Award ceremony honors Greeks

Last night, representatives from each fraternity and sorority on campus packed into Bodek Lounge to honor accomplishments within the Greek community last year at the annual Greek Awards Ceremony.

The purpose of the ceremony is to "recognize people who have made contributions above and beyond expectations," said director of the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs Scott Reikofski.

Reikofski said the students of each chapter have the chance to nominate members of their house for individual awards. In addition, every semester, each chapter is supposed to describe its achievements from the previous year for the alumni advisers to assess.

Ultimately, the decision for each award is made by a collaboration of OFSA's staff, alumni advisers, members of international headquarters and student feedback.

"We've been looking forward to this Greek Awards Ceremony for a while," said president of the Panhellenic Council and College junior Drew Tye. She added that the ceremony "gives us an opportunity to honor each other" and "makes us very proud to be Greek."

President of the Interfraternity Council and College and Wharton junior David Ashkenazi also said that he was looking forward to honoring all of the members who did an exemplary job in the past year.

"I feel good that I contributed a lot to the sorority," said College sophomore Amanda Frankel, member of Alpha Phi and winner of the Panhellenic Outstanding House Manager Award.

In addition, awards for Outstanding Greek Leaders were presented to recognize individual students who have made exceptional contributions to the Penn Greek community over the past year.

Winner and Wharton senior Austin Pena said it was "an honor to be recognized" for his work.

The Outstanding Chapter Awards are given to the best chapter of each of the three Greek councils - the Multicultural Greek Council, the IFC and the Panhellenic Council. The Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, of the MGC, Alpha Phi Fraternity of the Panhellenic Council and Delta Tau Delta of the IFC were all recognized.

Eight individual chapter awards were also presented, including the Outstanding Academic Programming award, which was taken home by Delta Tau Delta of the IFC, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority of MGC and Delta Delta Delta of the Panhellenic Council.

A separate award is given to the chapter within each council with the highest GPA for the spring and fall 2007 semesters. This year, awards were presented to Sigma Alpha Mu, Sigma Kappa and Lambda Phi Epsilon National Fraternity, among others.

This year, the Special Accomplishment award was given to the Gamma chapter of Delta Sigma Theta for its HIV/AIDS awareness campaign. Throughout the year, Delta Sigma Theta raised over $5,700 for the cause.

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