Cornell's Social Scene and Parties

Colleges and Universities A-Z Cornell University
1

<p>I wanted to start a topic talking about Cornell's social scene since there is no other way I can find out about it. It's not like while on a tour with my parents I can say to the tour guide, "Are there a lot of ragers going on?". So, if you have a question add it and if you can answer a question do so.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>I hear contradicting things about how Cornell is a party school (not in a bad way, just that they have a lot of parties), and also how they aren't really. I would assume that with 50 frats if each has at least one party over the year there should be tons of parties, but I could be wrong.</p></li>
<li><p>Are the parties hard to get into (especially for underclassmen)? I keep hearing about there being lists for parties and that makes me think "Crap, I'll never get in".</p></li>
<li><p>Is it bad to not be in a frat because I hear they're big at Cornell, but my parents (who are paying) are against frats so I can't be in one.</p></li>
</ol>

2

<p>I’m surprised no current/recent student has answered this.</p>

<p>"It’s not like while on a tour with my parents I can say to the tour guide, “Are there a lot of ragers going on?”. "</p>

<p>Just send parents away, you want to ask the guide something. Or try asking some of the “Life on the Hill” student bloggers.</p>

<p>From my recollection, and D2s experience, I can tell you that frats seem quite important when you are a freshman, because they throw a lot of parties that freshmen can and do attend. After freshman year, you are either in a frat, or you aren’t. Once I wasn’t, I hardly ever thought about frats any more, except maybe when visiting a friend who was in one. I didn’t care abut being on some “list”. Because I was doing my own thing, with my own friends, and i couldn’t care less about frat parties. We were going to our parties. Or just hanging out with our friends, generally.</p>

<p>If you are in a frat, that scene will sort of take care of a chunk of your social life (I asssume). If you aren’t, you form your own social network with people you meet along the way. House parties in collegetown apartments are standard fare for the non-greeks.</p>

<p>It is not “bad” to not be in a frat, most people aren’t. It’s not “bad” to be in one either, if you want to be.</p>

3

<p>Freshman year social scene:</p>

<p>Orientation week:
If you like to party, this week is amazing. Go into any apartment after 10pm, and ask for beer. Tons of people to meet, fun is had by all. </p>

<p>Rest of first semester:
Party scene will be difficult to “gauge”. The IFC is changing how frats are run, and its pretty likely that freshman won’t be “allowed” into frat parties. This doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to party at frats though. Also, frats might invite you to events that involve some pretty ridiculous raging, but aren’t “open”. Never tell a frat that you can’t join a frat, theyre trying to recruit you so play along. </p>

<p>2nd Semester:
If you are in a frat or sorority, you will be getting fratty all the time during pledging. If you don’t join a frat or sorority you will most likely be chilling with your friends that didn’t go greek. 2nd semester freshman year is really the only time there is a big divide between greeks and non greeks and this is because all new members are spending most of their time pledging their houses. Things are much chiller in the semesters after. </p>

<p>Sophomore year:
Greeks: Get more fratty, go to college town, get fake IDs and go to bars, go to friends parties
Independents: go to college town, get fake IDs and go to bars, go to friends parties</p>

<p>Junior/Senior year:
Go to collegetown, go to bars, hang out at friends places in collegetown. </p>

<p>If you are into drugs, theres respective subcultures for whatever you want to get into. Ithaca is very 420 friendly. Some people do cocaine. If you are a rich WASP, you may even be offered it. If you don’t look for it, you won’t find it and it won’t find you. </p>

<p>Freshman partying is usually Thurs-Sat nights. Upperclassman partying is much more flexible. I know people who go hard on wednesday nigh (good deals at bars) and stay in fridays. I manage to go out as much as I would like (1-5 nights per week) depending on whats going on with school. I am an engineer so take that for what you will. </p>

<p>Drinking and smoking weed in the dorms is commonplace for whoever wants to do that.</p>

4

<p>Cornell’s social scene varies widely. If you want to go out every night, you’re bound to find a party going on. With over 12,000 undergraduates here, there’s always SOMETHING happening, whether its in Collegetown or at a frat.</p>

<p>About 1/3 of the student body chooses to “go greek.” Its not for everyone, but with the variety of fraternity and sororities, its easy to find one that suits your personality. Second semester tends to be more closed parties (mixers) between a frat and a sorority with fewer open parties, but those who choose not to pledge are by no means limited in their social lives… Like I said, there is always something going on. </p>

<p>Concerning the Greek scene, vast changes are being made by the administration to fraternity and sorority life. Incoming freshmen won’t be allowed into open parties at frats first semester, but that’s not to say that this will cause the end of your social life; it just means parties are more likely to happen in Collegetown and will be less advertised. </p>

<p>Overall, Cornell’s social scene is thriving, whether you decide to join a sorority/fraternity or not. Each group on campus (a cappella, project teams, dance troupes, sports teams) forms a tight knit community that will be a big part of your life on campus.</p>

5

<p>Tboonepickens is pretty spot on. </p>

<p>The status quo for years has been that freshmen go to random open frat parties throughout 1st semester as they decide whether to rush and pledge during 2nd semester. There is a significant deal of segregation between people pledging and independents during the spring due to the heavy time commitments of pledging. In my experience, my friends who pledged drifted away into the greek world and took a different social trajectory over the years. If you remain independent (even if you go out and socialize frequently), you’ll often find that you lose touch with your fratty friends. </p>

