So my D17 got back from the CBHP weekend, and perhaps her biggest “this might not be for me” concern was the extremely high proportion of students (as in >50%) involved in Greek life among the current CBHP students she interacted with. (She isn’t a fan of the Greek system. Please, no pro- or anti-Greek flamewars—it’s simply her preference, and a very strong one.)
So, a couple questions:
[ul][]First, since she’s a finalist for CBHP, was her conclusion correct? Is there a disproportionately high proportion of fraternity and sorority members (as in what people generally think of by that, not including those in Greek-lettered honors organizations or groups like ΑΦΩ) amongst those in CBHP, or is it just that those are the ones that show up for interview/recruitment events like the one this past weekend (or, perhaps, her luck of the draw in who she had proper introductory conversations with)?
[]She’s also a finalist for the Blount Initiative. What’s the level of going Greek among Blount students? It’s a LLC, so nobody’s moving into a Greek house their freshman year, but they could still pledge, presumably—but I’m curious whether that sort of community is correlated with less likelihood to go Greek.[/ul]
I’m not sure what to tell you about Blount. Maybe her perception of Greek life isn’t fully accurate and not all Greek organizations fit the stereotype that she views negatively.
Actually, for clarification, it’s not the usual negative stereotypes that Greek organizations have that concern her—it’s more of a personal identity issue.
There seems to be many different style of Greek life at UA. I hope I get these correct, if not I hope someone better informed will help out.
There are the Professional Greek organizations, just as it seems nearly one for every major (almost).
Honor Society Greeks. More than one for each step along the way toward graduation.
Social Greek group. These tend to be the ones that are spoken of when people think of Greek at most any school.
Service and Leadership Greeks, while most of the other groups have this aspect within there organizations, these organizations are lead by those words. It think APO is in thais category.
Most of the groups have good and not so good aspects and members.
My son, CBHer, is a member of an Honor Society and Professional Greek organization although he has never shown interest in Social Greek life, just didn’t seem to be his “thing.” His friend groups have members of all three and it doesn’t seem to have created any issues.
What he would tell you and has told me on many occasions is, “CBH is my home.” When he has free time he spends quite a bit in the CBH lab.
I would say it could be worth a call to Ms. Batson, if your daughter would feel comfortable, and see if there are some of the CBHer’s she could speak with specifically about her concerns.
Good luck to your daughter no matter what her final desicion.
A bit of an aside: We really need a better shorthand on CC for Greek life as people usually mean it when they say “Greek life”, so that awkward phrasings like the one in my original post (as in what people generally think of by that, not including those in Greek-lettered honors organizations or groups like ΑΦΩ) aren’t required.
How about “social fraternities and sororities”, as in a social greek fraternity. I think that’s the most common term, even though professional and honor fraternities/sororities have a “social” aspect. Also, “panhellenic” sororities is often used.
Edit: Why am I even starting this conversation with a Linguists, that will never going to go well for the engineer that got a C+ in freshman english…
My son is not involved in Greek life and most of his friends are not either. He has told me in the past, not about CBH but in terms of people he knows in general, that more of his female friends are involved than male. When he was talking to his younger sister, who also wants no part of Greek life, he assured her that plenty of people, females included, aren’t involved in Greek life and that no one cares one way or the other.
My daughter was in CBH (she’s a graduate student now - graduated last year) and she was not in a sorority. One of her roommates and one of her HS classmates were also in her CBH class and they were not in sororities either. I can think of a handful of other girls I knew in her CBH class who also were not in sororities. That’s anecdotal, but based on the girls I knew, 50% sounds very high to me. I would be surprised if the percentage of CBH women in sororities was as high as the percentage of the general population of women that are, which I think is around 40% for freshmen. I do think the percentage of honors students in sororities is consistent with the percentage of total women in sororities. I texted my daughter to ask her the question and I’ll come back with her answer.
My daughter was in the professional business fraternity, and I’m sure there were engineering and CS students who were in the engineering fraternity. Those groups have a social component, but I don’t think that’s what your daughter means when she is talking about Greek life.
I got an answer from my daughter. She said there were 2 girls in her CBH class who were in sororities, but it will obviously vary by class. She thought the class behind her had a couple more.
I’m a current CBH student so I can answer this to the best of my knowledge. Of my class (~40 students, ~20 women) I think 3 or 4 are in sororities and 1 is in a fraternity. The current sophomore class may have slightly more girls in sororities, however they are still closely knit into the CBH community.
In many ways, CBH offers many of the benefits of Greek life without some of the potential downsides. Even though I was from far out of state, I had a close group of like minded friends from day one. I have an alumni network I can use to find jobs and internships, and I have a “house mother” in Mrs. Batson.
I hope this helps answer some of your daughter’s concerns. It’s very possible that she just happened to be in a group of friends during the social on Sunday night who were more involved in sororities than the ratio in CBH as a whole. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help with!
Some of it is just a numbers game. Take the number of freshman at Alabama. About half of those are women. About 2300 will pledge the PHC sororities (what you think of as the typical social sororities) before they even take one class freshman year. At some later time (either in the spring or as sophomores), another group of women (200? 400?)will join the historically black social sororities. All of these women may also join the academic Greek societies too, for math, engineering, music, and then there is another group of fraternities that have social missions or special interests like music but are still considered social.
That’s a good chunk of the eligible students. Any of them may be wearing Greek letters around campus.
Yeah—this evening (now that she’s had a chance to mostly recover from jetlag) she allowed that her conclusion was probably an observation bias issue, in that someone who’s in Greek life (as usually defined) is more likely to introduce herself as “Hi! I’m Katie, a chemistry major, and I’m in Kappa Kappa Gamma” than someone who’s unaffiliated is to introduce themselves with something like “Hi!, I’m Makenzie, a comp sci major, and I’m not in a sorority”, since we tend to describe what we are rather than what we are not, unless prompted otherwise.
@dfbdfb My daughter is a CBH’er and Greek. She has never introduced herselt as “hi, I’m xxx, and I’m a XXX greek letters.” Greek doesn’t define her. Of the 38 in her CBH group, two are sorority. In fact, I’d argue there might be some “counter bias” as when she leaves CBH lab to go to chapter or dinner, someone will always tease her, “oh, are you going to your sorority house now?” She takes it in good stride.
CBH’ers are tight knit. They won’t define your daughter as Greek or not. In fact, they won’t care. You may have seen a few more Greek kids over the CBH weekend because they are perhaps more willing to “put themselves out there” to meet the potential CBH’ers than some others might be. Or, more likely, they were the CBH kids who happened to say hi to your daughter, or who had the time to devote to the process that weekend.
I would NOT rule out CBH and its opportunities based on a few kids being Greek. If you did, you’d have to eliminate a few for being part of the Engineering Club, or being Honors College ambassadors, or being a triathlete. They are wildly diverse, smart, and tight knit.
Dr. Sharpe and Mrs. Batson have something wonderful going on with CBH. Don’t let Greek letters keep her away from taking part in it. The Dean of the Honors College really looks out for these kids, as do the alumni CBH’ers who offer them internships and jobs.