<p>StickerSchock, I would not go so far to call all of Greek Life absurd. But I will agree with you that sorority rush is exactly that for the exact reasons you named. I also think that a lot of women share that view. But it is a time-honored tradition and so won’t be changing anytime soon.</p>
<p>Dima, that’s true, it won’t be changing anytime soon. Almost 30 years ago as a college freshman, one of the things I found so appealing about my husband was his indifference to and/or mild ridicule of the frat rushing. So lots of guys feel this way, too.</p>
<p>It was an engineeering school with no sorrorities. A male:female ration of 10:1. You can’t imagine how desperate these frat guys were to have us rare women attend their frat functions & draw in pledges. Talk about feelking like a piece of meat! And witnessing the desperation of some kids, trying to impress… Not a good memory.</p>
<p>Actually StickerShock, fraternity rush is very different from sorority rush here.</p>
<p>Sorority rush includes ridiculous rules during fall term which severely limit contact between sorority members and rushees. Fraternity rush has no such limited-contact rules so the fraternities spend all of fall term trying to get to know the guys, taking them out to dinner, inviting them to watch football games, etc. We also have 14 fraternities on campus so every guy is practically guaranteed a bid at at least one. So unlike sorority rush, where many sororities are clueless about the girls they are making decisions on, formal fraternity rush is essentially only the final decision for guys as to where they are going to pledge, deciding between at most four finalists - the one to four fraternities they tended to be spending most of their time with at the end of fall term.</p>
<p>I have no issues with fraternity rush (with the exception of “dirty rushing” which is against the rules anyway) but think sorority rush is ridiculous, maybe adding a sixth sorority will help a little but certainly not enough.</p>
<p>Making the W and L rounder would make huge difference in eliminating the trident’s swastika resemblance. It would also prevent the symbol from evoking a mental image of the devil’s pitchfork too.</p>
<p>As for the sorority issue, when we visited the school I remarked to my husband that while I could consider sending my son to W&L, I would definitely discourage my daughter from attending. In addition to the strong Greek life dominated by fraternities, I felt that the presence of VMI in Lexington would add to the male-dominated atmosphere. That combined with Southern cultural mores for women would be a little much for her.</p>
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<p>The length of time or level of frenzy involved doesn’t matter to me. It’s the whole idea of a group of people making “decisions” on another person. Plain and simple, it’s odious.</p>
<p>as ariesathena pointed out, the trident was created before the swastika became associated with Hitler’s third reich (even though the swastika existed before, but had no associations with fascism). that being the case, how could anyone expect the trident to be changed? </p>
<p>stickershock, while i agree the greek rush/pledge process can be ridiculous/catty (for girls especially), your point holds no water. “the idea of a group of people making decisions on another person” is how the world works. what happens at a job interview? can the employer take everyone who applies/ interviews for the job? is the employer’s method for selecting employees often totally subjective and not fair? ABSOLUTELY. even on the playground in grammar school, children are left out, rejected, and “decided upon” when teams are picked for a basketball game. once again, i admit that the greek process can be out of control; but to say that it’s “odious” when people are judged/ decided upon is just silly. it’s the way of the world.</p>
<p>pirt: I think comparing a job interview process, where a carefully crafted set of credentials is presented to a group of professionals, to pledging frats & sorrorites is silly. The pledging process,however, is very similar to the grammar school playground where the chubby kid gets left out. Or the girls wearing juicy couture all travel in a pack. If you feel that college kids should still be approaching the world with the mentality of a schoolyard bully, then I don’t know how to answer you. I guess you would pledge or encourage your kids to do so.</p>
<p>Really, if anyone wants to live in the frat world, go ahead. I hope my kids are confident and open-minded enough to step outside their comfort realm. That’s why this board is a great way to get the flavor of colleges that they might be considering in the future.</p>