<p>Anyway, the administration is on the verge of making sweeping changes to Greek life so the said status quo is changing. Freshmen may not be allowed into open frat parties at all, which likely will push things down into collegetown (annexes and house parties). Limiting freshmen access to frats will make it more difficult for freshmen to determine whether they want to go Greek. Also an inconvenience, considering north to ctown is a 20-25 min walk each way. </p>

<p>Juniors and seniors have an established group of friends with whom they go to bars/hang out in collegetown. Seniors in particular will go out to the bars on random nights for drink specials due to senioritis/making an easy schedule.</p>

6

<p>My daughter is in a sorority, and her social life in the last four years were very much revolved around her sorority. That being said, if there were no Greek life at Cornell, she would still have socialized with same people. The social scene progression is pretty much what’s described in post 3. Now as a senior, she has parties at her apartment or go to other people parties, she only goes to more formal events sponsored by her sorority.</p>

<p>She did tell me about the recent tragedy on campus, and how the administration is going change the Greek life (it already started this spring). In my view, the administration is not going to change anything by preventing freshmen from partying at fraternities. The whole scene will just go underground, just like pushing the drinking age to 21. People won’t have to walk 20 min collegetown to party, most of those houses have cars, they will drive people they want to their annex, which in my view is more dangerous. Maybe it should be for another discussion, but we seem to have some pretty sensible students on this board, maybe they could work with the administration to come up with a better solution.</p>

7

<p>I have a few questions about that, people keep saying that there is always something going on, I don’t really understand what you mean, can you either explain more or give some examples. Secondly, can anyone tell me or give me a link to something that talks about whats changing with the frats and what IFC is doing, any opinions on that?</p>

8

<p>The trustees of the university changed the recognition policy for greek houses. The gist of it is that no freshman will be allowed at registered open parties. The reality of it is that no one knows how this will really play out. Frats already break most of the rules, so drinking at frats should not be much of a problem. The only real way to get to know the party scene here is to attend, and trust me, there are ragers.</p>

9

<p>premed, if you go to the cornell daily sun page and search “greek” or “ifc” you’ll get a ton of articles about it. </p>

<p>there are changes being made but

  1. people are scared they’re going to disband greek life. personally i don’t really think thats possible since there’s already trouble finding housing so i’d love to know what they plan on doing with an extra few thousand people who would no longer live in their greek houses, and additionally greek alumni contribute a significant percentage of alumni donations…which would decrease greatly if greek life was gone.<br>
  2. so instead they might try to add more rules/regulations to the ones that were already going to be implement. well, 80% of the current rules are broken on a constant basis, and the new rules probably will be treated similarly.<br>
  3. people here have a lot of work and are under a lot of stress and need a way to blow off steam. a lot of people like doing that by going out/partying. if it so happens that they can’t do so at frat houses, they’ll find ways around that. with 13,000 undergrads, say 1/3 of people like to party hard. thats >4,000 18-22 year olds. if you want to go out, there will be a place to go, and there will be people to go with. it just might not be as concrete/advertised/definite anymore. </p>

<p>oldfort, i agree with your opinions completely. if freshman can’t go to open frat parties (where they can usually only get horrible light beer—not really that dangerous–and are around hundreds of other people), they’re just going to be going to random collegetown apartments, or drinking in their dorms. situations I think could turn out far worse. unfortunately, the administration doesn’t seem to think so. and with the recent unfortunate experiences i think that along with enormous pr pressure on the administration, ifc/panhell is much more hesitant about fighting back like they had done previously.</p>

10

<p>are they just randomly doing this or did something happen?</p>

11

<p>^ SAE pledges kidnapped one of the brothers and effectively hazed him to death (the brother died of alcohol poisoning after being left unattended throughout the night). Other events transpired over the past couple years mostly having to do with alcohol-related hospitalizations, prompting the administration to consider changes even before the SAE tragedy, but I’m guessing this was the last straw. Check out the Daily Sun if you want to know more.</p>

12

<p>@callieboote: that is pretty messed up. i pretty much guessed as much, even though it wasn’t mentioned that it was hazing in the few news articles about this.</p>

<p>i’m pretty sure i won’t be in a frat next year, but we’ll see. and it’s not just because of hazing.</p>

13

<p>I’ve read that he died and nobody checked on him, but have not seen the rest of #11 in the reports I read.</p>

14

<ol>
<li><p>I hear contradicting things about how Cornell is a party school (not in a bad way, just that they have a lot of parties), and also how they aren’t really. I would assume that with 50 frats if each has at least one party over the year there should be tons of parties, but I could be wrong.
Yeah, there are a lot of parties here. Plenty of opportunities to have fun! Even if parties aren’t for you, there’s plenty of other fun things to do. </p></li>
<li><p>Are the parties hard to get into (especially for underclassmen)? I keep hearing about there being lists for parties and that makes me think “Crap, I’ll never get in”.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>No, unless the party is a really high-end one. Some frats do make it tough to get in, but you shouldn’t have any admission issues with most of them. </p>

<ol>
<li>Is it bad to not be in a frat because I hear they’re big at Cornell, but my parents (who are paying) are against frats so I can’t be in one.
Only ~1/3 ish end up rushing/pledging. You can have fun / enjoy yourself if you’re not in a frat.</li>
</ol>