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No one is as "pro college" as I am. Yet, not only did I not belong to a fraternity in college, I never even considered it. Nor, did any of my friends. I've met people since who did belong to them and I usually hear nothing other than stories about all the drinking and partying they did. Does anyone here joining one is a good idea for a college student? If so, why?
My college did not have fraternities or sororities. The one a mile down did, though, if I remember correctly. My sister's best friend is now in a sorority at the U of M (main campus), and she paid like $1,000 just to get in. I guess the hazing practices have changed from physical to financial.
I used to think the same thing about "frats" as you, but at some point I realized that frat brothers (or sorority sisters) remain loyal to their frat longer after they graduate, and that it is great for networking. In addition, they can provide support and camraderie at a tumultuous time in many youths' lives.
No. I am not crazy about them. It's essentially about finding a very similar, cloned group of people who basically reinforce each other's demographics along with drinking, partying, and excessive womanizing, all of which are often a big part of the fraternity experience. Some schools such as Notre Dame and Rice do not believe in them, as they find them elitist and divisive, and will forbid such groups from forming or being allowed on campus.
They serve a purpose at a state school having more than 25,000 students and, after taking a dent in your grades for one semester during pledging, you are a "brother," for life. That also means that you can't slack. You'll have to be an ambassador of this fraternity, partake in events, parties, recruitment, councils, and do other things which take time.
First, I think that any private school should think whether they should even be allowed, as did Rice. I think no religious university should allow them at all, as Notre Dame has done, because they are exclusive as opposed to inclusive, and that's not what Christ was about. I also wonder why, at satellite commuter schools of bigger schools, they are even necessary? I'd bet that these same people would become friends and hang out together because of classes and intramural activities. I couldn't imagine the necessity of a Greek system at UW's Tacoma branch, or UMinn Duluth, or other regional satellite campuses of a much larger mother system.
They are not for everyone. At some campuses, the represent 5 to 7 percent of the student body. At others, they represent 25 to 27 percent of the student body. If Greek is not for you, don't attend the latter type of school.
That is actually the reason my alma banned them though it wasn't explicitly about Jesus, it was seen to be against the core principles of the school to have exclusive organizations. The vast majority of the student body was against them as well. With that said I have friends who were part of Greek organizations at their colleges so I figure to each their own.
I really have no experience with fraternities or sororities. My only observation was that they all were in really nice houses with fantastic landscaping at the university I went to. Except the frat for the engineering majors. They lived in some godawful badly designed brick building that represented everything that was wrong with the 60s. lol
But it seems to me that you can get all the potential benefits of a Greek organization by just living in a dorm (well, minus having friends with really rich parents...I guess that could be a big benefit in itself). You have instant friends/connections/community plus most dorms have activities and community service and things like that going on. And it's inclusive, so you'll meet a wide range of people, from upper middle class students to poor students from the inner city to international students. Even better, when I was in college, you could choose to live on a substance free floor, so you didn't have to worry about drunks wandering the halls and puking all over the place. But you could still choose to go to parties and be involved in that type of thing too, if you wanted to.
Was this in TX? Just curious. Someone asked the question up above: how do they meter who gets in and who doesn't? Do people approach (rush) them or do they approach (rush) you? I'd be willing to bet that people who would overwhelmingly be considered attractive would get "multiple offers," right?
Yes, this was in Texas and no, that is not how the formal rush process works.
Sorority rush varies a little from campus to campus but by and large it works like this:
Open house...this is the round where you visit every house and meet everyone. At my university this took two days because we had fifteen sororities.
Round 1: First cut; you were allowed to accept a maximum of ten invitations back to houses. Most students did not receive ten invitations. If you received more than ten, you had to decline some of them. If you received ten or less, you had to attend all of the round 1 parties.
Round 2: Second cut; you were allowed to accept a maximum of five invitations.
Round 3: Third cut; you were allowed to accept a maximum of three.
"Preffing": After the third round of parties, you list the groups you want to join in order of preference. Some girls "suicide" for one sorority by writing only one name down. This is not recommended.
Bid Day: After the rushees' preferences are matched by the bids sororities are offering to potential new members, you are called back to a convocation to receive your bid. You are notified before the convocation if you did not receive a bid, so you won't show up and be embarrassed. Unless you "suicided", you do not know which sorority offered you a bid until you open your envelope. The sorority also does not know exactly who is showing up on bid day until they show up. Most bids are accepted, but not all are.
