In efforts to show the University of Oregon the positive side of Fraternity and Sororiry Life, Oregon Fraternity and Sorority Life teamed up with CommUniversity for its first Day of Service project.
UO student leaders who wanted to get involved in CommUniversity’s Day of Service had the opportunity to donate their time to a variety of service projects around the university. These included places such as: Alton Baker Park, Amazon Park, Hendricks Park, West University neighborhoods and Oregon Hillel.
Maximizing the number of students involved, Fraternity and Sorority Life was a huge contribution to the event’s success.
Vice President of Civic Engagement, Jason Selby, who is a part of Interfraternity Council, expected a large number of people for the event, but never expected the massive number of people who expressed interest in being involved.
“We figured about 300 people is the max, but we expected about 240 people. We sent out the link and the Facebook page to mainly Greek Life people because that’s basically what we thought was going to be most of the people coming to the event,” Selby said. “Two days in, we were over 400 people signed up.”
Immediately, Fraternity and Sorority Life shocked the community with its willingness to serve the others around them.
The numbers were so overwhelming, coordinators for the group had to reconfigure catering and food sponsors for the event to match the number of people participating. In addition, coordinators turned down additional volunteers for lack of work.
“It’s honestly a good problem to have though,” Selby said.
FSL being under the spotlight right now is hard on the community, but this event was the perfect way to show the community’s positive involvement.
“Yeah we’re going through a tough time in Greek Life right now, and this event goes to show that we’re not bad people. Our motto is ‘choose letters, choose responsibility,’ and we’re here to live up to that each and every day,” Selby said.
FSL has always been committed to service, but never took the time to display that for all to see.
“Greek Life has been doing good impacts in the community for a long time, but we haven’t been doing a good job of promoting that,” Andrew Weiss Interfraternity Council Vice President of Community Programs said.
Service has always been a value of FSL, and this event was the perfect opportunity to show that.
According to a press release sent out for the event, Kelsey Fuson, Panhellenic Council Vice President of Community Programming said, “We are proud to leverage our shared value of a commitment to service and partner with our fellow student organizations to really make an impact on our community.”
The overwhelming amount of support was never to prove a point, but rather to uphold FSL’s values.
“We’re not doing this as a response to a negative feeling that people have about us,” Selby said. “We’re doing this because this is what we want to do.”
Oregon FSL involved in massive service event benefitting all Oregon students
Daily Emerald
February 3, 2015
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