With the start of the second academic semester comes the return of Rush Week for fraternities on campus at Western University. Rush Week is a week of recruitment events put on by fraternities in order to attract new members. Rush Week starts today and will carry through to January 20th.
Greek life is more common and popular among US schools and is certainly sensationalized in the media, but with a string of hazing-related deaths and other incidents popping up in the news on a semi-regular basis, fraternities do not have the best reputation. For many students involved in Greek life, they say the culture is different depending on where you are.
Jason Wallenburg, VP of Delta Upsilon at Western University says that the media has it all wrong and at the end of the day, it is about a bunch of guys coming together to be a part of something bigger. Wallenburg expands on this in the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmHb1wNKUno
Wallenburg goes on to talk about his involvement in the community, stating, “In high school, I did a lot of community service work, and I thought that would end in University because there’s less push to be involved. But it’s astonishing to see how much people care. Greek Life here really pushes philanthropy and because of that I have been involved with many different community events and although I didn’t think my community involvement would continue as strongly as it did in High school, I am really glad to see that it is.”
Various Fraternities and Sororities hold charity events every year raising thousands of dollars for causes such as mental health awareness and suicide prevention, arthritis, cancer, and youth activity programs.
Wallenburg says that the stigma can be hard to overcome at times but he encourages everyone to keep an open mind about Greek life, especially in Canada; adding that people should come to a rush event, meet the people within the greek scene, give it a fair unbiased look, and form their own opinions from there,
