The tenth annual Northeast Greek Leadership Association Conference last weekend provided three Penn students the opportunity to network with leaders in the Greek community from the region.
The NGLA conference is a three-day event that brings together over 700 students and faculty leaders from Greek organizations across the Northeast.
Penn was represented by three students — Interfraternity Council President and Wharton junior Christian Lunoe, Wharton sophomore and Alpha Phi Finance Director Hillary Heimbach and College sophomore and Sigma Alpha Epsilon Executive Vice President Nate Ashton, who is also a member of the IFC judiciary board.
The keynote speaker for the event was Mike Dilbeck, founder of “Response Ability,” an education program on bystander behavior and intervention.
Panhel Advisor and Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs Associate Program Director Stacy Kraus, who helped to organize the event, said Dilbeck’s speech helped her realize “we can individually make differences by confronting things.”
The bystander effect “can be anything from someone using the phrase ‘that’s so gay’ to seeing hazing or alcohol abuse on campus,” Kraus said.
According to Dilbeck, the conference was a “unique and extraordinary opportunity” to introduce the issue of the bystander effect to fraternity and sorority leaders. Many students and faculty thanked Dilbeck for introducing them to a new set of vocabulary to speak about things they have all experienced.
Dilbeck stressed that they bystander effect affects people from all walks of life. “When you, as a human being, see something happen that you know is not right and you do nothing and say nothing, you are a bystander,” he said.
“There are things that are happening in a fraternity that people aren’t asking enough questions about,” he added. “Nine times out of ten, if we really start asking those questions, there are things happening in a chapter that we’ll realize we shouldn’t be doing.”
According to Lunoe, educational workshops ranged from recruitment ideas to risk and stress management.
“It was great to socialize with other people,” he said. “I learned a lot of things about how to run an inter-fraternity council.”
Lunoe said he hopes to encourage open expansion of the National Interfraternity Council chapters at Penn. This system will allow any of the 73 NIC fraternities to set up a chapter on campus at any time.
Currently, the University has a voting system in which the majority of existing fraternities must agree to allow new chapters to set up.