After you see your bid, you can accept it or reject it. If you accept it, you go to your new sorority's house and officially become a "pledge". A pledge is a provisional member until she is fully initiated. In some sororities this takes a few weeks; in others it takes almost the entire freshman year.
That's how the formal rush process worked at my university...in a nutshell.
But it seems to me that you can get all the potential benefits of a Greek organization by just living in a dorm (well, minus having friends with really rich parents...I guess that could be a big benefit in itself). You have instant friends/connections/community plus most dorms have activities and community service and things like that going on. And it's inclusive, so you'll meet a wide range of people, from upper middle class students to poor students from the inner city to international students. Even better, when I was in college, you could choose to live on a substance free floor, so you didn't have to worry about drunks wandering the halls and puking all over the place. But you could still choose to go to parties and be involved in that type of thing too, if you wanted to.
That is actually very possible without joining a Greek organization.
My college did not have fraternities or sororities. The one a mile down did, though, if I remember correctly. My sister's best friend is now in a sorority at the U of M (main campus), and she paid like $1,000 just to get in. I guess the hazing practices have changed from physical to financial.
I used to think the same thing about "frats" as you, but at some point I realized that frat brothers (or sorority sisters) remain loyal to their frat longer after they graduate, and that it is great for networking. In addition, they can provide support and camraderie at a tumultuous time in many youths' lives.
Well, the more religious and smaller the college is, the less likely they will be there. I wonder how popular they are at UMD. Generally, they are huge at big schools in college towns. At big schools in urban centers, they figure less prominent. I would expect them to be less important at UM main campus than, say, Indiana at Bloomington, staying within the Big 10 for example.
No one is as "pro college" as I am. Yet, not only did I not belong to a fraternity in college, I never even considered it. Nor, did any of my friends. I've met people since who did belong to them and I usually hear nothing other than stories about all the drinking and partying they did. Does anyone here joining one is a good idea for a college student? If so, why?
College fraternities and sororities exist for the same reasons that high school cliques do: many young people have an inherent, nature-driven need to stratify themselves into social castes in an attempt to maximize their social stature. The greek system is nothing other than a social caste system. It is entirely driven by ego.
I showed up, and in a matter of weeks, about 80% of the student body had neatly stratified themselves into their own social "caste", their sense of ego and pride invested in a random set of greek letters and new built-in friends who validated their self image. Every school has their own distinct hierarchy. In my overwhelmingly greek college, the Pi Phis and Alpha Phis were the hot, preppy girls that all the jocks wanted to date; Delta Gammas were all-around friendly and pretty girls, who tended overwhelmingly to go into education; Delta Zetas were where all the female jocks went; and AOPis were at the bottom of the heap - the "ugly" girls who couldn't get in anywhere else. On the guys' side, Delta Upsilons were the handsome sports jocks who got the Pi Phis; except for the big, muscly football guys, who were overwhelmingly SAEs; Phi Psis were all the guys white who listened to reggae and smoked a lot of weed...and so on down to the the Sigma Nus were at the bottom of the heap, the nerds who basically only got to go to social events with the AOPs. It was remarkably efficient and fascinating to observe.
Me personally, I skipped all of that because I've always been a bit of a loner and never could take seriously the notion of "pledging" myself into some fabricated, superficial stratification. We already impose enough boundaries on ourselves in our minds; why make it even more explicit and ritualized? I just went about my daily life and made friends wherever I met them...still had a great four years.
College fraternities and sororities exist for the same reasons that high school cliques do: many young people have an inherent, nature-driven need to stratify themselves into social castes in an attempt to maximize their social stature. The greek system is nothing other than a social caste system. It is entirely driven by ego.
This is the most incisive post here. That's all it is. It's positive reinforcement via a self-created caste system.
I only paid attention to it from the outside, since it was a big deal when in grad school, and, at that point, I couldn't stand the noise and ruckus they made. However, I found the nicknames for some of them funny:
AOPi - Alpha Omicron Pigs
Delta Gamma - d**k grabbers
Tri Delta (Delta Delta Delta) - try a Delta, two out of three go down
ZBT - zillions, billions, and trillions
I don't know who made these up, but they are in the nationwide popular lexicon for the Greek system.
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