Greek Week Steps Up to Challenge

With sorority sisters and frat brothers dancing in the aisles, the thundering stomps of the United Step Team shook the stage at Cal State Northridge this week in a show anchoring the first Greek Week sponsored by the African Pan Hellenic Council.

Take a small military formation marching double-time in circles. Throw in some heavy-footed, tap-dance style moves, hand-bone body slapping and call-and-response chants, and you have step, the most visible ritual of African American Greek organizations.

Think kick boxers in combat boots doing an N-Sync dance routine with twice the intensity.

Although one of the goals of the show was to bring the black Greeks together with the white Greeks, few from the 16 white sororities and fraternities on campus showed up for Wednesday’s performance at the Northridge Theater behind the student union building.

At CSUN and many other campuses, the black Greeks and white Greeks experience little crossover, and the eight African American groups on campus usually do not participate in the annual Greek Week held each spring by the Interfraternity Council and the Pan Hellenic Council.

But CSUN President Jolene Koester said she hopes to bridge the social rift and has promised to fund a joint event between the councils. The groups are scheduled to meet for the first time today to plan it.

Tari Hunter, president of the African Pan Hellenic Council, said its Greek Week grew from a maturing of the organizations on campus and a desire to present a unified image.

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With only about 60 members on the 30,000-student campus, the black frats and sororities at CSUN have come into their own after being extensions of citywide chapters, she said.

“We’re all founded on some of the same principles of sisterhood and community service,” Hunter said. “It was time for us to have a week together and show a presence on campus.”

Planners with the African Pan Hellenic Council coordinated the black Greek Week’s anchor event, the step show, with the school’s campuswide programming group to attract the entire student body, Hunter said. But most in the nearly all African American audience were members of a fraternity or sorority.

“Every school has some separation of different groups on campus,” said Kappa Alpha Psi member Tim Clark, a transfer from Georgia. “The Greeks just see that to a higher level. I think getting everybody together for a step show is a great idea that can bring mixed groups together, like I expected Southern California would be.”

A step routine is as important to a fraternity’s identity as its name or colors, said Lion Shaw, a stepper with the Step Afrika! troupe that portrayed the evolution of South African mine workers’ boot dance into today’s Greek renditions.

“People who step represent what we do, and in a large sense, who we are,” Shaw said.

The visiting Step Afrika! comprises Greeks from around the country and performed before the United Step Team, which includes members from five of the eight black Greek organizations on the CSUN campus.