Tuesday night, the fraternity and sorority community gathered for a Trilogy event -- thus named because we have three a year -- with some trepidation. A speaker named David Stollman was going to be addressing our Greek community with a lecture called "Buy in, or Get Out." Kind of a harsh lecture title, right? Not to mention, David asked for pictures of us drinking in our letters for his presentation. He didn't get any, probably because there aren't any, but it still set a few of us on edge. I know some of my sisters were worried that he was going to yell at everyone for being bad Greeks.
Along with some other Greek leaders, I had the opportunity to share dinner with David before his presentation at the Delta Tau Delta house (and it was delicious, thanks guys). I was asked to escort him from HamWil to DTD by our Greek advisor, Dana. Let's be honest, I will do anything that woman asks me to but inside I was pooping my pants because I thought in the walk over, this little dark-haired balding Sig Ep was going to grill me about Greek life problems here on campus. And I don't do well with confrontation when I'm all alone!!
David was not really scary. He was actually quite nice! He was interested in our campus, its differences from other campuses and how the Greek system operates. We had a good dinner with representatives from the other sororities and fraternities, and we talked about things that are important to our chapters and to the Ohio Wesleyan Greek community as a whole. They were tough questions but I think all of us were thinking about any problems we have in our chapters or overall and how to solve them.
The presentation in Benes was well-attended, probably because we all were required to go....anyhow. There were a lot of people there to hear David's speech. He encouraged us to Tweet and text and update our statuses if we liked or disagreed with anything he said. He discussed negative stereotypes of fraternity and sorority life...and, yeah, showed us some pictures of puking fraternity men and of topless sorority women posing for a picture. But he also showed pictures of Greeks doing good things -- raising money for sick brothers and sisters, building a house for Habitat and doing a Dance Marathon to raise millions. Pictures of our community members were mixed in there too and I felt proud to be an Ohio Wesleyan Greek.
