Greek life was great! My husband and I met because we are/were Greek. I would have never have crossed paths with him on campus if not for Greek life… Our majors were to different. Could I have met some other nice young man, sure but I wouldn’t have my wonderful kids that I do now and my best friend at my side. Our oldest is a senior and he wants to go Greek. No, that does not make his IQ go down! Do we have reservations. Yes, you hear these awful stories and bashing of the Greek life. Our son only knows that we had a great time, played a big part of our college experience and that we still get together with those friends all most 30 years later. He wants that, could he get that another way in college, possibly but he is not one that joins things. He is willing to rush and find a house that fits him. With Greek life you have study hall, meetings, date parties and campus involvement. All we can do is hope that he makes smart choices. Will this limit his pool of friends yes and no but for him I hope that he will join some other clubs/groups but if he doesn’t that would be ok. I can tell you within my sorority and my husbands fraternity their was a broad range of individuals, not all members are going to have the same major or be best friends with each other. you will find your group within that house.
^^ You can pledge as a sophomore, and often in the spring. People who have issue with certain houses should vote with their feet, and pick the houses they can honestly support.
^^ I agree with you about the time frame, which was actually the OP’s issue. Second semester is much better. The students are more acclimated to school, they have met people both in and out of Greek life, and can absolutely make a much more informed decision.
“Stop taking it as a personal affront to your particular child’s experience as opposed to institutional issues.”
That’s hard to do when others are so against the system that the IQ of Greeks have diminished by several points. If enough people say that Greek life was a good experience, then maybe what we hear in the news is the exception and not the norm. The news isn’t going to report a good bonding experience or friends for life. Too boring.
One poster mentioned IQ. Don’t paint all of us offering our thoughts with the same brush, please.
“could he get that another way in college, possibly but he is not one that joins things. He is willing to rush and find a house that fits him. With Greek life you have study hall, meetings, date parties and campus involvement”
Let me play devil’s advocate here - if your son is willing to put himself out there for the rush process, he could definitely put himself out there by joining a couple clubs and activities that match his interests. I’d think it would actually be less intimidating for most.
Maybe they can join a football team to get out of the hazing…
My point is, there is good and bad in every aspect of Greek life and college athletics and church groups ( I have a friend of a friend who said she first tried drugs on a church retreat).
And you are right - the IQ was just from one person - I apologize.
“put himself out there by joining a couple clubs and activities that match his interests.”
FYI - Most of the members of my son’s fraternity DO belong to clubs. They also hold internships and jobs. To say that they are excluding themselves is just not the case. Most members are ambitious and want to succeed in their major and future career.
Perhaps this thread would be more productive if posters (a) describe characteristics of campus fraternity and sorority systems that are indicators of desirability and undesirability, and how students and parents can find out about them, and (b) name specific examples of campuses and/or chapters with desirable and undesirable characteristics.
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1886771-schools-with-harsh-fraternity-and-or-sorority-systems-or-those-with-disagreeable-practices-p1.html (particularly replies #6 and #8) would be examples of (a), though some of these are sorority-specific.
Fraternity-specific aspects may be more related to such things as:
- Alcohol and party practices (may be subject to rules by the school and/or fraternity national organization).
- Hazing – prohibited, but obedience and enforcement of rules probably varies considerably.
- Safety practices to prevent sexual misconduct (at parties and otherwise).
For both, some issues could be:
- Rush/pledge process.
- Level of racial segregation/integration among the various chapters.
- Whether any chapters have disciplinary action taken against them, and how strict the relevant rules are.
Is any college ok with hazing?! Yet, it continues to happen.
Ditto with alcohol and party practices. The PennState frat with the pledge that died in February was supposed to be dry.
I would also imagine that parents could be unaware about what goes on at some places.
My son’s fraternity that he will be joining in Jan is quite different from the fraternities I have see here in TX. It is much more laid back, not as party oriented and very easy to pledge. My son received an offer after just getting to know some guys through classes and an alumni function and since they all got along well they made him an offer to join. No rush, no mess. Yes he will be a pledge but from talking to several parents (one was a house mom there) it is very mild. They are competing for the top GPA. Why a fraternity. Well, most of the kids don’t want to live in the dorms forever but don’t really want the apartments either. The frat house is right across the street from the dorms and has good food. It is only a few hundred more than the dorm. My son is in two academic clubs and is doing research with his department already. It isn’t one or the other. Some fraternities are just like you mention. Some chapters of the fraternity he is joining are terrible. I also know some that are great. It all depends on where you are and what house. It isn’t all bad. (This is from a mom who did feel it was all bad when I was in college in TX). I’m realizing it is different at different places.
“Whether any chapters have disciplinary action taken against them, and how strict the relevant rules are.”
I think that how rigorously the rules are enforced is a big issue. These big parties are not hard to find.
" Level of racial segregation/integration among the various chapters."
I agree conceptually, but this is a tough one to assess because often an AA student may join an AA frat or sorority and not be interested in a largely white frat. If certain frats/sororities are not seriously attempting to recruit URM students, which is probably the case on some campuses, that is an issue. However, if URMs feel that they were included but chose other options, then I don’t see a problem. Also, that is more likely to be a reason why URM’s are underrepresented, but should not be a reason that there are not any.
My perspective: I arrived at my college as a transfer (from a cc). I knew a handful of people there - all guys coincidentally and I wanted friends. The girls in my dorm who were not Greek already had their own groups of friends and weren’t particularly interested in getting to know me. The sororities had rush parties that I could sign up for and attend so I did. I pledged soon after and never regretted it.
