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can anyone tell me about partying as a male NOT involved in a fraternity??? Is it much harder to party?
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<p>If you don't go Greek, you and your friends can still go to parties on campus hosted by frats or SLG's or whoever. I've never seen a closed party. All of the parties you hear about are for anyone to attend.</p>
<p>Everyone at Duke has access to parties.
Some frats are more exclusive to others in terms of who they allow.
However, you can count on some like Pike, ATO, and DTD to hold open section parties.</p>
<p>are there covers?</p>
<p>As for what to do if you don't drink, I can answer that. I didn't drink freshman year and what I usually did was hang out with my friends from the dorm, go get dinner and such. If you like big parties (I don't personally) you can also go to the parties on campus and not drink. I know some people that did that but I personally don't see the appeal. (either way, drinking or not, I don't like those parties so that really is just my personal preference) Also, the RA's will be doing programing throughout the first few weeks (after orientation) and those will have nothing to do with drinking.</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>as a male not involved in a fraternity, it is harder to party. i hate to be blunt, but it is the truth, more or less. i would keep an open mind about it.</p>
<p>first semester freshman year, it's fine since you can't possibly be greek yet. then beginning of second semester rush is starting up, so the events other than like a house party or a section party are all technically closed, and once pledging begins, a lot of stuff is geared for brothers (date functions, brother events, mixers, etc). from this point onwards, if there is an "open" party, i have male friends who said it was weird to go unless they had friends in the fraternity. you had an option to rush, and you didn't. outside of that there are certainly "closed" parties in a sense that word is intentionally not spread and kept to those "familiar faces" even in the aforementioned fraternities. </p>
<p>that being said, there are plenty of well connected independents who have friends in the fraternities and friends who didn't rush and still have a BLAST and tons of friends and are welcome everywhere (i think this is a great situation, to be quite honest)-- but more rare.</p>
<p>being of age also makes not being in a frat easier, since by this point, so much of the duke social life exists at bars where things like affiliation don't matter at all (aside from "oh ATO is hosting here, kappa sig is hosting here, aepi is hosting here" and choosing between those options).</p>
<p>any idea what percent of people (guys and girls) who rush don't get offered a bid?</p>
<p>It's tough to say.
I would say more people get bids than not.
It often matters by where you choose to invest your rushing time.
I know of two people in my hall who spent a lot of time with one specific frat but ended up not getting a bid.
I know of a whole group of people who rushed the same frat and (I think) everyone got a bid except one.</p>
<p>how time consuming is a frat?
how expensive is a frat?
so u can't really part if ur not a frat?</p>
<p>Frats are exhausting and very time consuming during pledge (except a nice dip in your GPA). The costs vary depending on the frat, but they're usually a few hundred a semester (it's possible that the most expensive ones exceed $1000, but I'm not completely sure).</p>
<p>You can certainly party if you're not in a frat. There are a lot of open parties first semester (mostly for frats to get their name out there for rush season). Second semester, you'll probably have made friends so you can party with them even if you don't join a frat. There are a lot of cool independent people as well as your friends who do join SLGs and frats who can invite you to events. And not being in a frat doesn't mean you can't go to club nights when they host (in fact, they DO want you as many people as possible to come for reputation reasons)</p>
<p>So frats host parties in dorms and not in their houses?</p>
<p>Probably a lot safer to do it in section on campus than to do it at some brother's house off campus with ALE crawling about. At least for the freshmen it is.</p>
<p>I dont want to sound dumb or anything but what are SLGs</p>
<p>SLGs = Selective Living Groups. So once you get to soph year on West, if you're not in a fraternity in section, you have the option of joining an SLG. Most of them are co-ed except for Wayne Manor which is just a frat without national dues. But you live together, have programming together, throw section parties, etc. </p>
<p>Frats host a lot in their houses/apartment clusters, especially like pregames, daytime parties, a huge blowout or two the first weekend of school, etc. The section parties are actually limited to a few times a semester, but there's usually drinking going on in section on a low key basis (like let's say Thursday nights) most nights.</p>
<p>Frat dues -- you pay per semester, usually second semester is more expensive because of rush costs. I'd want to say for the year $1500 is average. Which seems expensive dead on, but you have a built in social calendar and a slush fund in that number, which makes it tons more reasonable.</p>
<p>As for the percentage of people who rush and don't get a bid - it's a low number. For girls, if you go back to three parties on the last night of rush, you're guaranteed a bid, and if you're going to only two, it's still extremely likely that you'll get a bid. For guys since it's less systematic/calculated, there's less of a guarantee and safe guard, but if you're rushing a bunch of places and putting in effort to go to the events and meet the brothers in a positive way, you should be fine.</p>
<p>Oh and I think Greens may be thinking of "frat houses" which don't exist at Duke. Fraternities have sections of the dorms that they live in.</p>
<p>Many frats do rent out houses off campus, though.</p>
<p>Sure but that isn't the same thing.</p>
<p>Sure it is.
I'd also honestly go out on a limb and say that the fraternity's off campus housing -- whether it's a house, a compound of houses, or a cluster of apartments and always occupied by its seniors -- is really the true center of the fraternity's social sphere.</p>
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Oh and I think Greens may be thinking of "frat houses" which don't exist at Duke. Fraternities have sections of the dorms that they live in.
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That's odd. How do they get away with the crazy partying if it's in dorms? And for what reason do they not have houses...I've never heard of this.</p>
<p>Green: they can have crazy partying because the police doesn't really care. They don't officially have houses because all students are normally required to live on-campus for 3 years. So a large part of the frats live on-campus. And also I believe that in order to be officially recognized by the university, they have to have on-campus sections.</p>