Brown and White Vol. 107 no. 29

              the brown and white lehigh university's student newspaper founded in 1894 vol 107 no 29 tuesday february 15 2000 all the l-high news first ceremony welcomes new greek pledges by kara wetzel news writer the greek community welcomed its new inductees with the first-ever new member ceremony at packard auditorium thursday night following the presentation ceremony was a speech on risk-management by dr ron binder from the university of north carolina at chapel hill the ceremony allowed each fraterni ty or sorority to introduce its new members to an audience consisting of each house's pledges new member edu cators and executive boards panhellenic council president joyce hohenstein 00 and ifc president pat russo 00 read the names of new members as the houses came to the front of the stage in alphabetical order the idea for this event is to show you're joining more than a house you're joining an entire greek system and we're really strong russo said i think the idea was there for the ceremony but i didn't like how it was presented alpha gamma delta's new member coordinator danielle impink 02 said it felt like we were parading our girls up there after the introductions a representa tive from each pledge class went to the front of the room to light a candle one large candle representing the lehigh community sat in the middle of a circle of 35 candles representing each of the greek houses on campus the event started 15 minutes late because the large crowd was trying to fill the seats more people attended the event than expected and some were forced to stand along the sides of the auditorium the executive board members were asked to leave after the presentation ceremony to provide seating during binder's speech the speech on risk management began by showing a list of the 20 most uninsurable groups that pose large risks including engineers doctors accountants fraternities and sororities the one thing that i want you to take away with you tonight is that you're going to have to deal with risk management at some point in your life he said binder spoke of the liabilities frater nities and sororities can face his speech included several anecdotes about greek houses around the country that have faced lawsuits because of dan gerous activities fraternities and sororities in america face about 2,000 lawsuits a b&w photo by danielle frikker house officers pledge educators and new pledges gather to listen to a speech on hazing given by dr ron binder of unc-chapel hill the speech was part of the first ceremony to welcome new pledges into the greek system miss pennsylvania shares her experiences by alexandra goldmacher news writer korean-born susan spafford miss pennsylvania discussed her bicultural her itage and the challenges she faced as the first asian-american title winner in a presenta tion in sinclair auditorium wednesday although proud of her bicultural heritage stafford stressed that being asian is part of her identity but not her sole attribute bill hunter the director of the office of international education for the global union commented on the focus of this presentation what we are mostly interested in this evening is her bicultural heritage hunter said spafford was adopted by caucasian parents when she was 3-years-old and brought to the united states during the presentation spafford asked the audience whether or not anyone was adopted and encouraged them to share any bicultural experiences i guess i'm more interested to hear what other people are going through as well as sharing my own experiences thoughts and stories spafford said after listening to a few of the audience members experiences spafford said as an adoptee i will admit that i have a per spective that is different than what others of you had spafford's parents encouraged her to take korean language classes early on she explained this was one of the many ways her parents tried to expose her to her biological cultural heritage spafford discussed the difficulty for caucasian parents to know how to deal with the biological heritage of the chil dren they adopt some parents take it a little too seri ously she said they want their kids to still have their cultural roots but it's not something you can force spafford hoped that by entering the miss pennsylvania contest she might win and receive scholarship money for college she was crowned the first asian american miss pennsylvania a thought which had never crossed her mind when she entered the pageant she was overwhelmed with race related questions from reporters and realized for the first time that the initial quality people noticed about her is her bicultural background i never really realized how people would look at me as an asian spafford said since then spafford has expressed a great desire to win such honors for more than just her racial background spafford said that as years passed she has become increasingly curious about her heritage and decided to meet her bio logical family in korea it was an incredible experience not just in meeting my biological parents but in finding my roots she said spafford feels the trip had an enor mously positive impact on her it gave her the opportunity to connect with her family roots and cultural heritage she plans to adopt korean children in the future as a way of giving back the things she has received as an adopted child spafford believes every child should have the kind of opportunities that were open to her she feels there are too many children in the world without parents i want to make sure that they have chances to experience what i have she said i think she just did a wonderful job in discussing her cultural heritage and what it means to be a korean american even though she wasn't raised by korean parents said gradu ate student and global union member cynthia meyers spafford received a bachelor's degree in music performance and education from the eastman school of music a part see pledges page 5 see spafford page 5 p # tr#ft_--''m ' 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