Just looking for more information on Greek Life at Brown. How does it compare to Greek Life at Penn, Cornell, and state schools? How are the fraternity rushing/pledging processes?
Brown doesn’t have a large Greek presence, only 8 pct of women and 12 pct of men last I checked. I don’t know much about it otherwise. Although the parties are attended by non greeks.
Less than 10% of Brown students are involved in Greek life, so it’s definitely much smaller than those other schools you mentioned. It’s just one of many social scenes on campus - plenty of people go their whole Brown career without ever stepping into one of the fraternities. I think that right now, there are 3 sororities, 2-3 co-ed houses (one isn’t technically Greek), and maybe 6 fraternities.
All the houses are on-campus (essentially dorms with more social space). Rush is in January/February, and most students move into the house their sophomore year if they wish. Greek life tends to be relatively chill - simple pledging process, etc.
Additionally, the university just kneecapped Greek social life this year and I imagine it’s only the beginning of harsher things to come. There’s certainly a lot more to Greek life than parties, but even worse it’s an example of a backwards social policy. Kind of like when the university made people charge money per drink (instead of higher covers with free drinks) in an attempt to cut down on pre-gaming.
You can guess how I feel about it.
How often do Greek Parties occur at Brown?
A current student will have to way in on the aftermath. When I was a student in 2005-2009 I’d say at least one house was throwing a large party nearly every weekend. Houses would specifically avoid having competing large events although smaller events would happen concurrently so there was always something happening every weekend. There were also parties by program houses too (art house, buxton, and machado in particular) which might disappear now too.
How do the fraternities differ from each other and does everyone get a bid?
There were very few large parties in the greek houses this past semester due to some changes in university policy, but that may not be the case for this coming year - we’ll have to wait and see.
@abrad1998: different cultures, mostly. Some are affiliated with specific groups (AEPi is Jewish, many Thetes are on the football team…), some are less so. Not everyone gets a bid, but I know for my house, if you show up at a few rush events and seem generally interested/not creepy, you’ll get a bid. The sororities have a combined rush system, and I think most girls get a bid at one of the three houses if they express an interest. Not sure about other houses.
When I was in the house there was maybe 1 kid per year who clearly wanted a bid from us that didn’t get it. Otherwise it felt more like we were under more pressure to be good enough to get them to accept the bid than they felt pressure to be good enough to get a bid.