As for the comments here regarding lack of diversity, it so happens that I recently saw some photos from the Pi Beta Phi Chapter at a school close to where I live now (George Mason University). Feel free to google. The photos I saw showed a lot of diversity. There are other chapters/schools where Greek life reflects this.
“Much of the Greek system is ALL ABOUT prejudice!”
That is a ridiculous statement."
How is this ridiculous? What is rushing but a popularity contest? Or a beauty pageant? Why are there so few women and men of color in the Greek system? Why do people get turned down? Oh, wait… they get turned down after a thoughtful meeting of the minds and deep intellectual discussions about values, politics, philosophy and cute shoes.
:))
For traditionally African American fraternities and sororities, freshman joining is discouraged for the very reasons listed Not one of the Divine 9 allows you to consider joining unless you’ve had at least one semester of school because there are GPA requirements which you obviously can’t meet as a first semester freshman. Also, activities cannot be scheduled during exam periods, etc. The dates and times have to be approved and are based upon the individual school’s schedule. Most intake periods are near the middle of the spring semester.
The Greek make up reflects the make up of the school. My daughter is a member of my sorority and while my chapter had one black woman (not surprising at a school that was only 2-3% black, and most of them were football players), hers is very multi-culture because her school is. If you look at a picture of our sorority from the RPI or Case Western chapters, they are very diverse. MIT, Harvard, Cal all have members who reflect their school’s make up.
My house was diverse in different ways than race because the school just wasn’t racially diverse. I went to my first Seder at the house because a few Jewish sisters hosted it. We had quite a few engineering students, and I would have had no contact with engineers without being in the same house. These are very successful women, who at the time were in a college dominated by men. They wanted a community of women for support. I was at a state school so the majority of students were local, but I had sorority sisters from Hawaii, NJ, California, Alaska.
My daughter’s at a STEM school, so outnumbered by men. The women in her sorority are supportive. They come to her games to cheer her on, the help her with books and studying if she needs it, they give her an opportunity to have fun and relieve stress. They are officers in other campus groups. The president of her house was also president of the mechanical engineering society, on the women’s jet car team that traveled around the country, in a few other campus activities, and still managed to get 4 full scholarships to grad schools including Georgia Tech and Columbia. Amazing since we now know her IQ is so low after joining a sorority!
If you don’t like sororities or fraternities, don’t join one, or go to a school that doesn’t have them (because, gee, those eating clubs at Princeton are so much more civilized and absolutely include everyone). But I ask you, can you contact 50 college classmates within an hour? All we have to do is call the national organization and they’ll produce a list. Handy.
Clearly not at every school. UF and FSU are roughly 40% minority, yet not a single person of color appears among the 250 or so women in these pictures.
https://www.theodysseyonline.com/recruitment-is-really-like
http://www.cbhscircuit.com/?p=5538
http://axofloridastate.blogspot.com/2012/09/bid-day-2012.html
Why there are apparently no students of color in those sororities I don’t know, but I do know that it would make the houses unattractive to me. It’s a little like a school where a bunch of students of color were accepted but none chose to attend, leaving an entirely lily-white campus. Even if it’s not the school’s fault I wouldn’t choose to attend that school.
These days with Facebook and other social media getting in touch is pretty easy. Post a message on the class FB page and you can reach half your class in a couple of minutes. In any case all I’d have to do to get a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers for my graduation year classmates at my LAC is to call the alumni office. In fact I actually have that list on my computer. My class has business networking events, pub nights, golf outings, trips and other events that don’t require people to be anything other than an alumnus or spouse. They don’t even have to be from our year.
Different strokes for different folks. Greek just ain’t my stroke.
Many of the minority students at the big southern sororities choose to join the traditionally black sororities, the houses their mothers and grandmothers and aunts belong to. That has been an obstacle to integrating the houses. Alabama has been trying to do it, and there are many more Hispanic and Asian girls who have joined the national panhel houses, but not many black women want to because they have their own strong traditions.
Look at the pictures from RPI, or Yale, or Cal. Very mixed.
And do you throw together a group of 50 of your LAC classmates, Sue22? Not the school organizing homecoming, but just you and your 50 dormmates, or 50 kids who worked together on the Heart Association fundraising?
“,my D17 is attending a school where Rush is not until Spring semester , and I am very grateful for this. She may or may not Rush, but by then she will have a better sense of self. I just dont get why more schools dont have this rule, that as a freshman you need to wait to spring”
There is a large downside to Spring rush. Kids may have done the very hard work to form friend groups first semester only to have the group thrown off kilter as some rush, some don’t , some get into houses the others had hoped for but didn’t etc… First semester rush has downsides too, the ones you point out, but having two kids go through rush, one fall amd one spring, I’d vote for Fall rush.
“Many schools have clubs or theme houses, some of them even based on racial identity or other factors a student can’t control. The big difference is that generally anyone is able to join.”
There are non-Greek houses at my daughters school called " selective living groups" that are MUCH more selective than Pan-hel. In Pan-hel you are guaranteed a bid of you max out on your preferences in each round.
“But I ask you, can you contact 50 college classmates within an hour? All we have to do is call the national organization and they’ll produce a list. Handy.”
In addition to facebook, add linkedin and colleges’ online groups. Easy peasy.