Greek Students' Role in a Rebuilding Program

The University of Oklahoma men’s basketball team possessed the best player in the country in 2009. Blake Griffin was an All American and the first overall draft pick in the NBA draft. Since his departure, the Sooners basketball program has been abysmal. Two losing seasons later, they are hoping to bound back and reflect the team they used to be – the team that reached the Elite Eight round of the NCAA tournament. New head coach Lon Kruger’s plan of rebuilding a team starts with generating excitement on campus to encourage ticket sales. Student participation is crucial to the atmosphere of a basketball game. All groups of students are important, but the Greek system, whose members are the heart of campus participation, may be the key.
Many fraternities are getting the opportunity to attend basketball practices.Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity attended the Sooners practice most recently - last week. The students had the privilege of taking a tour of the locker room and facilities, watching the entire practice and shooting hoops with the players afterward. “I love Coach Kruger’s idea of allowing students to go to practices,” said Carson Rock, a junior member of Sigma Phi Epsilon. “It was really cool to be able to see everything that goes on during practice, not to mention getting to shoot around with the players after. I’ve never gotten to do anything like that before.” Rock is one of the many fraternity students who have attended practice this semester.

Coach Kruger has done his best to get fans and students involved with the program since he arrived on campus in April. These open practices are a very personal way for students to get to know Kruger and the players, and they seem to be proving successful in generating buzz around campus with students, Greek and non-Greek alike. The hope around Norman is that the excitement of the study body leads to ticket sales, which can ultimately help lead to success on the basketball court once again.

Kelsey's Story

Journalism students from the University of Oklahoma listened eagerly to special guests Cherokee Ballard and Britten Follett in Gaylord college of Journalism and Mass Communication Wednesday. The two ex-television reporters spoke with heavy hearts about Kelsey Briggs, the abused toddler who was the subject of the book they co-wrote. They also described their personal television careers to the students and the nature of the business.

Ballard and Follett’s book, Who Killed Kelsey?, is aimed to tell Kelsey’s story and fight child abuse in the state of Oklahoma. The title is such because it has yet to be proven without doubt who the murderer was. However, Ballard and Follett have their suspicions.

Kelsey was an abused two-year-old child who was murdered in October 2005. During the two years of her life, she had frequent scrapes and bruises throughout her body and suffered from a broken collar bone and two broken legs. She was killed from being hit in the stomach. Her mother, Raye Dawn Smith, and her step-father, Michael Porter, were both home at the time of the incident. Her father was overseas serving in the military.

Ballard and Follett are both prestigious names in the television reporting industry. Ballard has spent 25 years in television news and has worked as a professor of Journalism at the University of Oklahoma. She won the Staff Peabody Award and a Regional Emmy Award for her work covering the Oklahoma City Bombing, and was named Oklahoma’s 2008 Woman of the Year.

Follett travels across the country telling Kelsey’s story to students, in addition to the book. She recently entered the corporate world after spending five years as a news reporter for KOKH Fox 25. She is the winner of an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow award, as well as six state and regional broadcasting awards.
Ballard and Follett have set up a website, www.whokilledkelsey.com, which provides biographies on themselves and Kelsey, and presents the opportunity to purchase the book and other wkk? merchandise.

U-Sing 2011

Singing, dancing and exaggerated smiling faces. These are the characteristics required of students participating in one of the surprisingly-largest student events at the University of Oklahoma. One week after the Habitat For Humanity event Shack-a-thon was over, the OU Greek system competed amongst each other once again in the annual event U-Sing - an event full of fun and great memories, and plagued with heartbreak. The show dates were November 3rd, 4th and 5th.

The first-place winners of U-Sing 2011 were the Delta Delta Delta sorority and Delta Tau Delta fraternity, whose theme was A Bugs Life (based on the Disney movie.) The Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity came in second place with a theme entitled Revenge of the Nerds. Rounding out the placing was the Gamma Phi Beta sorority and Beta Theta Pi fraternity’s show, A League of Their Own, which took third place.

U-Sing is an annual event put on by the Campus Activities Council (CAC) where Fraternities and Sororities that have teamed up with each other put on a show consisting of acting, singing, dancing – the whole nine yards. Each show has a specific theme. The groups begin practicing choreography at the very beginning of the semester and continue practicing until the days of the shows. The groups perform one show each of the three days. Judges are present to judge each show daily, and make a final decision on the last day ranking first, second and third place.

After months of hard work and preparation, placing in U-Sing provides a satisfaction that makes the effort worthwhile. However, a sour taste is left in the mouths of those not awarded. “We really felt like we were going to place this year,” said Ben Becker, a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. He was one of the directors for Sig Ep’s joint show with the sorority Pi Beta Phi. “We thought we had a particularly strong acapella part of our show. We were definitely not expecting this, but everything is at the discretion of the judges.”

U-Sing is a big deal, to say the least. It demands hours of participants’ and directors’ time throughout the Fall semester and weighs considerably into the formula for the President’s Trophy. The President’s trophy is the award given by the University of Oklahoma’s President David Boren once a year to the school’s ‘outstanding fraternity.’ The formula for the coveted award consists of a mix of placing in U-Sing and the Homecoming Dance, grades, activity in community service projects and more. In the upcoming weeks, fraternities will be asking sororities to partner with them for next year’s U-Sing show; some hoping to repeat this year’s success, others hoping to correct their mistakes and redeem themselves.