Greek life is alive and vibrant as the University of Wisconsin celebrates the Greek System's 150th Anniversary this year with a series of events to welcome back alumni.

According to Barbara Kautz, UW interim fraternity and sorority coordinator, the celebration has already started with its successful Humorology event that secured some 40 alumni to take part in fundraising and a silent auction. The celebration will continue this Saturday with alumni weekend, where fraternities and sororities will showcase their houses to visiting alumni.

"We are celebrating that we have 150 years' worth of alumni, and that we have all these great connections to people who go out and become business leaders, and do other great things," said Fraternity and Sorority Program Advisor Jeff Benson.

The first Greek life establishment was the Phi Delta Theta fraternity in 1957, a fact that Kautz came upon when she was researching UW Greek life and how to get more alumni to return to the UW campus to establish connections with their former organizations.

Kautz said getting alumni to return to campus will be a significant part of the celebration, as they are the "lifeblood" of what keeps Greek life strong.

"Sometimes we don't appreciate how important our alumni are," Kautz said. "Alumni, especially those who are coming from outside Wisconsin, can open up a lot of doors for people and also offer some wonderful mentoring relationships."

Benson said it is critical for current students to develop connections with the alumni in their Greek chapter not only for business and networking related reasons but also to show them how important Greek life was to their success.

"[Alumni] are going to give you this laundry list of why they are successful, and nine times out of 10, those are skills or attributes they got from Greek life," Benson said

Benson also said part of the celebration belonged to the alumni because they were the ones responsible for building up what Greek life is today.

As Greek life evolves, Benson added it is important to connect the past with the present and uphold the ideals that were in the program since the beginning.

"During the celebration, the biggest thing that we are celebrating is that our ideals are still alive and well within the community now," Benson said. "We want alumni to come back, reminisce and celebrate that we are still upholding these ideals even though a lot of things have changed since their time."

Camille Gitter, a former Greek life intern and a UW senior, said the celebration was constructed in a large part to dismiss any notion that Greek life is predominantly a bad thing.

"The Greek system isn't looked at so positively in our campus, and I think that showing our campus and our community that we have been around for so long and that we have done a lot of positive things is important," Gitter said. "This way we can actually show that Greek life does a lot of good things and that being Greek is a good thing."