Thank you. I hope if Greek life continues all frats and sororities live by the standard you described.
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Everyone has to decide for him or herself. I would not advise my children to join a fraternity or sorority. Even for a shy introvert such as myself, I found plenty of socialization opportunities in college. I just heard of too much nonsense going on among the girls at my dorm who were in sororities. And boy, my roommate had to participate in a lot of mindless, time-consuming activities. There is still a lot of hazing that goes on - UT-Austin keeps a list of violations.
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Fraternity parties have caused Duke to shut down campus this past week. https://www.wral.com/in-one-week-duke-covid-cases-approach-fall-semester-total/19578554/
That is it in a nutshell to me. I have no use for any of that stuff. Glad my kids donât either.
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Similar things have happened at so many colleges this yr. Very concerning that it has reinvigorated a spike where the general population is dramatically reducing cases and lowering infection rate.
But like weâve seen all over the country with these college kid issues, the hospital rates donât change within that population. Critical that they keep it within that population and thatâs the bigger issue.
The non-Greek kids at Duke seemed pretty pissed off with the frat kids over this. Duke shut the whole campus down because of this. Just opened it back up today.
They need to seriously limit that type of activity. Suspensions, not threats of but actual suspensions, would go a long way to discouraging the frat parties that have plagued campuses during covid. Hate to say that but itâs necessary.
Itâs like most other clubs, jobs, teams, opportunities â it will become what you make of it.
If you are there just to drink, well, you can do that. There will be parties and ample other opportunities to socialize, with and without alcohol.
But fraternities also tend to push their brothers (members) to do well in school/academically. At ours, we had to maintain a minimum GPA to remain active.
There are also charitable causes our fraternity got involved in, like Habitat for Humanity and food pantries. I imagine other houses also get involved in their communities. Youâll thus have an opportunity to aid a good cause. This tends to be very enriching.
There are also leadership roles to which you can aspire, like Rush Chair, VP of Alumni Relations, even President of the chapter. These provide experience that can come in handy down the road.
(Although if you are Rush Chair and you are throwing an event for the Super Bowl, make sure that you order the pizza hours before the game starts â because (some) hungry dudes waiting on food will complain and make life miserable until the food arrives. hehe)
Columbia U just expelled one:
At Columbia, Greek life is for those who seek it, but doesnât play any major role.
Another example of why fraternities need to removed from campuses. I hope Penn throws them all to the curb! Those boys should be expelled and fraternity closed! How can boys just stand by and allow this type of behavior to occur right in front of them? A girl tried to intervene and was violently shoved away.
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My older son joined fraternity. By the time the pledge process was over he was completely disgusted by the system and hated 99% of the so called âbrothersâ. He left a year later.
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âOther clubsâ donât seem to have all the fighting / brawling that surrounds frat parties. Not every frat. Not every school. Just appears to be more of it within the frat environment. You wonder if these same kids would be so quick to brawl if they werenât in a frat or does the frat create the environment? Sad excuse for brotherhood.
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Iâm old enough to remember when most of the NESCACs had fraternities and that they served a very specific, practical purpose: they fed and housed the bulk of the (often) all-male student bodies. Wesleyan did not even have an official dining hall until 1962. By my frosh year, half the guys I knew were still taking their meals at an âeating clubâ. Beyond that, the houses seemed good at preparing guys for corporate life. By that I mean, being able to navigate a complex social organization with a definite pecking order, mostly based on age and seniority. It wasnât my cup of tea and, thankfully, most of the NESCACS spent the better part of the 1960s building out their residential systems so that eventually people didnât have to depend on Greek letter clubs and societies in order to survive. At least, that was the way it worked at Wesleyan. Some NESCACs just seized their houses and shut them down entirely.
Have you gone to a school with a football team? It is a roving gang of the biggest men on campus that are conditioned and trained to be violent, and they have a coach, who at big time schools is the highest paid person on campus, that will cover up anything they do wrong. See Baylor under Art Briles if you still think that âother clubsâ donât have all the fighting/brawling that surrounds frat parties. The Baylor football team was a reign of terror at that school, and a lot of what happened there happens at other schools with big time athletic programs.
Rugby and hockey players can be pretty aggressive too, although they typically donât have the âGet Out of Jail Freeâ card that football gets.
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Well if you have to do this ridiculous ârushâ thing, participate in an arbitrary popularity contest run by someone two years older, and subject yourself further to degrading requirements (whether they are officially recognized as âhazingâ or not), then some might fall into two major categories:
- the âpopular kidsâ, who have a talent to easily enthrall others and manage to get picked by equally popular peers,
- the wanna-be-populars, who lack the self-esteem and will go to any length of degrading themselves in hopes to break the circle (with the occasional deadly consequence every year), rather than confidently say âThank Youâ to this entire scheme.
Frankly, I find it disturbing that colleges havenât universally put a stop to it on campus.
