As Michael Kriegsman told a childhood story about facing adversity growing up Jewish among Christian friends, 43 members of Ohio State's greek community took a vow to help eliminate discrimination within their chapters.
Kriegsman, a freshman in biology and member of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, had the opportunity this weekend to share his story with the group of fraternity and sorority members and listen to similar testimonies at a Greek Diversity Leadership Retreat.
The retreat was sponsored by Vice President for Student Affairs Rich Hollingsworth and took place two hours away from campus at Salt Fork State Park.
Kurt Foriska, senior coordinator for greek life at OSU, said the event gave members of different chapters an opportunity to focus on building a better community.
Patrick Hall, director of the National Coalition Building Institute and Ramsey Piazza, hall director for Jones Tower, welcomed the students with a daylong workshop consisting of a variety of hands-on exercises.
The first activity called "Up-Downs," asked students to stand up if they identified with a specific group mentioned. The groups included birth order, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and hometown. Kriegsman said he found this to be one of the most effective parts of the retreat.
"People stood up in every group, and it showed how similar and how different everyone was in greek life and in general," he said.
Kelsey Weber of Alpha Chi Omega sorority said another effective exercise from the retreat was called "Caucuses," in which students chose a group they belonged to and created presentations based on the hurtful things they would not like to have said about their group.
"Usually bias and prejudice comes out of being scared of something different," said Weber, a sophomore in anthropology. "I learned you just have to take a chance to find out what you have in common with everyone, no matter how different they are. People should think about the actual person, not the group they are associated with."
After the workshop, attendees were given an opportunity for fellowship, which included swimming, board games and snacks. Weber said this was imperative because it allowed people who were strangers to become friends and share ideas about how to improve their chapters.
A large portion of the second day of the retreat was geared toward resolving diversity problems within the greek community. The competitive attitude that exists between fraternities and sororities was cited as a major problem. They applied the ideals they learned the first day to brainstorm ways they could enhance diversity, create a welcoming attitude and sense of unity among all four greek councils at OSU.
At the end of the retreat, Kriegsman already had an idea of what he was going to do to make a change. He said he plans to run for a chairman position in his fraternity's elections this week and use the lessons he learned as a foundation for his campaign.
"As a first-year student, it's important to be involved," he said. "Between the older brothers' experience and my motivation from the weekend, we can definitely make positive changes."
Michael Evans can be reached at evans.798@osu.edu.
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