<p>[quopte] admit to finding this conversation a little disorienting, after reading all these stories of students who benefitted so much from Greek life, where the selection system was “mutual,” where they didn’t drink that much, where they were all studious, etc. Are the stories I read in the papers of frats closed down for hazing, of alcohol poisoning, destruction, etc., just made up? Or maybe the kids (and parents) involved in those “bad” frats and sororities just don’t post on CC?
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<p>Both can be the case. Honestly, if you want to turn your frat experience into 4 years of drunken debauchery (or is that 7 years of college down the drain – shout-out to Belushi), sure you could – but you could do that just as easily without going Greek. </p>
<p>Here’s my admittedly imperfect analogy - football on a college campus. In some places, it’s just a fun way for the student body to enjoy a crisp fall afternoon and have some school spirit and camaraderie. In other places, it’s the raison d’etre of the school in the first place, academics take a back seat, the library shuts down, classes are canceled, the administration focuses more on the coaches and the stadium than on the academic facilities and professors, and students who can barely add 2+2 are recruited and essentially paid to be semi-pro athletes. Are both systems in place at American colleges? Sure. Can you generalize when you hear the word football as to which system it is at any given college? No.</p>
<p>Hunt-- It could just be that the parents of the kids who are spending thier college careers in a blackout aren’t really on CC to begin with? I mean, it is a self-selecting group of parents, for one thing.</p>
<p>There is a fraternity my daughter won’t go to when they have parties. It’s just not her scene. Very drunk. But, that’s the point. In any greek system which is being discussed here, the students have freedom to choose what to participate in and what not to participate in within the greek system. </p>
<p>For my daughter? It’s not about meeting fraternity boys or whatever, since she already has a pretty serious boyfriend, it was just about the opportunity to be involved in a “sisterhood.” (Not really my thing, but so what? She’s my kid, not my twin.)</p>
<p>I think it’s just silly to try to figure out what the greek system is. It’s really campus specific. There are schools where my daughter definitely would not have been involved. She has far too many outside committments to be able to make sorrority life her main priority. But, at the campus she’s at? It works for her.</p>
<p>I think that’s about all you can really say about it. Depending on the student, the campus, the system, and the house, it can either be a good thing or not. More likely, it’s got it’s good points and bad. It isn’t mandatory.</p>
No…but my point is that this difference can be real and can really matter to students, both for football and for Greek life. And…</p>
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Of course, you could, but at some colleges this is less likely to happen than at others–also part of my point. This is maybe a little off point, but I’ve noticed on CC that when anybody is defending a notorious hard-drinking party school, they always say “this is college” and that people drink hard everywhere. Well, to a certain degree, that’s true, but not entirely.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone is debating that at some colleges, the predominant frat vibe is more of the 7-years-of-college-down-the-drain style and at others, the predominant frat vibe is more “hey, come hang out with us, and if you don’t want to, that’s cool too.” Or that at some colleges, the predominant sorority vibe is “we’re all BFF’s, and you’d better look the part and come from the right background, and ewww, don’t wear that dress!” and at others the predominant vibe is “hey, come hang out wiht us, and if you don’t want to, that’s cool too.”</p>
<p>When we first decided to move to NYC 30 years ago, my parents were very against it. They showed me all the crime reported in the paper and various news medias. We moved there anyway. My parents came to visit us often, and my mom said, “How come I haven’t seen any crime and where are they getting all those stories. They made it sound like there was a crime committed everyday on every street corner.” How many people are still afraid of going to NYC because of what they have heard on the media.</p>
<p>Now 30 years later, we have moved to Mexico City. My mother said, “Oh, there is a lot of crime, we read it in the paper all the time that people are killed, and the pollution is really bad.” My parents visited us 2 months ago. My mother said, “This is not what I have imagined at all. You have a nice park in front of the building, and we don’t feel unsafe when we go for walks.” </p>
<p>I told my mom that most of the time the news media only report exceptions. If there isn’t any sensationalism, no one would buy it or read it. If you looked at the total population in NYC, % of crimes is probably pretty low compared with other areas. MC is a very large, spread out city, it is not all safe, but where we live and work is very safe. </p>
<p>If news media only reports “students in Greek life have parties, just like other students living in dorms, and students in Greek life study and lead a fairly normal life,” do you think it would attract people’s attention? A report about a frat boy causing a scene sells a lot more paper than saying a frat boy is a 3.8 engineering student.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The one thing to keep in mind is that even if a kid does choose to go greek? It’s not some prison scentence. It isn’t like joining the marines. You are free to disaffiliate at any time.</p>
<p>You can go through rush and not join.</p>
<p>You can pledge and not initiate.</p>
<p>You can initiate and then disaffiliate.</p>
<p>But, are you saying you don’t want your kid at a school where it is “too dominated” by drunken greek life? Maybe avoid the SEC.</p>
<p>Is it any harder to find out whether a campus is “too dominated” by drunken Greek life than it is to find out whether it’s dominated by any other social clique or milieu – e.g., so liberal that a conservative would feel horribly out of place / isolated / not welcome (or vice versa)?</p>