It should be something equivalent to Health Spa in the college town: If you check the yellow pages you can find it, and if they want your money theyâll take you.
I think students should be careful, very careful, about the Greek system. I quickly saw that fraternity life was completely incompatible with the rigors of being a Division 1 scholarship athlete, and even if I had the money to join, it was no way to survive the rigors of top level athletics. My coach had no rules over them; indeed the basketball team, arguably the most well known and best in the country team the last four decades, didnât either. Frats were such a distraction that it really worked against succeeding in athletics and school. One thing that scholarship athletes need to know is that it is a high wire act and they need to use the system rather than have it use them.
My brother, a multiple All American and Phi Beta Kappa in math at one of the nationâs best public schools, had an easygoing and fantastic coach who any parent would relish. But he had a hard and fast rule - no frats unless it was academically oriented - like the business school had. They had kids on the team who arguably should not have been admitted, so this coach knew exactly what he was doing. The coach actually made it easier for all with this rule.
We had no set rules so two of my teammates joined the popular frat. All Americans in high school. They were, like many at the school, from wealthy prep schools so they just had to join the frat. Their athletic performance thereafter markedly declined, and if at any other school which grants athletic scholarships, they would have lost them. I could no longer train with them, which was a loss as I ended up training with a pro athlete instead. My sport required workouts twice a day, with the first having to be finished prior to 7:30 am or there wouldnât be sufficient rest for the afternoon session. Sleep in late once on a hangover and the afternoon practice would be miserable if you cared about bring nationally competitive! Academics suffered too, with frats. Sunday is your catch up day academically and if you lose it partying and hung over you just donât catch up. Like me, these two became lawyers but despite having superior educations, they ended up at regional schools with far fewer opportunities (I went to a top 10 school only because I did not fritter around socially). People tend to perform at levels to which they are comfortable, but as a poor person I was happy I had options they didnât. And to be clear, I was no great shakes academically in undergrad - just kept my act together.
This is all anecdotal, so it needs to be filtered. My friend, a center in the NBA for 13 years, was in a very popular and often destructive frat, yet had a 3.6 gpa. He finished high school in 3 years on an AP track fooling every other powerhouse program who wanted him. But I always thought he was an exception and frankly at 6â11 he didnât have much grief in pledging.
I do concede that learning to get along with a number of people is a good skill - often picked up in frats. One of my teammates became a CEO of one of the largest companies in the world, having gone on to Harvard MBA school. He was in a popular frat, and he was easy to like and great with people. My first 10 years of work I just thought being top notch analytically would make for success - the people part is every bit as important. But frats are not the only source of this skill, and again, at what cost?
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My daughter was a D2 athlete (on scholarship) and joined a sorority. Both provided structure that was beneficial to her academics (the coach and the sorority scholarship chair knew daughterâs grades before she did).
Honestly, she wasnât the strongest sorority member, didnât hold many offices, didnât attend meetings if they interfered with practice or a game. We made it clear to the sorority that academics came first, her sport second (because it was paying half her tuition), but she enjoyed her time in sorority. She didnât live in the house. Her sorority sisters often attended her games with posters and pompoms and were some of the only students (other than boyfriends) at the games. I appreciated it because I couldnât be at every game, she was 17 years old and very scared about being at college and about transitioning from hs athletics to college, and needed the support of friends. They even held a separate initiation for D because she had a game when the group initiation was scheduled.
The sports teams can be bigger party groups than the frats and sororities, and that was true at daughterâs school. The president of her sorority was also president of the ME society (and had a 4.0), several members were in ROTC and were commissioned officers at graduation, the gpa was higher than the college average (as was her teamâs gpa). It wasnât a group of party girls.
A million years ago, we had a D1 skier on a top ranked team who was a member of my house. She missed a lot of sorority events but I think enjoyed having friends not on the team, a place to decompress.
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Iâm not a fan of greek life. Cliquey and exclusive. Binge drinking and rape culture are far too prevalent. Racially segregated. I prefer organizations that are inclusive. I doubt my kids would be interested but I really hope they donât go greek.
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Iâm not a fan of fraternities. At best, theyâre a breeding ground for drugs and underage drinking mixed with criminal mischief. At worst, theyâre racially segregated organizations that behave like a middle-class version of prison gangs.
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My Dad belonged to a frat in the late 50s/early 60s and is still incredibly close to his former âbrothersâ. Itâs been an amazing force for good in his life. That being said, those were different times (including house mothers that lived with the boys and kept a lid on things) and he is not a fan of fraternities in this day and age. I hope my sons donât âgo Greekâ if they happen to attend a college where Greek life is available - there are too many downsides that far outweigh any potential good from these organizations.
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I think a major reason why students pledge is to get into parties, at all of my kidsâ universities guys could only get into parties if they were in frats or sports.
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