National Student Research Study on “What Does Being Greek Mean”

New York.- By Vicki James Yiannias from GreekNewsOnline

Stephanie Marudas’s idea for the “Got Greek? National Student Research Study”, the first national online survey of American university students of Hellenic heritage, may have started quietly but it’s turning into “a terrific story”, says Leon Stavrou, co-founder and Executive Director of “The Next Generation Initiative”, which sponsors the study, “If our 2010 ‘Got Greek?’ campaign was a movie, we would have to say that it’s doing ‘boffo box office’”.

More than 1300 students have signed up to express what being Greek means to them, says Ms. Marudas, Director of “Got Greek?”.  The main goal of the survey is to learn more about the ways in which the next generation of Greek American undergraduate and graduate students connect to their Greek heritage.

The survey is open to any student with Greek heritage currently enrolled in a college and university in the United States.  This includes second, third, and fourth-generation Greek American students, as well as those born in Greece or Cyprus currently studying in the U.S.

And if you’re just one tiny bit Greek it counts.  “Whether you are 1/16th or 100% Greek, if you are an undergraduate or graduate student of Hellenic heritage currently enrolled at a college or university in the United States, this study is about you and your views and opinions about your background and how it relates to everything from food and music, to family and friends,” say Marudas, Stavrou, Executive Director of “The Next Generation Initiative”, and Bill Schuyler, Managing Director.

Marudas, Stavrou and Schuyler comprise the 3-person team that launched the study with major support from the Zapis Charitable Foundation, the Maliotis Charitable Foundation and others, and assembled an academic team of professors and students to help develop the survey.

ABC’s Good Morning America anchor and chief political correspondent George Stephanopoulos and director/actor Nia Vardalos are among those helping to promote the “Got Greek? study.  Stephanopoulos helped kick off the campaign in an e-mail to students around the country, calling on them to participate in the ground-breaking study, saying “To get the most complete and representative results, we need to make sure that every eligible student has a chance to be included in the study.  As we are learning from this study, there are many more young people your age who say they’ve “got Greek” than we knew or imagined.”

Vardalos recently wrote, “A few years ago, I wrote a film about my large, first-generation Greek family’s reaction to my marriage to a non-Greek… or as my dad called him, “a Xeno.”  I was surprised to learn the audience didn’t have to be first or second-generation Greek to identify with the characters in the film—they didn’t even have to be Greek.  For me, though, it was a way of telling the world “I’ve got Greek”, and explaining what that meant.  That’s why I am inviting you to register today to take our “Got Greek? survey and see how your views and experiences compare to those of students like you all over the U.S.”

Two years ago, Ms. Marudas, Director and inspiration behind the Got Greek? project, observed a need in the community to find out more about how the next generation connects with their Greek heritage.  She approached the Next Generation Initiative — whose goal is to help prepare the next generations of Greek American leaders for the challenges that lie ahead — with the idea to do both a survey and an oral history project geared around college and university students of Greek descent.

Speaking with the GN, Ms. Marudas described how the idea for the survey came about.  “Two years ago, It just sort of came to me that we have a lot of material out there in terms of interviews with the earlier, immigrant generations, but we don’t have much material out there with the younger generation.  We talk about a lot in our community about: ‘is it going to be a community in 50 years?’  So why not ask.  Why not find out how today’s young people are connecting?”

The GN asked whether Marudas senses that the ancestral past is in danger of being forgotten.  “I would say no…. I would say there is recognition, especially at the family level; young people very much carry the stories of their relatives, particularly if their parents are first generation.  But many know the stories of their grandparents and know where they came from.  Some have been there, some have not.”

This comes to what the community could do, says Marudas, “how do you connect these young people to modern Greece?  The Next Generation takes students on the Athens Fellowship and really exposes them to business leaders, political leaders, to get a pulse on what modern Greece is looking like.”

And then there is the question of how to promote simple person-to-person connections, she says.  “A friend who is a journalist in Greece and I talk about how we can connect 20-somethings there with 20-somethings here.  Do they need to have exchanges?… they certainly have the technology to just get to know each other better.”

There is a kind of “disconnect”, amongst Greek Americans in their communities, says Marudas, noting that “In our community we have probably a branch of people who associate being Greek with Greek Independence Day, Greek dancing…and that’s one way of connecting, but there seems to be a deficit of understanding of today’s Greece.  And I think it would help on the other end, too…there are those in Greece who think of Greek Americans as being on the other side.”

Will “Got Greek?” help with this “disconnect”?  “I’m hoping that this will be a stepping stone to a project that would involve Greek youth.  One thing we ask these students is whether they interested in modern Greece at all.  And if they are, what are they interested in; what do they follow there?”

Speaking with the GN, Mr. Stavrou praised the next generation of young Greek Americans “an amazing group of young men and women”, pointing out the interesting and important to remember fact that “third–and even fourth–generation Greek Americans are very different, with names, attitudes and even appearances that would surprise the earlier generations that came before.  And yet they consider themselves Greek — and are proud of it — but they are expressing it new, different and unexpected ways.  This study is the first to really look at the next generation in all its diversity, really listen to all kinds of young people who see themselves as Greek, and let them speak for themselves,” said Stavrou.  “I think our board member George Stephanopoulos said it best when he said, ‘There are many more young people who say they’ve “got Greek’ than we knew or imagined.  When the study gets going and it all starts adding up, I think it will be clear that there are many reasons it’s good to be Greek — and that there are thousands of young people out there who are part of a brand new generation showing the world why.”

Stephanie Marudas has worked as a public radio reporter and producer, and got her start in the field at COSMOS FM, a Greek and English radio station based in New York City.  She’s since done work for WYPR Public Radio in Baltimore, WHYY Public Radio in Philadelphia and National Public Radio.

To participate in the survey, students can go to www.gotgreek.org and register today.  The study will most likely come down at the end of June, and results will be analyzed over the summer.  The aim is to release results to the public sometime in the fall.

Visit www.gotgreek.org to learn more about the study and why it was launched, as well as read some sample interviews.

You can follow the progress of the “Got Greek?” study on Facebook

To learn more about “The Next Generation Initiative” visit www.hellenext.org

Two scholars of Greek America offer thoughts about the “Got Greek? National Student Research Study”

“I think ‘Got Greek?’ is terrific in that it is by, of, and about Greek Americans in college,” opts Dan Georgakas, Director of Greek American Studies Project at Center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at Queens, (whose most recent book is “My Detroit: Growing Up Greek and American in Motor City”).  “This ethnic ‘facebook’ involves an age group critical to our survival as a community,” but he cautions that although the survey questions the students are being encouraged to complete is useful, the results must not be mistaken for a portrait of a generation, as this is not a random sample.  “It is however extremely useful in identifying the feelings and needs of a sector of a generation that already identifies itself as Greek in some way.”

Yiorgos Anagnostou, associate professor of modern Greek and American ethnic studies at Ohio State University (whose most recent book is “Contours of White Ethnicity: Popular Ethnography and the Making of Usable Pasts in Greek America”) says,  “The initiative actively participates in the production of a Greek American identity today, as a host of activities surround it: seminars on leadership, the positing of role models, etc.  “Got Greek?” creates a consciousness of a collective of Greek Americans…. participants realize that they are not alone in the dilemmas and issues they face.”

Originally posted http://www.greeknewsonline.com/?p=12943. Pulled 6/20/2010.