Phi Chi Theta hosted Bradley’s first Business Olympics Tuesday afternoon on Olin Quad.
“This is hopefully an annual event that we will host,” said Business Olympics Public Relations chair Candace Esken.
Phi Chi Theta organized the Business Olympics in coordination with the Student Business Leadership Council.
Esken said Phi Chi Theta came up with the idea of having the Olympics, introduced it to SBLC and received funding from Robert Baer, dean of the Foster College of Business Administration.
Lindsey Vaught, Phi Chi Theta vice president, said the purpose of the event was to help reduce apathy on campus among students in the business school.
She also said she hoped by having this event it would push students to be more involved, not only from the business school, but from other organizations as well.
“This was to get business students to get to know each other and network, because in the end we’re the ones we’re going to be working with in the future,” Vaught said. “We also wanted to see if we could maybe have some fun together and open up all kinds of doors for future events.”
The goal of the Business Olympics was to unite different business orientations by using cooperation within five Olympic games.
The first game was a standard three-legged race, and another was a paper clip building contest.
“The paper clip building contest is kind of a joke about office fun [and] the whole point is to see which team could build the highest paper clip tower in five minutes,” Esken said.
A suit race was the next event, and Esken said the game consisted of one suit per team where every team member would have to put the suit on and race down a set of cones.
Other games included a spin and run and a stress ball pass that involved the passing of stress balls among members using their chins.
Esken said the games were designed “to be very goofy and fun overall” with winners receiving a trophy for their efforts.
The five participating teams were from several of the business-related clubs on campus – Phi Chi Theta, Women in Business, Bradley University Toast Masters, Society of Human Resource Management and the American Marketing Association.
“What we tried to do with Phi Chi Theta was to encourage a couple of our new actives to be on the team,” Esken said.
Vaught said she tried to get individuals “to feel like they’re a part of something bigger, because you need to feel like you belong and you have a purpose. We want people to feel that they’re involved here at college.”
Esken said she thought the event had a positive outcome and was not expecting such a great turnout.
“Next year we’re hoping to make this an even bigger event and make this a business school tradition,” Vaught said.
