On the second Saturday of Olympic action in Athens, Dartmouth will play host to its own Summer Olympics, an event that will benefit the United Way.
This Saturday from noon to 6 p.m., registered teams will compete in a slew of events for the glory of a first-place victory, a potential prize and the satisfaction of knowing they have contributed to a worthy cause.
The competitions will take place on Webster Ave., which will be shut down for traffic at 3 p.m. to allow for a barbecue and band on the lawn of Chi Gamma Epsilon fraternity.
Last spring, the United Way approached Greek leaders at Dartmouth about starting a year-long fundraising project to benefit the organization. Members of the Panhellenic Council, the Interfraternity Council, and presidents of various Greek houses took on the challenge and they have set out to meet their year-long goals. To benefit the United Way, the IFC has already hosted a barbecue at Gamma Delta Chi fraternity and a dodgeball tournament this summer.
Lauren Pfisterer '06, Panhell's philanthropic chair, thought of the idea to hold the Greek Olympics to sponsor the United Way while browsing the website of the United Inter Fraternity Institute. Panhell organized the event with the support of Programming Board, Class Council and the Student Assembly.
"Most schools already have a Greek Olympics or a Greek Week of competitions for fun," Pfisterer said.
At Dartmouth, where an official Greek competition has never been held before, fun and philanthropy will be combined.
Pfisterer hopes to raise money through the registration fee, t-shirt sales, donations and a 50/50 raffle in which half the money collected in the pool will go to the United Way and the other half will go directly to the person who wins the raffle.
Registration fees are $75 and teams must have at least eight members to participate in all the events. Teams of less than eight are able to enter the contest, but they will not have enough players to participate in all events, thereby reducing their chance at the grand prize -- a 54-inch high-definition TV.
The event is not limited to the sororities, as fraternity teams and teams independent of the Greek system have been encouraged to sign up.
As of Wednesday, eight teams had registered -- all six sororities, Psi Upsilon fraternity and an unaffiliated team.
"Hopefully with the information about the TV, we will get more people involved, especially fraternities," Pfisterer said.
Competition will begin Friday night with a poker tournament at Sigma Delta sorority. The events Saturday afternoon will include relay races, trivia, water balloon toss, pie-eating contest, keg rolling, water chugging "boat races," lip sync, tug of war, volleyball and brain teasers. Each sorority has organized a different event.
The winner will be calculated after the completion of all events.
"I hope it's a huge success and that it continues in future years. It's a good opportunity to go out, have fun, play, get the whole campus involved and raise money for a good cause," Pfisterer said.
The United Way is a national organization which raises money for over 1,400 smaller community-based organizations across the nation. The board of directors of various chapters of the United Way looks at its community's needs to determine how to divide the money they have raised among different local health and human-care organizations.
The United Way is the only charity institution that is College-recognized, meaning that the United Way can advertise on campus. The College supports the United Way because it has one of the lowest overheads of any charity in the U.S. -- meaning it uses a very low percentage of the money it raises to keep the charity alive and donates most of the money to the community.
