I don’t see how allowing those “exceptions” makes Brandeis a best policy place. If you are a member of an athletic team, student government, music group, work team, or even certain majors with limited enrollment, and build your friend group around that, then you are just as “exclusionary” as members of fraternities, who do not necessarily limit their friendships to their organization, just like everyone else who is in an organization.
You are simply being judgmental about which groups are entitled to exclude others and which are not, using the words “special skill or talent.” All campus groups can function with anyone interested who wants to join. You are making arbitrary exceptions because you do not value social skills or personal compatibility criteria for membership.
Have you ever seen the lunch tables in a public high school cafeteria? Talk about exclusionary and self-segregating!
Your notion of college as an egalitarian Shangri La is very different from my actual impressions and experience at a variety of colleges and universities. Teens and young adults are some of the most self-segregating judgmental people around. You can’t fairly single out greek life for being exclusionary; it’s reflected in nearly every aspect of human life including college admissions.
Yes I am. It’s not different. If you only want to hang out with people like yourself, you have the whole rest of your life to do that.
And BTW I’m really not just talking about racial/ethnic exclusions. I’m also talking about the kids who simply don’t get “invited” to join. Their families pay just as much tuition as the kids who get invited, and those kids are entitled to no less of a meaningful undergraduate experience as anybody else.
I agree with you, soze, that every interested student should be guaranteed a place in some fraternity, and some college sorority systems do have a procedure in place that does just that. (I don’t know as much about fraternities). In many cases, it is the college that prevents this from happening, because they won’t allow new chapters to form to accommodate everyone. But I definitely agree that the system would be better if there was enough space for everyone to join a house.
No, and those admissions decisions are made by trained professionals, not a bunch of kids. If someone is good enough for Brandeis, they are good enough for an organization within Brandeis.
“No, it’s because I don’t think a bunch of 20-year-old kids are in any position to be judging a bunch of 18-year-old kids on how “acceptable” they are.”
Those same judgments occur every single day. There were girls in my hall / dorm who I thought were weird and I didn’t want to hang out with them. There were other girls who were likely plenty nice people but for whatever reason we just didn’t hit it off - maybe they were interested in partying and I wasn’t, or they were super into theater and I wasn’t. There’s no difference in the judgment being made - I wish you well, but I’m not interested in having you be in my friend group. Are you friends with everyone in your child’s school, your neighborhood, your workplace? No. You like some people more than others and vice versa. Same thing.
I’m not quite saying that. I’m taking it further.
If a student wants to be a member of fraternity XYZ, they should be allowed to join XYZ. End of story. I can’t come up with a single, legitimate reason for XYZ to exclude any student who is “good enough” for admissions to the university.
Of course what I’m proposing would mean the end of the traditional fraternity system, which is fine by me.
“Yes I am. It’s not different. If you only want to hang out with people like yourself, you have the whole rest of your life to do that.”
Um, of all schools, Brandeis has a particular “type” - northeast, urban, liberal Jewish kids who taught Hebrew school, do some social justice work and are fresh-faced, eager and want to save the world. (My son was interested in Brandeis. I have no doubt that he would have done well and fit in well there.)
Greek life is not required, it’s optional. It’s not for everyone, as is evidenced by 10-20% average participation rates at schools who have it. If a kid involves him/herself, they understand the rules of the game, which includes potential “arbitrary” exclusion of some. Truth is, the kids typically self select in both directions - you don’t try and join a group that doesn’t share background/interests.
Also I’m having a hard time reconciling your idea of why college should be the only time in a person’s life where they should be free of arbitrary discrimination when most have been facing it since the Kindergarten playground and will continue to do so throughout their career. Why should everyone have a free pass for just college?
@soze I get your point but on the other hand I would argue that it is pretty difficult to become friends with an entire campus. Many kids need small groups as a way to organize relationships. Adults do too, for that matter. My parents were in a bridge club for 30 years. Same 6 couples. Were they exclusionary? Their bridge club didn’t define them, but it was one of many activities that they participated in.
Campuses can help tamp down the exclusionary aspects through their policies. At Sewanee, frat/sorority social events are open to all students. The frats and the sororities are non-residential. D talked to many students during her visits there and all spoke highly of the system.
