A crowd gathered on the hot Friday afternoon outside Taylor Hall.

Music blasted and people chanted.

Stomps were heard and strolls were taken.

People gathered around to see what it was all about. As the crowd grew it became clear this was not an ordinary gathering, it was a yard show and a preview of what was to come later that night.

The yard show was part of a day full of NPHC recruitment events.

It was a sign of Greek unity according to Amanda Bush, a junior in corporate communications and public relations major, NPHC president, and Zeta Phi Beta member.

“All this week we have been getting NPHC out,” said Sunni Solamon, the NPHC adviser and member of Kappa Alpha Psi. “It’s a big public relations campaign to make NPHC visible [in a way] that is social and unthreatening.”

The yard show acted as a recruitment tool for sororities and fraternities in the NPHC. “Each organization has their own intake process,” Soloman said. “This is just a method to introduce new students to the organizations. The chapters have to take the next step.”

Solamon would like to see membership continue to grow.

He came to Eastern in the fall of 2006 with the goal of increasing membership.

Since then numbers have risen from 12 to 50 this year. His hope is to eventually get the “Divine 9” traditional black sororities and fraternities on campus. Eastern is currently home to five of the nine.

Later in the evening a dance party was hosted by the NPHC at the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

The atmosphere was lively as a DJ played music. Clusters of circles formed throughout the room as different chapters did their strolls.

Keyan Newble, a senior speech communications major, sat in the back of the room to cool off.

He said members had been strolling since 10 o’clock.

“From the time they made it here, till the time they leave,” he said.

At 12:45 a.m. the mini step show took place, and each place each chapter of the NPHC had 3 minutes to perform their signature moves. For some it was hard to see over the crowd. Attendees climbed on chairs and got on friend’s shoulders.

The rhythmic beats of the stomps and claps made the floor echo over the loud mixture of music, claps, chants and hoots.

Tara Crawford, a sophomore psychology major came to the event with friends.

She said she went to an informational earlier in the week to see what the sororities were all about, and came Friday night to find out what the social side of the NPHC was like. After a night at the dance party, Crawford said the event was a lot of fun.

“The Greeks here are close and you definitely want to be a part of it,” she said.

Members of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, stroll-off at the National Pan-Hellenic Council Yard Party, Friday afternoon in the South Quad. This is a recruiting event for the NPHC. Karla Browning/The Daily Eastern News

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