Greek Peer Advocates, Community Service, and Scholarship Recognition, Oh My!

First off- I'd like to congratulate my sisters and the sisters of Sigma Sigma Sigma for winning the Highest Sorority GPA award at the Greek Awards Dinner last Thursday. Tri-Sig has won this award for many semesters, and it's an honor to be tied with them for this award. One of the myths about Greek Life is that once you join an organization, you will never have time for school work. The complete opposite is true. At Oneonta, our recognized Greek Life Organizations put a lot of pride into their schoolwork. We have a scholarship chair who presides over the SUNY Oneonta Inter-Greek Council and each chapter has a scholarship chair to make sure that their brothers or sisters are keeping up their grades. Next semester, in order to be active through the school, each Greek brother and sister must have a GPA above 2.5. Also, in order to be eligable for fraternity or sorority recruitment, one must have a GPA above 2.5. Being a Greek Life Scholar has a lot of benefits, I believe that if your term GPA is above a 3.0, you will receive an award at the end of the semester recognizing you for your acheivements, and for those who have a cummulative GPA of 3.25, one will be invited to join the national Greek honor society, Order of Omega.

Oneonta Greek Life also have Greek Peer Advocate program, otherwise known as GPA. Each chapter designates a brother or a sister to serve a Greek Peer Advocate. But what is this program and what do the GPAs do? I'm one of the GPAs for my sorority and we decided to switch the program up this semester. In the past, we would invite Greek Life to programs about Time Management, Conflict Resolution etc., the programs were good...but they didn't apply to all of the age groups. So this year, we are tailoring programs for sophomores, juniors and seniors. For example, the senior GPAs and I created a program called "Shake Your Money Maker" and we are going to talk about money management, how to budget out your college loans, and how to get health insurance after graduation. The sophomore class is having a GPA program about how to rent an Oneonta apartment. I would highly recommend being a GPA to any Greek because you get to develop programs and you get to know a lot of people from other organizations.

Also- I'm really excited because starting on Thursday, we are playing bingo with the residents of the Robynwood Nursing Home. We have played bingo at the nursing home for almost 3 years. I live for Thursday Night Bingo. The ladies are so nice and so funny and you find yourself getting attached to them.