<p>For OP’s son, I have several friends at Vanderbilt and they’ve said that the fraternity pledging is time-consuming, but it doesn’t take over your life or anything. A school as good as Vanderbilt (and as expensive) will make sure the grades aren’t suffering too badly.</p>
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How exactly would “a school” do that?</p>
<p>actually, most greek organizations have gpa requirements to pledge, and a low HS gpa is often cause for an initial cut during pledge week. Most greek orgs are competitive as to which one has the higher group gpa and have mandatory study hours during the week. A friends D at LSU has seen her D’s gpa go up since joining a sorority there (she joined during the spring.)</p>
<p>“No, but joining the frat is a good way to MAKE SURE it will.”</p>
<p>Oh, please. This is a tired argument. For every example of one who will, I can give you an example of two who didn’t.</p>
<p>“Most greek orgs are competitive as to which one has the higher group gpa and have mandatory study hours during the week.”</p>
<p>This is true and Greek organizations today put those who don’t make a minimum GPA on social probation meaning they cannot attend any social functions until their GPA is raised.</p>
<p>Quote:
My issue with these groups is that the whole rush system is all about being exclusionary, deciding who’s good enough to be part of the select few. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth to think someone could be officially rejected from a social group. Too much judgment and elitism for a bunch of young people.</p>
<p>That is what the real world is like and that is exactly what greek organizations are about. Yes they are about making lifelong friendships and bonds and community service and all that too, but they are meant to be smaller, selective groups that are somewhat difficult to get into. They have standards and if you don’t meet those standards then you don’t get let in. Its just like applying to college or for a job. The point is to be exclusionary and elite.</p>
<p>[Fraternity</a> and Sorority Members and Alcohol and Other Drug Use | Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse and Violence Prevention](<a href=“http://www.higheredcenter.org/services/publications/fraternity-and-sorority-members-and-alcohol-and-other-drug-use]Fraternity”>http://www.higheredcenter.org/services/publications/fraternity-and-sorority-members-and-alcohol-and-other-drug-use)
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<p>NASPA Journal, 2009, Vol. 46, no. 3
journals.naspa.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5017&context=jsarp </p>
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<p>One thing that I didn’t get about the whole process before I looked into it, is that most rush/pledge weeks are a mutual cut process. So it’s not just about a greek org cutting a PNM, it’s also about PNM’s cutting greek orgs that they’re not interested in.</p>
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<p>What are you trying to say? That people don’t need to join fraternities to drink? OK, I agree, but this is about joining and pledging fraternities, you do whatever you are told in rush weeks, that’s how you are judged to be deemed worthy to join that particular fraternity. But ALL fraternities include some drinking and for the OP to say her son said there’s no alcohol involved, it’s not believable. Pledges are judged to fit in with their brothers, and if most drink, the non-compliant kid will not have be given an invitation to pledge.
It has nothing to do with how your student will be influenced by others or the other alternative places to drink.</p>
<p>That said, I don’t think joining a fraternity is detrimental to studies if the student can handle time management. For several weeks at rush and prior to pledging, yes, it can be very time consuming.</p>
<p>Disclaimer, I am speaking generally on the average Greek fraternities, not those that are specifically religious based or strictly service based. Most Greek life is socially centered and in college, alcohol will be involved.</p>
<p>^^
RobD- thank you, this is an important point to make.</p>
<p>Sometime back it occurred to me that I do very,very well in job interviews. When I have gotten interviews, I have almost always gotten a job offer and I have had this happen even right out of college. I think I learned my interview skills from being on both sides of sorority rush. It’s easily the most useful skill I learned in college.</p>
<p>CBREEZE - I originally said there is no alcohol HAZING, in other words, the pledge process doesn’t involve drinking large amounts of alcohol as an “initiation type” thing. Of course, during the rush process (in the fall) there is certainly plenty of “pre-gaming” but of course, that happens at every university, within the greek system and in the dorms.</p>
<p>nngmm, thanks for sharing that article. I would never deny that alcohol is present in many Greek environments but I also know that many restrictions are now in place on some campuses that were not many years ago. For example, in the linked article, much of the article is devoted to strategies for institutions of higher education in addressing the alcohol issues. </p>
<p>On DD’s campus, every one of the strategies listed in the article is currently in place. Also note that the data used for the statistics in the article are 10 years old so hopefully some gains have been made through the use of these strategies.</p>
<p>Cbreeze, my point was that if your kid is going to drink because his peers encourage it, then he is going to drink in college because at some point he will more than likely find himself in a situation where he is being encouraged to drink, regardless of whether he’s in a frat or not. I personally know grown men who were officers of social fraternities and they didn’t (and don’t) drink - sure, many of the others did but they respected these guys and certainly didn’t force it on them. Again, maybe different strokes for different campuses.</p>
<p>Fallgirl, I agree with you about the skills for interviewing. Even directly out of college, once I received an interview, I almost always got the job. DD has found the same success as she navigates grad school interviews.</p>
<p>I drink and I don’t care if any 18-year-old adult drinks.</p>
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<p>Stop with the exaggeration. It’s convenient to think that the pledges are “told what to do” during rush week, but at many places it’s just participating in fun group bonding activities that have nothing to do with drinking. </p>
<p>It has nothing to do with being “judged worthy.” There is no difference between making friends in your dorm / floor (where you’ll find that you want to be friendly with some people and not with others) and making friends in a Greek system. </p>
<p>If I’m on a floor with a bunch of kids who really like Star Trek, or Renaissance-Faire dress-up, or theater, or lacrosse, and I’m not interested in those things, and after feeling one another out realize that we don’t have a lot of basis for friendship, I’m not being “judged unworthy.” We just like different things. That’s all.</p>
