<p>Ignore cobrat’s last paragraph. The part before that makes some important distinctions. At some colleges, there is no officially sanctioned Greek system, but participation isn’t prohibited. At such places (and it sounds like Harvard is like this; I know Yale is), the Greek organizations aren’t really “underground.” They still may receive some punishments from the college–such as being banned from activities on campus (this happened to Deke at Yale). There has been growing interest in Greek organizations at Yale (and I guess at Harvard), despite the residential college system, which is supposed to obviate the need for Greeks. In my opinion, this has happened because the higher drinking age eliminated many social events with drinking that used to occur on campus, and Greek organizations have filled the gap with unsupervised underage drinking events. I don’t consider it an improvement over the old system.</p>
<p>At some colleges though, not only are Greek organizations not sanctioned, students are prohibited from joining them. At such places, fraternities and sororities really do have to be underground. This has been an issue at a number of high-profile LACs.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t be surprising if college administrators preferred a drinking age of either 18 or >=22, so that all or almost all traditional-age college students were on the same side of the drinking age line.</p>
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<p>Note that Amherst recently changed from non-recognition (policy dating from 1984; about 10% of students joined the off-campus fraternities recently (there are no sororities)) to prohibition of joining fraternities and sororities.</p>
<p>Hunt, the last paragraph was meant to explain one factor in why such underground frats at my LAC had practically no influence on its campus life. </p>
<p>Change the campus culture to one which a critical mass of students are more accepting/welcoming of fraternities/sororities and the underground frat/sororities’ levels of influence on campus life/popularity among students would be greater despite the official ban on students joining as a condition of matriculation. In such cases, such bans and institutional ostracism would be much harder to maintain. </p>
<p>Williams banned all Greek-letter organizations in the 1960s (or early '70s). Some have been revived, but as “underground” societies, whose existence is kept secret. The students who join can be summarily expelled.</p>
<p>I will qualify my last comment to say that I don’t know whether the draconian policies toward Greek societies are still in place at Williams, but they certainly were within the past twenty years. I was an undergraduate member of an organization that had a chapter there. We initiated several men who had pledged just before the ban went into effect, and had waited more than a decade. That was a controversial action, and the national organization remained ambivalent about contacts with underground affiliates. Nobody wanted to encourage students to risk the consequences, but they wanted to support the “brotherhood” (which is co-ed at most chapters now).</p>
<p>Princeton is trying hard to banish the unrecognized frats and sororities (for freshmen) which have served as feeders to certain eating clubs (which choose their members in the winter of sophomore year.)</p>
<p>Harvard does not officially recognize the final clubs, frats, or sororities. </p>