<p>pirt8528. Getting judged by groups of people may indeed be the way of the world. But for me, the process in the Sorority Frat system is quite a bit different than the process involved in a job search - or a search for college for that matter. Yes, all of these processes involve rejection. And the processes can be largely subjective. But as a job candidate or student applying to school, I’m not asked to linger and mix in the environment from which I was formally rejected. Yeah, everyone probably finds there own way after the dust settles, but it may be very tough for the “rejected” to do that in a school that has a dominant greek culture. I think it’s healthier to set up an an environment where it’s OK to be greek OR non-greek. In any case, it’s one of the reasons my son steered away from W&L. He’s not sure what he wants annd would like to leave his options open.</p>
<p>I think it’s hard for the outsider to truly understand sorority rush. I’m even seeing misunderstanding and judgement from male fraternity members who otherwise embrace Greek Life.</p>
<p>Cuts aren’t made based solely on a one-time meeting at the first round of parties. Recommendations are sent by alumnae from a girl’s local area to explain why Suzie would be a great new member of XYZ. My daughter and her friends have had interviews this summer with alumnae who write the recs. I myself must send out at least 10 each year to different colleges for my particular sorority. I also am an alumna intervewer for my alma mater and can unequivocally say that these recs are similar to college recommendations. </p>
<h2>I can’t speak for the other NPC groups, but I know my sorority wants the chapters to have well-rounded women who are not all exactly alike. They want women who are involved in other areas of campus life, whether it’s being on a sports team, in Student Government, or volunteerism within and outside of the school.</h2>
<p>About Recruitment:</p>
<p>My college had 5 sororities as does W&L so I’ll use that size as an example:
The exact times might be off but basically each round is longer.</p>
<p>1st Round: Go to all the sorority houses for 15-20 minutes.
2nd Round: Go to up to 4 houses 20-30 minutes.
3rd Round: Up to 3 for prob 30-45 minutes.
4th Round: Preference night, up to 2 for about 1-2 hours.</p>
<p>After each round, the sororities have to decide who they would like to ask back. What happens is that in an effort to keep the size of the houses balanced (this benefits the smaller chapters on a campus) is that the sororities are forced to make cuts.</p>
<p>So if you have 200 girls in Recruitment at the opening party of a 5-house school and a girl can only go to up to 4 parties next time, Panhel would take the 200 and multiply it by 4/5 making the new number 160. This means each sorority can only ask back 160 girls. Similar calculations are done after each round.</p>
<p>Is this a perfect system? Probably not. It’s up to the PNM to be open-minded enough to accept all invites for which she is eligible. Unfortunately girls are told by the guys (or they read it on Facebook etc) that ABC is full of losers and the girl believes the stereotypes. Some girls may get cut heavily and only get invited back to ABC. Rather than truly seeing if the ABC sisters are actually quite nice, the girl would rather not pledge at all. This is really a bias on the girl’s part rather than the way Panhel structures recruitment.</p>
<p>First of all Motherdear hit the nail on the head with sorority rush - I couldn’t have exlpained it any better. Just want to add that you need to remember that there are a good 130 or so girls in each sorority. It is simply not humanly possible for all of them to get to know all the PNM’s. So you get a lot of girls who are involved in the decision making process (everyone is) who have to base their votes on maybe only meeting a person once or twice.</p>
<p>Now fraternity rush is NOT like that. It is not an application and rejection process. Unlike sorority rush, there are pretty much no surprises in fraternity rush. You spend the fall term spending time with guys from all the houses, having dinner, going to parties, watching games together, even going on trips, etc. At some places you feel like you belong to a group and feel comfortable there and those are the places you keep coming back to and the places that will end up giving you bids. This is pretty much exactly the same process you go through when making new friends at a new place any other way. You hang out with groups of people and if you feel a connection, they become your group of friends and if you don’t you stop meeting them so often. Same with joining any other club, if it feels right, you join if it doesnt you leave. It is also the same thing as starting a relationship - you go on dates and if you feel like it’s working you keep going and if it doesnt then you stop. Are any of those decisions odious? Having a guy feel like he belongs in a certain fraternity and goes back there all the time and then doesn’t get a bid is very very rare. More often it is the fraternities who love a certain guy and spend a lot of time with him fall term and then learn in the winter that he was doing the same thing with another fraternity and chose to pledge there instead. Because of the high number of fraternities we have - 14 - guys rejecting fraternities happens a hundred times more often than fraternities rejecting guys.</p>
