Omega Psi Phi fraternity hosts Women's Appreciation Week

“Can we choke you?” joked the self-defense instructor before asking the 25 seated girls whether they were up for a live demonstration of an attack.

This exchange took place Thursday night at Café 58 inside Irvine Auditorium, where students attended a self-defense workshop, designed to teach girls about public safety and how to respond in crisis situations.

The event, part of African-American interest fraternity Omega Psi Phi’s Women’s Appreciation Week, was organized by the fraternity, as well as Panhellenic Council chapter Zeta Tau Alpha.

The collaboration between a Multicultural Greek Council fraternity and a Panhel sorority is “something that we do not see very often,” according to College senior Tobi Abegunde, president of Omega Psi Phi.

Women’s Appreciation Week, an annual Omega Psi Phi event, began on Monday with a Women’s Spa Day, and ends with a speed dating event on Sunday.

Abegunde said that, while the event is not nationally mandated, the brothers decided to put it into place in 2010 because they “felt something was not right about the community we live in.”

“We personally feel that women on this campus are not appreciated,” Abegunde said. “Fraternities traditionally have a bad reputation of objectifying women, and this is our way of breaking that stereotype.”

Abegunde added that his fraternity was “probably the only fraternity on campus to organize a self-defense class for women.”

Omega Psi Phi is a city-wide fraternity, with brothers at schools like Villanova and Drexel universities. Two of the seven events during the week took place on Villanova’s campus, including the spa day, which was held in collaboration with King of Prussia Mall’s Bubbles Salon.

“We approached these businesses and told them what we wanted to do, and they volunteered to provide their services for free,” said College senior Jae Barchus, a brother at Omega Psi Phi and president of the MGC. One such organization volunteering its services for free is “Voices in Power,” a poetry group performing at Friday’s “For Her” performing arts night.

Although Women’s Appreciation Week is only two years old, turnout at each of the events has been promising, with around 50 girls attending spa day and 25 girls attending the self-defense workshop, according to Barchus.

“We have people telling us that they will write on their Facebook walls how much they appreciate what we are doing,” he said.

College senior Melanie Redfearn, who is judicial chair at ZTA, said the self-defense workshop was the first event she had attended of the week.

“I think this event allows women to slow down for a second instead of running from activity to activity, and really decompress,” she said.

Redfearn also found the week “especially relevant” to Penn’s campus.

“A lot of the events during Women’s Appreciation Week are associated with raising funds for assault victims and women’s centers,” she said. “Definitely an event like a self-defense workshop is important to an urban campus like ours, where crime is more frequent than we think.”

College sophomore Canaan Bethea, an Omega Psi Phi brother, said the responsibility of hosting the annual event this year largely fell onto the shoulders of younger brothers.

“We had a lot of fun showing women our appreciation,” Bethea said. “I think the ladies are definitely enjoying it, too.”

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