Greek Weeks Were My Favorite Weeks in College

April 22, 2026 by Shawn Collins

Springtime in college meant fraternities pairing up with sororities for Greek Week, an annual, week-long tradition filled with parties, philanthropy, and various competitions.

In spring 1991, at the University of Maryland, Pi Kappa Alpha (?KA) asked Kappa Alpha Theta (KA?) to partner, and then my pledge brother Joe Incaprera and I ran as co-Greek Week chairs to organize the week’s events with Theta.

Joe and I put together a couple of fliers for the Greek Week chair election, and we went on to get elected to handle the Greek Week festivities.

After the election, we got together with our fellow chair on the Theta side, Kathleen Gamboa, and started making plans. There were lots of fun events like kickball, ultimate, chariot races, and a carnival, as well as a philanthropy event where members of the fraternity and sorority served as huggers at the Special Olympics. But, really, the focus was on a week of parties.

We put together a schedule with one or more parties every day for six days. Things kicked off with an opening bash at a local firehouse, and continued with four-way and six-way parties packed with kegs, live music, and revelry. The week of parties wrapped up with WHFS DJ Neci spinning records at the PiKA house.

Throughout the week, we may have won some stuff. I don’t actually remember, but we had a lot of fun. I don’t think we ever won overall Greek Week in the five springs I was there. I still have some beach scopes from the week – I guess we sold them as fundraisers.

On the Friday night of Greek Week, I had to sneak out from some of the nighttime partying to go see the Dead Milkmen at the Student Union. I tried to convince them to come back to the house to party, but they had to head on to their next city.

I think I took this last picture during the dance or lip-sync contest at Ritchie Coliseum. I’d like to say I applied some sort of artistic treatment to make some or most of the stuff look blurry and frenzied, but I just had a crappy camera.

Those weeks were some of my favorites, except for when I’d trade a set of letters to some random person and never see them again. But I always gained a Greek Week t-shirt to add to my giant collection of frat t-shirts.

Originally published at https://shawncollins512.substack.com.

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