<p>By the way if the college selection/application process worked like fraternity rush, having students say go to college X for a while and then go to college Y for a while and then go to college Z for a while and see where they feel comfortable and can succeed with both the level of academics and socially, then we would need neither the SATs nor CC.</p>
<p>dima - good insight on the process. But I guess the key is that a W&L student needs to be comfortable with this “more formal” process of finding the right group of friends. It seems a bit artificial and forced to me, but that’s just a personal opinion. And with such a high greek % at W&L, it seems like the only option for fitting in. And, yes, there probably only a few rejections every year but how do you think those students feel at the end of the process? I have to believe it feels worse than just a general feeling of isolation that someone might experience at a less greek school.</p>
<p>how do you think the 91% of applicants (many with near-perfect credentials) rejected from yale this year felt? they dealt with it.</p>
<p>pirt, those Yale rejects don’t have to stay at Yale for four years, not being allowed to attend classes or Yale functions. And Dima, while freindships naturally evolve and grow over time, I do not have my college friends forming committees to vote on any new “members” we add to the group. Or dismiss. That would be odious.</p>
<p>I don’t think an “organically-formed” group of friends can be in any way compared to frats or sorrorities. The more details you provide, the more awful it sounds. Either you are a greek lover, or you are not.</p>
<p>then let’s just leave at that. as much as i hate the expression itself and the idea it suggests even more, we’ll have to agree to disagree. this thread has spiraled down into nothing more than the often debated greek v non-greek argument, which, next to the AA debates, is possibly the most overdone, stale, and tired discussion on these boards. let’s steer back to what the OP intended…</p>
<p>The reason it’s called the “Trident” is that the W and L letters are superimposed to resemble a trident,or three-pronged spear, which has ancient and worldwide historical uses as both a fishing tool (commonly used in the South) and a battle weapon, as well as symbological roots associated with leadership, including the power to “calm the seas.” </p>
<p>From wikipedia.com: “A trident is a three pronged staff or spear. The word’s origin is from Latin tridens or tridentis, from tri ‘three’ and dentes ‘teeth’. It was used by fishermen to catch fish. As a weapon, it was also used by the retiarii, Roman gladiators, who used a net to wrap their adversary and a trident to kill him. In the southern United States, this type of spear, called a gig, is used for catching bullfrogs, flounder, and sometimes carp.” <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident</a></p>
<p>The trident is Neptune/Poseidon’s symbol, and is often used to depict his leadership qualities. </p>
<p>Again from wikipedia.com: </p>
<p>“From the fishing origins, the trident is often associated with Poseidon, the god of the sea in Greek mythology.” <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident</a></p>
<p>“In his benign aspect, Poseidon created new islands and offered calm seas.” <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poseidon[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poseidon</a></p>
<p>W&L traces its name back to the post-civil war South, when the exercise of power to “calm seas” was highly desirable. Indeed, this was one of President Lee’s avowed missions in his own leadership of the University, which existed at that time as an all-male school committed to training future business and political leaders in the liberal arts (check the no. of corporate CEOs and Supreme Court justices). </p>
<p>This may add some perspective on the University’s choice of this letter-based logo.</p>
<p>“let’s steer back to what the OP intended…”
Yes, I agree that the thread is a bit off track. However, some of the “bad” things folks hear about W&L may be related to the dominant greek scene. Some view this scene as a postiive. But others may see that the heavy greek scene usually results in heavy drinking, formal rituals in place of informal friendships, and very few avenues for those who don’t want to go greek. This is personal preference for sure…but I would recommend all who consider W&L to read this thread and choose for themselves. The details on greek selection processes are very revealing - they may sound like a fun-time to some out there but could be a TOTAL turn-off for others (like me).</p>
