for greek organizations to coalesce around a common cause. Unfortunately, this sounds about as likely as RLHS actually making its first ever legitimately good decision. And while we're going for this unity thing, we might as well ask the Israelis and the Palestinians to "unify" as well; we'd probably have more luck with them.

So what actually is Greek Week? It's spin. Fantasy. Make-believe. It's an administrative attempt to cover up what greek life is really like on campus by selling it as what the University thinks it ought to be. Because if you really think about it, Greek Week is wholly unrepresentative of the true greek experience at Duke. Sure, fraternities and sororities organize charity events like Into the City. But would they really do so if Duke didn't force them to? Predictably, the attendance at these events represents only a tiny fraction of the greek population and a similarly insignificant percentage of the overall impact of greek organizations on campus.

Ditto for all those games and contests they hold on Main West Quad. Deep down, we all know that the couple dozen people who participate because they lost their chapter's lottery would rather just be getting drunk. More importantly, however, fraternities were banned from making their primary contribution to social life at Duke-throwing section parties. So before Greek Week even began it was already lacking the lion's share of greek life, since everybody who's spent even a week at Duke knows that good things only happen if fraternity-purchased Busch Light is lubricating our social interactions.

That leaves us with the least-unrepresentative events: the ones that involve alcohol. Admittedly, the pub quiz at 'Dillo Bar was a good idea, but ultimately not a success. After all, it's in the center of campus; most greeks would rather escape Duke's oppressive regulation by going to Brightleaf, or at least retreating to the holy sanctuary of their section.Though on the surface the Greek Gala might sound appealing, it really isn't. Let's be honest: This event will have Duke kegs, and there is no way Duke is ever giving a keg to an individual fraternity for their own on-campus event.

Plus, who wants to party in a big tent with a bunch of administrators watching over them? Undoubtedly it will fall victim to the classic greek strategy of campus attack: rolling up late, rushing to the beer station, heading back to section, and then repeating these steps every half hour or so.