Fraternity and Sorority Life

i_wanna_be_Brown
Sun, 06 May 2012 17:29:34 +0000

Former fraternity president and former vice president of my school’s greek student body. Both of my parents are former national presidents of their respective greek organizations as well.

Pros (this is assuming you have joined a well run house and you put in the effort to get the most out of it):

1. At a large school, having a smaller community to identify with can help make the experience more enjoyable

2. Increasing your social network. I mean this both professionally, personally, and academically.

3. Easy access to leadership and responsibility roles and, if the house is well run, leadership training.

4. Teaches you how to interact with people in a way that other organizations don’t. No other organization on campus is one that’s meeting 24/7. Every moment of every day you are part of your fraternity, and you represent you, your brothers, and your house. This is whether you’re with your friends who are indies, in class, at work, with your brothers, at some other extracurricular, etc. No other organization is quite as consuming as greek life can be.

5. Access to more resources: whether it’s man hours, things the house owns, the house itself, knowledge from older students, etc. This is kind of an add on to 2, if you have close bonds with more people, you have access to greater support in every way imaginable.

6. More fun. When my indie friends threw parties, they were jokes. That stuff is expensive on your own or in a small group. When we threw a party, it was big, and it was awesome. I never had to organize an IM team, there was always one for every sport, I didn’t have to plan my weekends, that’s what the social chairs were for. Even if an indie has as many friends as a greek, it’s a guarantee they don’t live with them the way a greek does. Having all those guys in the house just makes it that much easier to have fun at any moment. Not living in a frat house has been the hardest thing to adjust to about graduating.

Cons (some apply to any house, some only apply to bad houses):

1. Hazing (bad houses only): This is unfortunately a minority opinion (although it’s growing a lot) but hazing is completely unnecessary. If you think it’s an important part of brotherhood, you’re doing it wrong.

2. Time sink: pledging is a lot of time, and being active in the house is a lot of time
Conflict can spring up easily: yes, living in the house is awesome, but it can obviously lead to conflict if people don’t get along and you see them all the time. If you’re house is any good, you’ll learn how to resolve conflicts as mature adults.

3. Isolating: depending on your personality, being in a fraternity provides you with a nice safety net that can disincentivize you from branching out beyond the greek social circle. (or if you’re in a bad house, they will promote such behavior)

What separates brotherhood from friendship is that it goes beyond it. It is far from a social relationship. You operate within an organization working on goals and projects that are bigger than any one of you or even your group of friends. It’s a 24/7 experience through living, working, and partying together all the time that immerses you in a way that most friendships don’t. The one thing I do agree with HarryJones on is to claim that only greeks are capable of this bond or these experiences is arrogant. But it certainly is much,much easier to get there and much, much more likely to happen as a greek than as an indie. But I will also say that this takes work. Just slapping three greek letters on your chest doesn’t make all of this happen. It takes effort from every single member every single day to truly get the most out of the experience. There are plenty of people in my chapter whom I haven’t spoken to since graduation because they didn’t do that, and I certainly won’t sit here and claim that I have a bond with them worth bragging about.

But I will say that my father, more than 50 years out of his undergrad days still speaks with every one of his (still living) pledge brothers, none of whom live close to him, on a regular basis. I grew up referring to many of them as Uncle this or Uncle that, and it took me a long time to comprehend that they weren’t actually related to me, especially since many of them were more involved in my life than many of our actual relatives.

It’s just like grad school or jobs or whatever. There are opportunities you can get that will greatly increase your chances of the things you want. If you want what I was talking about in the pros section, I will never say you can’t get it without going greek, but, as hard as it is to get there as a greek, it’s exponentially easier than trying to get there as an indie.