Student Affairs News

WSU Panhellenic Council "West Fest" fundraiser a success!

Department: Center for Fraternity and Sorority Life

This story was originally published on the Circle of Sisterhood blog. 

Our Panhellenic Council at Washington State University wanted to get our whole community involved in our efforts to support Circle of Sisterhood through a large-scale interactive event. We brainstormed and came up with “West Fest.” Our goal for this event was to raise awareness of Circle of Sisterhood on campus and to create our first annual fall philanthropy event where all proceeds go to the Circle of Sisterhood Foundation. The idea behind West Fest started in one of our Council meetings last May. Over the summer our President, Madison Johnson, spearheaded the organization of this event. Through the hard work of our Panhellenic Council, we successfully hosted our first annual fall philanthropy.

The Event
On September 7th, the doors opened for West Fest at 6 p.m. with a lot of anticipation from our community to attend. We held this event outside in one of our larger parking lots (make sure you have permits and such if you mimic this event!). To make this event something students, Greek or not, would attend, we provided a full southern dinner, a mechanical bull, and a live band playing the entire time. For dinner, we have chicken tenders, mac and cheese, and coleslaw. The mechanical bull added a little flair to the event because students were starting to get competitive and have fun with it. Our live band was The Olson Brothers, a popular country band. We are very thankful they performed at our event because they drew a large crowd. Also, huge thanks to Circle of Sisterhood, because throughout the event we were able to post updates on to their Instagram account, sharing our experience with fellow universities around the country!

West Fest Success
With campus community-wide participation, we were able to go above and beyond our original goal by raising $5,000! For our first ever-council sponsored philanthropy, we are so excited that our community was so willing to participate in West Fest. As this semester continues, we are eager to promote Circle of Sisterhood through many of our council activities. We have also been working with our 2018 Panhellenic Council to keep this new tradition going, by holding a Panhellenic Pride Week in the Spring and a Fall philanthropy like West Fest. We want Washington State University to continue to support Circle of Sisterhood and hopefully, beat our record of $5,000!! The awareness in our Panhellenic community has grown at an exciting rate and we are thrilled to keep this new tradition going.

Submitted by Katy McMullan '18, Alpha Gamma Delta & VP of Standards and Accountability for the Panhellenic Council

To learn more about WSU Panhellenic Council, visit https://www.wsusororities.com/.