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<p>Then you wouldn’t want to hang around with those people anyway. What, do you think abolishing a Greek system would make them want to hang out with a different crowd? People can be just as exclusionary on a non-Greek campus as a Greek campus.</p>
<p>Definitely a matter of choice and there is no right or wrong. I would not have joined a sorority if my life depended on it but that is just me. 3 of my 4 children (a fourth still in HS) have not had any interest, and in fact have a bit of disdain for them. But I think that most of them have pros and cons and it is for each individual to decide. There is also a huge difference among them depending on campus.</p>
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<p>Don’t know what you mean by “buying friends.” A student is not “buying friends” if he joins the Young Democrats, or the student newspaper, the intramurals tennis team, or the Dungeons & Dragons club, so I’m not sure why he is “buying friends” by joining a fraternity.</p>
<p>And somehow I suspect that non-Greek students between the ages of 18 - 22 are just as much trying to get laid as Greek students. That part of the whole thing is called human nature.</p>
<p>Glad you are enjoying the other thread. I will say that joining a sorority is not all about looks, and that many beautiful girls get turned away as well. I wish joining a sorority was as easy as joining most fraternities. It is about picking someone that you want to live with essentially. Where a sorority recruitment is very secretive and nerve-wracking, most fraternity recruitments are about finding guys that you like to talk to. </p>
<p>I would never say that fraternities are all good and all bad, but it can be a part of the college experience. My DS is an only child, and he wants the brotherhood that he never had. he knows that of all my friends, my sorority sisters have been there for me through everything.
From the other thread, wait til you get to the part where someone campares my support of the Greek system to condoning apartheid in South Africa in the 80s. It is a good read.</p>
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<p>Maybe more so, really.</p>
<p>If the objective of a group of organizations is to get together and socialize and have fun, the thing to remember is that they want to be around a lot of people a lot of the time. I think, whether it is your thing or not, a Greek system adds to the socializing on campus, which is more about openness than closedness, really. </p>
<p>I suppose if you are sensitive to these kinds of things it might bother you, but if you believe people who are going to exclude people for being overweight wouldn’t do it outside the context of a greek system, you are very naive.</p>
<p>You wouldn’t call your mother a mutt</p>
<p>You wouldn’t call your country a c***</p>
<p>Sorry, these were frequent retorts in my fraternity.</p>
<p>The main plus to greek life is the common bond shared with your brothers or sisters. You start out by going through the same pledge process as everyone before you. Your pledge brothers or sisters start out as teammates in your battle to survive. They end up becoming your lifelong friends, along with all the other members and alumni. You are instantly part of a close knit club, with built-in friends and activities. Always an intramural team available, always a friend to join you for dinner, always a party to attend or to host, always someone around for spur of the moment fun, always someone who took the same class last year and can help you now, always someone who knows someone who is hiring, etc.</p>
<p>I didn’t want to join a fraternity. My suitemates did, and I followed them more or less to stay friends with them. I have no regrets. Over 25 years later, we are still close friends. Actually, we’re still brothers.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl,</p>
<p>What I mean by buying friends is that some of the folks who join F’s or S’s are willing to pay membership dues to the national organization to get “brothers” and “sisters.” You pay money to socialize. </p>
<p>Is there anything wrong with that? </p>
<p>Not really. Not from my point of view. </p>
<p>But please let’s be honest here. F’s and S’s do charitable work but that is certainly not the primary focus of the organizations. And I think it is less than honest to say that people in F’s and S’s still have time and want to socialze with people not in F’s and S’s. Not really. You might not have time or access given that you might not see your old friends as much. Bottom line: you will be hanging out with your F or S friends for the most part. Please don’t try to buffalo me that that isn’t true. </p>
<p>Again, nothing wrong with that. </p>
<p>Regarding the weight challenged thing: … can anyone honestly deny that a heavy set person is going to get into the cool F’s or S’s. Ain’t going to happen. In post #21 on this thread Pizza says you wouldn’t hang out with them anyway. That might be true. Might not. Life isn’t fair. But lets not deny that some folks are left out. Lets not pretend F’s or S’s are organizations that do much more than party and socialize.</p>
<p>My son’s story from Michigan, or why a fraternity was good having nothing to do with leadership, philanthopy, etc.</p>
<p>My son really liked Michigan right off the bat, but his social life just wasn’t all he wanted. He didn’t meet that great group on the floor of his dorm. He had friends, but in his words, no place to “chill” after studying. </p>
<p>To his parents suprise, he rushed in the Spring, and it was an instant success. It provided the active social life he liked. He loved the parties, the formals, the dressing up (he’s a much better dresser now than his Dad). He apparently picked well because he made his closest friends there. </p>
<p>In the Spring, due in part to joining the fraternity, everything settled in for him. He got comfortable in class and started to pull excellent grades. You could just see his confidence grow on many levels, academic and social. </p>
<p>I’m sure if I knew all the details of the drinking there would be an element to this that would make be queasy. But this is a story of one kid, at one particular school, where joining a fraternity was one piece of the puzzle for a very successful college carrier. </p>
<p>P.S. As for the term “frat,” I regularly tease him by calling him “frat boy,” as does his twin brother, who doesn’t think very highly of frats, but tells his friends that his twin doesn’t fit the bad stereotype.</p>
<p>“…but it seems to me the primary purpose is to drink, live in a big house together and try to get as many chicks as possible.”</p>
<p>Pretty much what I observed as a student at Greek-dominated school. A lot of people have this impression for a reason. My opinion: I wouldn’t want my kids to join fraternities or sororities. There might be some good things, like charitable work, friendships, networking, etc.
