<p>I was wondering if the sororities/fraternities at Tech are focused on things such as volunteering and developing friendships, used as an excuse to party, or a little of both. Because when I toured Tech a few months ago, the tour guide was, simply put, saying how awesome the fraternities and sororities are because they are very involved with helping the community, but when I saw the front lawn of one of the buildings, it, uh.. was heavily 'decorated' with cans. Haha, and I thought Tech had no party life.. </p>
<p>It is hard to create one generalization that describes all of the fraternal organizations on campus because their is such a diversity in regards to greek life. There is at least one coed service fraternity (alpha phi omega) who’s primary focus is to participate in community service activities. I believe they do a project once a week either on campus or in the surrounding community. There is also a Christian fraternity with a similar focus. There are also numerous honors societies that are technically “fraternities.”</p>
<p>However, when most people refer to the “greek culture,” they are referring to the social fraternities. These are the organizations with the big houses and the parties. All fraternal organizations participate in service in some capacity, but the bottom line with social fraternities is this: There are parties. They commonly have alcohol. There are also disciplinary problems with said alcohol. Tech has an informal “work hard, play hard” mentality, and the greek culture takes this philosophy to heart. I’m not quite sure who told you Tech doesn’t have a party scene, but they were mistaken.</p>
<p>I have but one recommendation to a new student regarding greek and the decision to pledge: Participate in rush week activities, but don’t pledge your first semester. Wait until you can understand first hand what the greek community is really like. These organizations are on their best behavior during rush, so wait for their true colors to come out before you make any decisions. Plus, pledging (especially a fraternity) is a huge time commitment. Wait to get adjusted to college before taking that on.</p>
<p>As a side note: I have a feeling your tour guide was one of those annoying brain-washed types. Be careful talking to these people because it is hard to get an objective perspective from them.</p>
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<li><p>Social Fraternities are the ones you normally hear about. They’re organizations often with their own houses, have pledges, that throw parties, participate in Greek week, have formals, have secret handshakes, and organize events. They exist so that people with mutual interests can get together and pool their money for social events (you and 4 friends can pool money and throw a small party, but you and 100 friends can pool money and throw a huge party with a band). You can only join one social fraternity. These include the 31 members of the inter-fraternal council (IFC) and the four historically black fraternities on the National Pan-Hellenic (NPH). </p></li>
<li><p>Special interest fraternities are organizations built around a specific goal or purpose. For example, there are cultural fraternities based on nationality, there are service organizations (APO was already mentioned), there are fraternities that serve individual majors and professions, there are professional fraternities that exist for job seekers / recruitment, and there are honor fraternities that require certain grades or accomplishments to join. You can join multiple special interest fraternities and you can join special interests and one social fraternity. Special interest fraternities sometimes have social events associated with them, but that is not their purpose (though some of them try really hard to be social organizations). These are basically what you would call “clubs” in high school and are usually “co-ed”.</p></li>
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<p>Also, I would like to throw out there that Tech has all sorts. The tour route cuts in front of some of the frats who often don’t get the Thursday night parties cleaned up until after the Friday tour time, for example - it’s really frustrating as a tour guide (who is in no way “brain-washed”. I like Tech, and I like telling people WHY I like Tech). The fraternities and sororities at Tech that you’re referring to are social organizations. However, they do have a lot of benefit to the school as a whole, in both student involvement and later when they become alumni.</p>