LETTER FROM THE  PRESIDENT

Hello Everyone!

On behalf of 13 chapters and over 1400 members on campus, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to PHC! With a focus on our four pillars - friendship, scholarship, service, and leadership, our organization is home to some of the best and brightest scholars, researchers, athletes, and community activists at Berkeley. 

Everyone’s path to joining a sorority is unique. Here’s mine:

As an international student with no family connections to Greek Life, I had little idea about what PHC entailed. Fast forward three years and it has given me some of my best college memories, led to lifelong friendships, introduced me to mentors, and allowed me to grow into the best version of myself. In all honesty, I still don’t know what made me join a sorority initially. But I do know what made me stay: the people. Just after a few months of joining, I quickly realized that the people in this community will be by your side no matter what. Be it teaching me to cold email professors about research or providing me with moral support when international students were facing immigration issues at the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, this community has supported me in every way possible throughout my undergraduate career, and I hope it will do the same for you! 

Having said this, I also want to acknowledge that Greek Life has historically been an institution that has excluded certain communities, and Berkeley is by no means an exception to this.  We are working actively to change this to ensure that we don’t just provide lip service to diversity, equity, and inclusion, but follow through with tangible action. Some of the steps we have taken so far include establishing a community development scholarship for members from underrepresented communities, hosting town halls around different issues, holding community development office hours every week, and passing a by-law amendment to reduce the financial burden on new members within our community. In addition, we are  making recruitment free again this year to ensure anyone who is interested in Greek Life has a fair chance of exploring all of our sororities. This, however, is just the start and we hope to create more positive change within this community, so if you have any questions or suggestions or want to have a conversation, please contact me at phc.president@calgreeks.com. If you want to learn more about sororities at Cal, sign up here for fall recruitment   and make sure to check the recruitment tab  for more updates! 

Warmly, 

Sneha Ramesh