I was under the impression that there are plenty of student-run groups who choose their membership without professional help, like newspapers, a Capella groups, student government (obviously), probably some intramural sports teams, etc. Fraternities and sororities do go through training for membership selection. It is not as arbitrary, in most cases, as you might think.
I agree with all the previous posters that belonging to a fraternity does NOT exclude you from meeting other people, joining other groups, etc. My son (the one still in college) does a wide variety of other stuff on campus - I would dare say more than my friend’s kids who are not in the Greek system. His fraternity life is just a part of his entire experience.
In addition - my boys CHOSE to do this. They knew there was a chance they would not get a bid from a particular house and they were OK with that. I found myself more concerned about the process than either of my kids. They both (very adamantly) reminded me that “life isn’t always fair and not everyone makes the team” and they would accept whatever happened and move on.
@soze - about your comment “not a bunch of kids giving a thumbs up/down based on who they like” - wouldn’t this basically also apply to campus elections? At the end of the day, that is also just a bunch of kids giving a thumbs up/down based on who they “like”. And clearly, the kids that “lost” have tuition paying parents that surely believe their kid is “entitled to no less of a meaningful undergraduate experience” …
I learned something recently about these sort of stats that make it very misleading.
My S is a fraternity member at Syracuse which officially states that something like 30% of the student body belongs to greek organizations.
When I asked my son why he could not be part of the 70% who don’t join, he presented the following:
That 70% figure includes:
The very large population of students from Asia, who (according to him anyway) “don’t join anything.”
Athletes, who are not allowed to join.
Ditto freshman.
Non-traditional and commuter students.
Part-time students
He says that when you count just the “regular, American, non-athlete kids” pretty much everybody at least tries to get into a Fraternity (not all are accepted).
“You, you, you’re like New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis University, the socialist summer camps and the, the father with the Ben Shahn drawings…”
"I’m not quite saying that. I’m taking it further.
If a student wants to be a member of fraternity XYZ, they should be allowed to join XYZ. End of story. "
If I am at a lunch table with a few of my friends, and someone who we don’t like for whatever reason wishes to come up and join us, do they have a right to insert themselves into our activities, our conversations, etc.?
If I’m at a bar, and a guy takes a fancy to me whatever reason, am I obligated to “let him in” (so to speak)?
Gross! But not all fraternities do that stuff, and furthermore, many fraternities have really important character-building and social activities for students.
First of all, many college students - nay, many kids in the 16 to 25 age range - do dumb stuff. The focus media-wise has been on fraternities because that sells papers. But a kid from my high school died a few years ago because he was beat to death by an organization he was trying to join. Know what it was? The marching band. Kids have been hazed on sports teams, in social organizations, and just for fun for no reason. We had unconnected students doing stupid hazardous things just for the fun of it. Fraternities do not have the monopoly on dangerous dumb stuff.
Second of all, when fraternities are doing great things they’re doing great things. The fraternity men that I worked during my time as a residential hall director were respectful young men; I worked with a lot of young men who were officers in their fraternities and they learned leadership and organizational skills through those positions. They did a lot of community service and raised a lot of money for local philanthropies. Their GPAs were, on average, higher than the general population of students. I’m not saying that they didn’t get in trouble - they did sometimes. But they also were more visible because they were part of a system. If an unaffiliated student guzzled hot sauce because of a group of his also unaffiliated friends cheered him on while they were all super drunk, there might be individual consequences, but no one would say those kids couldn’t hang out together anymore. If a fraternity pledge got seriously injured because he guzzled hot sauce then his entire chapter would be under scrutiny.
There are lots of stories about this now because they’re click bait. Parents are worried about it, people are wringing their hands. It’s just like the recent upswing in stories about black men getting shot by the police. Black men have been getting injured and killed by the police for decades, but there’s a national conversation about it and it sells newspapers nowadays so now there are more stories. It’s just like terrorist attacks after 9/11, or suicides or sexual assaults after a high-profile one, etc. Journalists start digging up these stories and giving them the attention they always deserved because people want to read it.
Can’t. Freedom of association. First Amendment. It’s the same reason colleges generally can’t prevent their students from joining fraternities, although they can refuse to recognize the fraternity.