PCC Week Returns with Success, but Struggles to Find Participants

MILLS JORDAN

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Flickerball, popsicle-eating contests, and Nummit Trivia. This past week, the PCC Week tradition offered multiple events for students to enjoy. While attendance did not reach pre-pandemic levels, many leaders within Patterson Court Council (PCC) felt this year’s events signaled a step towards greater unity and engagement of members.

“Our goal is to foster relationships between organizations that hopefully carry over into actually working together on things that PCC is not directly overseeing,” said InterFraternity Council Ambassador Micheal Callahan ‘24. “Even if the pure numbers haven’t been completely astounding, people have been coming out.”

After a rainout on Friday, Mar.17, PCC Week was delayed and instead began on Saturday, Mar. 18. The Old Tennis Court Lawn was filled with games and food, and there were games ranging from cornhole to capture the flag.

The night of Mar. 21, PCC hosted a popular “PCC Got Talent” event, modeled after the game show “America’s Got Talent.”

Mike Liu ‘26 is a new member of Kappa

Sigma and participated in “PCC Got Talent”.

“The PCC Got Talent event was definitely the highlight of the week for me,” Liu said. “We teamed up with Turner to recreate the Treblemakers’ performance in Pitch Perfect. Even though we didn’t win, it was super fun to be out there to compete with the other PCC organizations.”

When participating in PCC Week competitions, members were sorted into cross-organization teams. Allie Hay ‘24, the PCC Programming Chair, designed most of the teams and events for PCC Week this year. For Hay, the team structure is critical to the success of PCC Week.

“The purpose of PCC Week is to promote PCC unity around the houses and to get the branches to meet people they wouldn’t meet,” Hay said. “That’s why we introduced teams.”

The Blue Team, consisting of Connor Eating House, Kappa Sigma, Phi Gamma Delta, and the Lambda Pi Chis, won the most events this year. In particular, the Lambda Pi Chis, a Multicultural Greek Council (MGC) sorority, stole the show with their 100% participation rate.

Joselin Serpas, a member of the Lambda Pi Chis and the MGC Ambassador, appreciated her organization’s showing at PCC Week.

“I love our bond and hermandad,” Serpas said. “We try to put the love for Ltinx culture into everything we do, even if it’s something fun and silly like PCC Got Talent. We still had to represent somehow!”

“I think we had almost 100% from the MGCs, which I was really happy about,” Hay said. “The eating house attendance was pretty low this year, but the fraternity and National Pan-Hellenic Council turnout was also pretty good.”

This year, PCC Week did coincide with the big-little reveal tradition across the eating houses. Harrison Grooms ‘25, runs on the track team and is a member of Rusk Eating House. She did not participate in PCC Week.

“I learned about PCC Week from Allie Hay, who did a great job promoting the events,” Grooms said. “I really wanted to attend them, but I had to focus on prioritizing my other athletic and academic responsibilities. It was also our big-little week, so I was very busy with that as well.”

Callahan, Hay, and President of PCC Sadie Murphy ‘23, see communication as a major barrier to participation.

“Getting the word out was a little difficult because there’s no way to reach out to all PCC members at once,” Hay said.

Communication goes first through organizations’ presidents, who then are expected to disseminate information to the rest of the members. For Murphy, “reaching out more to individual members is a goal.” While PCC does not currently have a mechanism for communicating events to individual members, events can be promoted to members through social media and posters to take communication pressures off of organizations’ executive boards.

Looking ahead to next year, plans are already being shaped for PCC Week 2024. “One big thing that we’ve talked about is going crazy on advertising,” Callahan said.

Emily Eisenstadt, the Assistant Director for Programs at Union, works with PCC E-Board and eating houses.

“I hope to generate more hype for PCC Week a lot further in advance,” Eisenstadt said.

Overall, many of the student and staff leaders who planned PCC Week this year view the events as a success.

“It’s fun to watch students have an idea and to help them bring it to life,” Eisenstadt said.

Callahan found PCC Week to be another way for fraternities to realize the value of cooperating instead of competing.

“I hope we realize that we’re all part of the same Council, and at the end of the day, our organizations are a big piece to the already limited Davidson social scene,” Callahan said. “Having them work together has always been a goal of mine.”