but I wouldn’t say the good outweighs the bad.</p>
<p>OP,
In a nutshell, this is what you will hear on this subject: Nearly all posters who were/are actual members of fraternities and sororities will tell you they were wonderful, worthwhile experiences (there will be a few exceptions to this). Nearly all posters have never been members of fraternities and sororities (and whose kids are not members) will reinforce the negative stereotypes about them.</p>
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<p>AGAIN, this is campus-by-campus specific. On some campuses, it is expected that Greeks socialize mostly with their own house or at least stay within the Greek system. On other campuses, it doesn’t matter one darn bit – if you have friends outside your house / outside the Greek system, who the heck cares? They are your friends and you’ll still do whatever other outside activities you desire. </p>
<p>Some of it is also driven by logistics. I went to a school where the fraternities / sororities were housed right in the middle of the campus, interspersed with “regular” dorms … so we weren’t isolated at all, we walked to class with whoever we wanted to walk to class with. In other campuses, the Greeks live on some kind of Greek row that is physically distant from where non-Greek students live so living there can isolate one or make it more difficult to socialize with students who live elsewhere. Again, you cannot make a blanket statement. </p>
<p>At a lower-key campus like my own, you hung out with who you wanted to hang out with. Yes, you had “obligations” - chapter meetings once a week and participating in rush … but if you didn’t want to do those obligations, well, then presumably you didn’t want to belong in the first place. They were hardly more onerous than the requirements of other clubs / activities on campus. </p>
<p>But it’s hardly “bad” to hang out with your f / s brothers / sisters. If you didn’t like them, then why the heck join in the first place? That’s like saying that I should be careful not to join the tennis team because I might wind up hanging around the tennis players a lot.</p>
<p>I attended a large state U and came away with a very negative impression of Greek life. My DS, who attends a very small LAC joined a fraternity (I always called them frats!) and it has been a great experience. It hasn’t affected his non-Greek friendships and activities at all. Every school and environment is different.</p>
<p>I had no interest in Greek life when I was looking at colleges, and one of the reasons I picked the school I attended was that it had done away with its frats. I would make the same choice today. BUT, both of my sons went to schools that have a significant Greek presence, both joined frats, and it was/is a positive experience for both. I will say that while I’ve seen the benefits for each of them, some of the things I’ve heard about (rush, pledging) still make me scratch my head.</p>
<p>In an ideal world, colleges and universities would model behavior we would hope to see in the big, bad Real World. Hopefully, when my S’s go to school they end up in a big dorm with people from all over the place all of whom have an interesting story and background and future. Hopefully, my sons get to know all of them. That’s part of the growth experience. </p>
<p>Some will be weight challenged, some will be short, some will be into Rock&Roll, some will be jocks, some will have parents that own successful businesses, some will be from the wrong side of the tracks, some will be from India and China, some will be from the same city they came from in the first place. I place a high value of school that make the dorms the center of the social scene to sort of force these sorts of social connections. When you pick your friends a lot of times that doesn’t happen. Oh, I know, there are a few “different” folks mixed in but don’t pull my leg and tell me people won’t be left out and then say no one gets left out …</p>
<p>They just didn’t get invited to join so that they can enhance opportunities to socialize with people not in the F or S. That’s not being exclusive! We’re doing them a favor since we don’t like them anyway! </p>
<p>Ideally that is the way it might work. I think the schools that use the dorms as social hubs are kind of cool. </p>
<p>Imagine you do get left out. Well, you better work hard. Because you might get left out again many years later when trying to get a job or promotion by a brother doing another brother a favor. Life just isn’t fair.</p>
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<p>One of the great things about my alma mater was that you had the Greek system for those who wanted, but you also had a residential-college system for those who preferred the concept of the dorm being the center of social life. And here’s the cool thing. You could participate in both if you so chose, along with any other campus activity of your liking. No one stopped you.</p>
<p>And one more time with feeling … THIS IS ALL DIFFERENT CAMPUS BY CAMPUS.