This is so true. From’s son’s fraternity class, the majority are now in graduate school–law, medical, dental among others. Many were in the Business School (which is very tough to get into at this school). None of that made the papers. However, there was one party where a girl showed up wasted and passed out shortly after arriving. My son was one of the guys who insisted EMS be called as she was not responding. Of course THAT made the papers…</p>
That is pretty much what I’m saying (or really, what she’s saying). But for her, it’s not really the “drunken” part of it, but what kind of social system or hierarchy there is. Just as an example, she’s negative about Princeton because of the role of the selective eating clubs. I don’t think Princeton is a den of drunken debauchery (relatively speaking, at least), so it doesn’t matter much to me. And…
I don’t think any of these are necessarily easy–but you can make a list of especially liberal schools. When it comes to schools dominate by Greeks, it appears to be primarily the SEC that is fingered. The level of Greek “dominance” isn’t easy, because it doesn’t appear to relate necessily to how many students go Greek.</p>
<p>Great story a few weeks ago out of Wabash where fraternity brothers saved the life of one of their brothers that almost went into a diabetic coma due to a malfunctioning blood monitor. The mother of the boy went out of her way to bring it to the media’s attention, because the school has had its bad share of pres due to an alcohol related death at a fraternity (that the national organization promptly shut down, CardinalFang). Here is her letter to the dean of the school. </p>
<p>My D is at an SEC school and chose not to go Greek for a number of reasons, including the fact that she knew she’d be very involved with some other organizations. Please do not assume that SEC schools are “all Greek.” Hers has Greek involvement at just under 30%; that means 70% are not involved. Her observation is that a lot of the Greek affiliated kids drink more than the non affiliated kids, but the campus (in her experience) is not dominated by drunken Greek parties. Now, the small Episcopal LAC an hour away from us (complete with seminary) is 80% Greek and is on the top 10 list of Party schools. And the stories that I’m hearing about unaffiliated students up at public schools in NJ would put the SEC parties to shame.</p>
<p>It is true that it is difficult to determine which schools are dominated by the Greek scene, but that is what campus overnights, and student reviwed college websites are for. In my state I can knock out the names of schools that have large scenes, schools that are exclusive but have the only parties in town, are large but apathetic, etc. just from talk. I couldn’t tell you about schools outside of my region, but give me a few days and I could probably get my answers online. Truthfully, though, that thread should be anywhere other than the parents forum. This subject belongs in the hands of those who matter, the young people that are applying to and attending the colleges.</p>
<p>Thanks Rob, I appreciate that input, actually.</p>
<p>I have an athlete who would like to play in the SEC. So, yeah.</p>
<p>Hunt–</p>
<p>I think you have legitimate questions and I think you’re talking about “fit.” I’m a big proponent of fit being incredibly important to college retention and success.</p>
<p>I assume your daughter is also interested in schools like Williams and Amherst and whatnot? Also, agree these are good questions for kids to ask other kids at the schools.</p>
I agree, but I do have to note that they all seem to say the same thing, even from schools that I know are quite different. “Sure, people drink, but this is college–people drink everywhere.”</p>
<p>Hunt, drinking is not a “greek” thing. If your daughter wants to find friends who do not drink at all on any campus? She will find them eventually.</p>
<p>But I don’t really think you are going to find a campus, with or without greek life, where alcohol doesn’t play at least some part in the social world. Managing that is really up to the individual, like in life. Sorry to say.</p>
<p>When I ask kids, I am not asking about drinking per se. I ask where most kids go on the weekends, out of all the parties every weekend, how many are put on by fraternity versus house parties, how hard is it to get invited to each party, etc. But generally, it is my DS asking, since no kid wants to talk to a parent about drinking.
As for how big Greek life is, I ask how visible the Greeks are on campus, I ask Greeks if they have a lot of friends outside their house, and I ask Independents if they have Greek friends. Small Greek numbers do not always equal small impact on campus, if the only parties in town are fraternity bashes. Lots of small LACs fall into this category. At very large state schools, the same percentage of greeks do not mean the same impact, since their parties are just one of many.
These questions can go a long way to determining. Also, for sororities, it is easy to find out if it is competetive to get in if you ask whether recs are needed for recruitment. If they say absolutely, or not required but recommended, then you know that you have a competitive recruitment (and it is time to help DD find Greek friends, family members, acquaintances for these letters). If they say that it doesn’t make a differences and that nobody gets them, then the sorority recruitment is very laid back.</p>
Of course. I was just making the point that people who drink a lot tend to say that everybody else does, too. I also don’t think my daughter will be looking for friends who don’t drink at all–but it’s pretty clear to me that campuses differ quite significantly with respect to what there is to do for fun in addition to drinking. Indeed, some small schools that aren’t Greek at all have this issue.</p>
<p>MizzBee, I think those are excellent questions to ask.</p>
<p>Son at USC almost went greek. He hung around a house and thought about pledging for a semester or so. Worst semester so far for his grades.</p>
<p>He decided not too join and got involved in a robotics club and another professional group and his grades climbed right back up.</p>
<p>I was very glad he did not join a Frat, being a GDI myself.</p>
<p>Just one experience but the same thing happened to a few of my friends in college. I was invited to a frat my freshman year and declined. I later learned it was because of my HS GPA. This frat was in trouble for their overall house grade point and needed some help in the averaging department.</p>