How do parent feel about Greek Life?

mkm56
Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:17:52 +0000

My 3 kids went to 3 different colleges. D’s school had no greek system. She didn’t miss it (of course you don’t miss what you never had) but found her “like” group and socialized with them.

S1’s school had fairly large Greek presence. Many of his friends were in frats, but the parties, etc were open to others and he kinda floated around with friends from different frats. He didn’t want to join because he felt he was more open to friendships with guys from various frats. Plus the money issue. But he never felt excluded.

S2 attended two different schools. At school 1, frats were large percentage. It made him feel obligated to join, which irritated him. So of course being the contrary person he is, he refused to pledge. The frats there were very “preppy”, dictated what their brothers could wear, etc etc. He left this school (primarily due to social scene) and went to a larger school where Greek was a much smaller percentage. Then to our shock, he wanted to go Greek there?! On this campus, he didn’t feel the push to join and the frats (at least the one he pledged) were much more laid back.

Was it a good decision? Who knows? What would it have been like as a new junior transfer without his fraternity brothers? There were pros and cons in my mind. Cost of course, probably more people available to party if you wanted, he socialized mainly with fraternity (could be good or bad). The one area he kept very independent was for some reason he refused to date sorority girls, only dating GDIs!?

He kept grades up, to my knowledge not cited for any misbehavior, held some positions that required people management and financial management, learned how to do home repairs on the house and has a great network that hopefully will be helpful in the future.