<p>Does anyone honestly know the realistic chances of an African-American student getting a bid to a predominantly white fraternity? I am applying as a transfer and if I get in would want to rush one. I'm just looking for an honest opinion. has any one done it?</p>
<p>I would say that you have pretty good chances. I know plenty of african-american students here who got bids to all sorts of fraternities that were predominantly white. It really depends on how you individually fit in with the specific fraternity though.</p>
<p>There was a predominantly white fraternity with a black president last year. Several fraternities have black members. You’ll be OK.</p>
<p>It’s all about fitting in. Skin color is totally irrelevant. Plenty of Indian students received bids this year. Skin color has literally nothing to do with getting a bid. It’s solely about fitting in with the fraternity culture.</p>
<p>What does that mean, though, “fraternity culture”? When the fraternity is predominantly white?</p>
<p>I think Pancaked means if you like having your weekends organized with activities with your brothers, if attending themed parties appeals to you, if you want to go on spring break with your frat, if you want to go to a formal now and then in a special location, if you would like to ID with a national frat.<br>
My son at Vandy would find all of the above to be dissonant and wrong for him and does none of the above. My son at Duke liked “fraternity culture” and where he lives now the younger frat boys still in college come crash at his place when they are in town looking for jobs.</p>
<p>^indeed. On top of that, each fraternity has a unique character that people may or may not fit into.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the comments.What is the rush like for transfers ? i know you get bids in the fall .</p>
<p>I don’t get it. If it’s true that race is not a barrier to entry into white fraternities, why do the white fraternities featured in Vandy’s greek life guide seem to feature little to no students of (any-but-white) color at all, besides a token?</p>
<p>It seems a bit presumptuous to say the students of color in fraternities are tokens. Do you know this for a fact? Perhaps they were brought into the fraternity for the same reasons as the rest of the pledge class. It is possible that the number of URMs rushing traditional fraternities is low … so percentage-wise it may be that only a few URMs would be in any given fraternity. It’s a possibility worth considering.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>…because not a lot of non-whites are interested in Greek life in the first place? When I attended a Greek Life interest event at the beginning of the year that was pretty much mandatory for anyone who wanted to rush, I saw very few minorities attending. Plus I know of several minorities who are pledging white fraternities this semester, and there are probably more.</p>
<p>:/</p>
<p>Why not?</p>
<p>There also is the National Pan-Hellenic Council, most minorities interested in joining greek life may be more comfortable joining a minority greek organization (ie historical african american organizations)</p>
<p>Why not?
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>It’s all about who you relate to. If minorities don’t see their cultural values reflected in the available organizations, why would they join in large numbers? As another member mentioned, there’s the historically black fraternities and sororities (NPHC) and multicultural greek life available on campus as well.</p>
<p>It’s also worth noting that Greek life membership in all these organizations is slowly shrinking.</p>
<p>Can we turn this around and ask… could a white kid join a historically black fraternity at Vanderbilt? My son is starting to seriously look at colleges. He has expressed an interest in going Greek, though I’m not sure he has any idea what that really means since he would be the first person in our entire extended family to join a frat.</p>
<p>Sigma Gamma Rho, a historically black sorority, has a Caucasian girl in it. So while it’s quite a bit more rare, it seems that it could happen.</p>
<p>There’s a lot of first-time Greek people in the community- he’ll figure it out by December/January when the bids are given out.</p>