How to cheer up a friend?

OtherEtc
Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:19:10 +0000

I know this will sound like a cliche–but if the fraternity wasn’t smart enough to take your friend, maybe that frat isn’t so great. It might help or hurt, but if it were me, I’d ask my best contacts at the frat to find out the real reasons for the rejection. If the reason for turning him down was that they liked him a lot, but they only had a certain number of slots, and he was next on the list, then maybe next year is a possibility. If the rejection was due to some shallow reason or a “blackball,” then maybe the frat isn’t as great as he thought it was.

If you can, see if you can get him to put off any decision about next year until next year, and try not to think about it in between–hard to do, I know. A lot of things can happen in a year.