<p>At a school with such a high participation rate in Greek life, isn’t it fair to conclude that most W&L students want to be a part of this – and that they are being given that opportunity. For those who do not want to formally participate, they have the option do so informally since W&L is an “open” campus (not like the larger campuses where Greek parties are closed to non-Greek students). </p>
<p>And, of course, with such an “up-front” profile on this aspect of college life, students who are certain they don’t want to participate also have the choice not to attend.</p>
<p>I think because of W&L’s UNIQUE Greek system/situation - those who have not experienced it would be better off to at least have a better clue in regards to the what’s and how’s that are unique to W&L - and not generalize about a system that one may not completely understand.</p>
<p>If one does not like any Greek system at all - more power to you - there are students at W&L who are quite happy being independants - and yet still be involved/invited to participate in many of the things that the Greek system offers. My question is - how do you judge overall or in a generalized way - something you don’t have any experience with - specifically the W&L Greek system and way of life. The frats at W&L are not the isolated and snobbish groups of guys that may be prevalant elsewhere - and animal house is a far cry from the reality of W&L frats.</p>
<p>For those who have an interest in frat life - go for it. The choice is there - or not. But not belonging to a frat at W&L will not be cause for a student to be so isolated that they are not able to get thru 4 years of a fantastic education alone - they seem to be pretty happy students as well. The independants are very active and very involved. Many independants are that - by choice.</p>
<p>One of the unique things about W&L and the frat houses - they are owned by the school - they are considered to be on-campus housing - each house has a live-in house mother - the houses have cooks - so room/board are part of the deal - (plus the frat fees - which need to be considered by anyone who chooses to pledge).</p>
<p>If frats are not your thing - fine - and you have not experienced the frats of W&L - then I don’t feel one has the right to dump all over a system that has been in place for years at this school. The brotherhood of the W&L frats is a life-long one - even between frats. Many guys do feel that the resources and relationships between frat brothers is a special type of glue - and since W&L changed their rush/pledge system a few years - I believe the opportunities to evaluate and make the decision to pledge or not have improved immensely - which gives any guy a much better yardstick to measure and to decide just what he wants to do.</p>
<p>One of the aspects that is a positive one - IMHO - was when President Elrod started a process that would encourage upper classmen to consider staying ‘‘on-campus’’ in the frat houses - or in the dorms. I believe that W&L now has a 2 years requirement for on-campus - could be wrong on that but…not all students can be housed in dorms - the frat houses do provide the opportunity for students to be ‘on-campus’ instead of in near by country houses. I see that as a positive.</p>
<p>The sorority system at W&L - essentially being fairly new - since the houses have only been occupied for about 6 years - is from what I understand - a completely different story - which I really am not lessoned on to comment - but I do understand that opportunities continue to be less for the girls. Since W&L became co-ed - tho the numbers are pretty equal these days - there is still some work that needs to be done to creat an equal opportunity for sororities at W&L.</p>
<p>PIRT - you actually brought up some very good points - make ya think at least.</p>
<p>I agree that one can make the choice not to join at Frat at W&L. But would I think it would be tougher to be an indpendent on a campus that is 80% greek. We attended an admissions session and they stressed that the independents are happy souls who find different activities to keep them occupied. If we were seriously interested in the school, we might want to check in with a few of these students. They also said drinking is NOT a problem on campus - and that the surveys show a problem only because a few goofy W&L students are completing the survey multiple times. Hmmm… I find that it’s hard to tell what is a marketing pitch and what is the the truth. But that’s all schools…not just W&L.</p>
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<p>In reading thru this thread - and the discussion about the ‘southern issues’ - it hit me - many of the posters on this particular subject are those ‘dam yankees’ - just an observation LOL :D</p>
<p>Interesting that soooo many yanks tend to land in the charm of the south :)</p>