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<p>Right. Is it all that different from the college admissions process? You scope out the colleges to see what’s a fit – you visit / listen to the students – and decide whether you want to spend your time there and whether these students are people you want to hang around with. That’s what you do during rush as well.</p>
<p>Wow. How can you compare a college’s process of selecting a student body or an employer making job offers, in each case based on their accomplishments and qualifications, to a frat or sorority accepting and rejecting people they barely know based on the most superficial qualities? We all get to pick our friends, but it’s quite something else to be definitively and officially spurned as not the right kind to join a mere club. That’s not at all what adult social life is like. Freshmen in the throes of adjusting to college life and figuring out their identities shouldn’t be formally judged as worthy or unworthy, of not meeting some “standards” (heaven only knows what those are–the right purse? a good fake ID?) by a bunch of kids. It’s just the institutionalizing of mean girls and mean boys. Notice that when adults do this sort of thing, by blackballing people who want to join ritzy country clubs, we all tsk tsk. I make my “lifelong bonds” with people whose behavior and values I’ve gotten to know over years, not people I met and judged in one hectic week of partying.</p>
<p>My son has a close female friend who’s in a sorority at a school I won’t name in Ohio. From what she tells him, women have to be considered sufficiently pretty in order to be accepted. No “ugly” girls need apply. She doesn’t believe in that kind of thing personally. If she did, I doubt she’d be the kind of person my son would be such good friends with. But I do wonder if that’s something very unusual. I’ve never heard of it, but then again I know nothing about sororities and fraternities. There basically weren’t any where I went to college, at least not fraternities where people actually lived. Just secret societies, and that’s a somewhat different animal I think.</p>
<p>my son, a recent Duke grad, appalled us by Rushing five years ago. Sorry but we are from a generation/place that found that scene to be anachronistic in our era. Somehow he got bids from three frats after distinguishing himself I imagine…as highly sociable–must have been at parties several nights a week to pull that off. This after four years of high school with no dates and no drinking and being a straight arrow and Eagle Scout, musician, serious student etc. He then got mono during pledge season and his first bad grade, dropped a class and picked himself up and regrouped for sophomore year, a more serious student who realized he could not make good grades at Duke without considerable sleep, healthy routines and major effort. But his love for his frat brothers was a constant source of support for him. To his credit, he had circles of friends in two other aspects of college and he went abroad with friends from other arenas in his life.<br>
I am still uncomfortable with his Frat World…when he tells me about the big arguments annually on who to offer bids to, and who gets let down and hurt. But…being in this frat was one of his warm hearths on a tough campus and he is a pack animal…he likes being part of a brotherhood. We don’t have much family and are a bit rootless. For him, a fraternity was like finding out he had a big extended family. I must also admit that his brothers are just great people doing very difficult things already in their young lives. I could see that they were great guys and very much had his back plus many were just great and idealistic pace setters deeply involved with their career goals in medicine and other fields.</p>
<p>Shall I add that when the Recession Ate His Job Offer, after 12 weeks at home post graduation, he found gainful employment with you guessed it…an alum 20 years older than he is …who was a member of his frat. </p>
<p>So, yes, we must eat our left-wing frat averse hats. </p>
<p>Second son at Vandy is going his own way and couldn’t join a group that rejects people for a million dollars. He is also just plain bad at small talk, which is not a good thing but hanging out and chatting up people at parties is not his talent or where he shines. He is having a fabulous time at Vandy in other places where he is a joiner in things that make his heart sing. Nashville is an excellent place for the GDIndependents to live…independent students can simply step off campus and find tons to do without Frat World. He knew Vandy had a strong Frat World…but so does UVA and other schools where he would have been proud to attend. But Nashville’s assets turned out to be a deal-breaker for him. He could see many opportunities clear of Frats around him and knew he would be AOK independent. He has always been the kind of person that is group averse…aspects of things found in scouting and religion and anything else where you had to repeat oaths and pledges etc gave him the willies as a child so he will never get the whole secret society pledge deal. </p>
<p>My advice to him is to refuse to identify himself or his friends as Greek or non-Greek, and to try to stay out of that false paradigm/Definition of self and others in order to not miss out on the opportunities to get to know some great kids who are also Greek at Vandy. The preoccupation with sororities is pretty high at Vanderbilt freshman year but time will soften all that. Life shifts…kids age up, start interning, specializing in majors, living in labs, meeting new classmates or doing other extra curriculars, going abroad etc and before you know it your four years are over.<br>
anyway, I try to respect my sons for having entirely different socialization needs and different things they can tolerate and enjoy despite my own personal prejudices.</p>
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<p>Actually, I find the job interview process VERY analogous to the rush process. Rush was the best prep I had for interviewing.</p>
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<p>Within a short time after meeting people, however, you have a general idea whether you’re going to mesh with them, or whether they’re just not going to be your type. It’s no different with rush. You don’t become friends with everyone you meet, or everyone on the same dorm floor, right? You might go out as a group and decide that you like only these 5 people and the others you don’t care for. Again, what’s the difference?</p>
<p>I can’t speak for the guys, but for the girls, it’s not a “hectic week of partying.” You get to know the girls just as much as you’d get to know girls in your dorm from chatting with them. You get a feel as to who you might enjoy spending time with and who you don’t. It doesn’t mean you’re “rejecting” them, any more than you’re “rejecting” the kids down the hall when you decide to go out with your friends from French class.</p>
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<p>I agree, it was surprisingly a lot like interviews I later had at law firms. At least for the sororities, which require recruitment forms and personal recs like resume/recs in the working world, and like the job interview where you get shuttled from one firm member to another for a short face-to-face, maybe they take you to lunch, and then they make a decision on whether to hire you to occupy the next office 10 hours a day, 5 days a week.</p>