Brown and White Vol. 124 no. 2

              Vol. 124 No. 2
Friday, January 25, 2013
‘All the Lehigh News First’
THE BROWN AND WHITE
Lehigh University’s Student Newspaper Founded in 1894
SPORTS
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LIFESTYLE
Lehigh community memorializes MLK
By ALEC KROSSER
Lehigh’s Martin Luther King Jr. Week activities began with the opening ceremony titled “Reflections,” which took place in Baker Auditorium Mon­day morning. Since this year marks 50 years since King’s famous 1963 speech, the theme of MLK Week this year is: “The Dream at 50: Old Challenges, New Realities.”
The program lasted two hours and featured Lehigh students and faculty speakers. Videos about the civil rights movement and segments of King’s icon­ic 1963 “I have a dream” speech were incorporated between speakers.
The speakers spoke about a variety of topics. Some chose to talk about past experiences, or how race or King has affected them. Others chose to look toward the future and discuss how far the United States as a nation has come since King gave his famous speech nearly 50 years ago.
Many of them referred to other movements that King and the civil rights movement inspired. Cheryl Ashcroft spoke about how this move­ment inspired the disability rights movement.
Lessons ranged greatly from speaker to speaker, with Dean of the College of Business and Economics Paul Brown reminding students to remember and embrace their upbringing, and neuro­science professor Jennifer Swann talk­ing about phenotypes and how they have no effect on what people look like on the inside.
One faculty speaker, Clara Buie, spoke of the importance of education.
“Let’s educate our children,” she said. “Let’s continue to educate ourselves.”
She also spoke about King’s life work, saying that no matter what race or ethnicity you are, “you are part of the great dream Dr. King had for America.”
Students are encouraged to go to the events being held during the week. Although some students attended the opening ceremony, hopefully more students will go to the many events held later in the week.
“I think events like this are really important, especially at Lehigh,” said Adam Balderas, ’14. “It’s good to hear what people think of Martin Luther King and how they’re expanding his ideas.”
In his closing remarks, psychology professor Gordon Moskowitz addressed the small attendance.
“It is a little disconcerting to me that there aren’t more of us here,” he said.
He also said he hopes more people attend some of the other events being held this week.
Many students, such as Balderas, said that they did not hear too much about the events being held this week.
After the opening ceremony, a “Day
See MLK WEEK Page 2
B&W photo by KIRK GREENWOOD
A group of Lehigh students poses in front of a Washington, D.C., memorial on their MLK week trip last year. The final event in MLK week is a day-long trip to the Capitol, where students retrace King’s steps and expand their knowledge of the civil rights movement.
By BENJAMIN GLICKENHAUS
This semester, Phi Delta Theta, a non-residential fraternity, will become the newest addition to the Lehigh Greek community. According to Tim Wilkinson, the director of fraternity and sorority affairs, Phi Delta Theta will have an increased focus on philan­thropic events.
The System Wide Assessment Com­mittee (SWAC) meets every year to determine strategies for fostering and growing the Greek Life on campus. Ac­cording to Wilkinson, the committee decided to add the new fraternity in order to provide a new option for the young men on campus who were not satisfied with the previous community, and specifically those not interested in living in an on-campus fraternity house.
Wilkinson noted that the recent suc­cesses of Pi Kappa Alpha and Delta Chi, along with the departure of Delta Tau Delta, were reasons to bring a new chapter to campus. Wilkinson de­scribed the Greek Life on campus as “a garden, and when you lose some flow­ers you need to plant some seeds.”
Also, according to the annual SWAC report, fraternity recruitment rose from 348 to 444 men in the last year, which indicated an increased interest in frater­nity life in general. With this in mind, the SWAC decided this year was an appropriate time to expand Lehigh’s fraternity membership.
Collin Melton, ’15, was excited about the opportunity to expand Greek life and the fraternity network.
“Fraternity life on campus has opened a lot of doors for me,” he said. “It’s great that more guys will be able to experience it.”
According to Jeff Mara, ’16, adding another sorority is much more impor­tant than adding another fraternity. Mara cited the already lopsided dis­tribution of fraternities and sororities, along with the purported 68 women who could not get bids this year due to lack of sorority capacity. Mara also said that he attended Phi Delta Theta’s presentation and was not sure how the chapter planned on recruiting mem­bers. For him, the addition of Phi Delta Theta does not change the rush process at all; he would much rather be a mem­ber of an already established fraternity than a founding father of a new one.
Kirsten Leskowich and Anna D’Ginto, ’16, were unsure of the rea­sons for introducing another fraternity to the school. They also said they did not think another fraternity would add anything to the social scene. Leskowich, however, voiced a desire for another sorority to accommodate high demand, as well as different tastes. She thinks she would have been more inclined to rush if there had been a more academi­cally inclined sorority that she was sure she would benefit from after college. D’Ginto expressed a similar sentiment. She felt that a themed fraternity, such an engineering or business specific one, would contribute more to the commu­nity than a generic fraternity.
The process to settle on Phi Delta Theta was grueling and thorough. Ac­cording to Wilkinson, once SWAC decided to add a new chapter, it alerted the North American Inter-fraternity Council that the school was ready to accept applications from previously unrepresented national fraternities; Lehigh received approximately twenty applications. SWAC narrowed down the choices to a selection of four frater­nities. From there, a joint committee of current students and staff considered the various pitches, paying attention to a large array of criteria. According to Wilkinson, the committee was par­ticularly struck with Phi Delta Theta’s well-regarded member development program. This particular fraternity, Wilkinson said, is particularly success­ful in turning its members into quali­fied leaders and active participants in the community. The committee was also impressed with Phi Delta Theta’s propensity for philanthropy, and hopes its addition to Lehigh University will increase overall community service. Wilkinson cited the existence of several Lehigh alumni actively involved in Phi Delta Theta as a good indication of ac­tivity and growth for the fraternity car­rying into the future.
The university has also done every
New fraternity colony coming to campus
See FRATERNITY Page 4