Some Greek systems will have very homogenous houses (here are all the jocks, here are all the rich blonde girls, etc.). Others will have very diverse houses. As someone who was upper middle class and white, my sorority had girls of all ethnicities / religions / socioeconomic backgrounds and no one thought twice. We had a Hispanic president and a Afr Am president during my time there. No one blinked an eye. My H’s fraternity was historically associated with Jews, but his two best friends in the house were Afr Am and Thai. Again, no one blinked an eye. I think you are laboring under the delusion that every system creates houses that are non-diverse. You are dealing with the stereotype of the southern Greek houses and applying them everywhere. Please don’t. It’s really tiresome.</p>
<p>ACCecil: Regarding your above post, you can also find this kind of diversity in a S or F, again, depending on the campus. </p>
<p>You asked early on if you were being small-minded with your presumptions about fraternities. Actually, you asked a good question (which is important - as you can see, it’s been asked and rehashed many times before), but you are answering many posts based on your initial presumption (which is quite judgemental). I can’t actually tell if you are being open to both sides of this discussion.</p>
<p>The bottom line – and I’ve read/participated in many of these Greek threads – is that it really really depends on the campus. You just can’t generalize. </p>
<p>I participated in the Greek system at college (with PizzaGirl!) and it was NOT what I think you are picturing. Accepting, diverse, campus-oriented - be friends with sisters, be friends with non-Greeks. It added to the richness of my college experience (and I just reconnected with a sister this weekend and it was like I saw her yesterday because of our common ground).</p>
<p>You will get opinions on both sides of this issue. Hopefully, your DS can figure out what is best for him on his campus.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl,</p>
<p>No, actually my lack of enthusiasm for F’s and S’s isn’t based on a lack of diversity. I can understand the contributions on this, and other threads, from parents who have said that there S or D wasn’t getting as much social interaction as they wanted from just whomever fate happened to toss together into their dorms so they joined an F or S and now they are thriving. </p>
<p>That isn’t that hard to comprehend for me. </p>
<p>I’m not 100% against F’s or S’s for my sons. </p>
<p>But there had better be a better reason for joining than pooling money for a keg, etc.</p>
<p>By the way, I lived in dorms the entire time I was in school and there were more than a few boring nights in the dorm trust me. Dorms can be a lot less than perfect too.</p>
<p>Since I am an alumna of a fraternity for women (yes, some of the 26 National Panhellenic Conference organizations for women were chartered as fraternities), and a staff member of the same, I admit I am biased.</p>
<p>However, there must be value in fraternity and sorority life or else the following schools’ administrations would not right now be adding additional chapters to their campuses: Stanford, Cal Berkeley, Penn, NYU, Lehigh, Drexel, Central Florida, Virginia Commonwealth, Indiana, DePaul, University of San Francisco, and St. Joseph’s. JHU, Michigan and Kansas State added new sororities in the last two years.</p>
<p>What many parents may not realize is that almost every university administration now has a set of standards that the Greek organizations must follow. In addition to reporting to their national organizations and following its policies, they must also file reports to the school and meet its recognition criteria. Greek life has become much more of a partnership between the administration and the national organizations.</p>
<p>I think what Bay said earlier is correct…most people will have opinions about greek life based on thier own experiences in college…some are negative and some are postiive. It really depends on the culture of that particular school. </p>
<p>My D pledged a sorority in the fall. It has been a wonderful experience for her. She goes to a very large university, but only 12% of the student body is greek. It has made her very large school much smaller. I think that the greek percentage can be a factor…If there is a high percentage of greeks, then the culture is going to be more pervasive.</p>
<p>MyD has had leadership and philanthropic opportunities that she would not have had otherwise. She will have many interesting things to put on her resume and they are worthwhile. She has met some really good friends. She will live in the house next year which is significantly less expensive than her dorm this year…and very safe. Our experience has been great! One other thing to consider is that most fraternities and sororities have grade requirements and study hours. At many schools, the greek community has a higher GPA overall due to these rules…
The only negative that I can come up with is the recruitment process…that is one thing I do not want to go through again as a mother…it is very stressful…however, I must state that my D goes to a school that has a very competitive and brutal recruitment. Before any starts to criticize that process…if you ask her, she will say it was worth it in the end. She is very happy:)</p>
<p>As far as fraternities…she refers to them as “frat daddies”…(tongue in cheek)…and they are “fratastic”…</p>
<p>Why can’t “it’s a fun way to meet new people and socialize” be enough of a reason to join? It’s enough of a reason for an adult to join, say, the Junior League or Hadassah or Knights of Columbus or similar organizations. Or, for that matter, the college alumni club in their city.</p>
<p>As someone who is naturally introverted, who could easily have spent all my college years buried in the library (as LINYMOM will attest!), who was in a special dual major that took up most of my classes (I had fewer electives), and who happened to be assigned to a very small dorm my freshman year, joining a sorority was an introduction to a BROADER range of girls than just the girls-on-my-floor. I wouldn’t have otherwise known engineers, or theatre majors, or journalism majors, since I wasn’t taking classes with them.</p>