^exactly. My father is a former national president of my fraternity. When I was applying to college, there were some schools where he would have dissuaded me from joining his own organization (despite how desperately he wanted me to follow in his footsteps) and other schools where he would anxiously await to hear that I was pledging.
This is arguably one of the most important skills to be garnered by greek org membership. Greek orgs are a 24/7 group unlike most of the other things you mentioned, and learning the dynamics of running an organization around the clock with relatively loose goals is far better leadership training than being president of an interest group with very specific goals that meets with some frequency and then disperses. In my experience, the differences in ability with things like managing institutional memory, managing meetings (e.g. setting and sticking to agendas, limiting useless debate), dealing with intragroup conflicts, and generating policies are night and day between people who have greek house leadership experience in good houses and those who didn’t have such an experience.
Anyone who thinks the greek houses are getting worse wasn’t paying enough attention in previous decades. I don’t blame anyone for not doing so though, as it was very hard to stay in the know in previous decades. The internet, email, social media, and camera phones have made it easier to see what goes on and allows stories to garner national public attention vs. only local public attention like in the past. The houses are getting better (with of course plenty of room to improve), the difference is that a) what is acceptable in society is changing (coughdaterapecough) b) a much higher percentage of the negative things are leaving the confines of the house and c) the things that leave the house are far more likely now to sweep across the nation.
@ConcertoinD, if you feel so strongly about this, maybe at least you should mention which organization you are a part of. I know that mine doesn’t have nearly the rate of incidents that yours does and if you are going to advocate for the elimination of all organizations, the least you could do is make sure people beyond just your son know how bad your organization is.