I am curious as to what people at other institutions think about “Greek organizations,” the slightly confusing catch-all term for fraternities and sororities (very few of whose members are ethnically Greek, and very few of whom know more Greek than a handful of the letters of the alphabet). Thus, a totally scientific poll on the subject:
I don’t have any particular agenda, here, I’m just curious and it seemed like a reasonable subject for a post.
It depends on the organization. The Greek organizations that are basically just drinking societies are a blight. Those that are primarily social (but not alcohol-centered) or scholarly are probably an asset.
It depends. It’s possible for individual organizations to be harmful, and I’d assume there are colleges where the net effect is harmful.
My experience, though, has been somewhere between 1 & 2. Beneficial, but not essential.
We wrestle with that question here, with our 75% greek affiliation. Some of my colleagues blame greek life for any anti-intellectual tendencies of our students. I do not. Because so many students join societies here, those societies do not have the “PARTY-ALL-THE-TIME-DUUDE!” atmospheres that greek houses on other campuses sometimes have. I have seen frat brothers and sorority sisters support each other at sporting events, musical productions, plays, academic presentations, etc., which is always a good thing for all involved. And yes, sometimes they are very silly. Which is an essential aspect of being a college student. So a little of #1, with a lot of #2 and a dash of #3.
There are greeks and greeks. Some are exactly as bad as people think. Others are service organizations that do good work in communities and for members.
I don’t know how common this is, but I went to a university with no fraternities or sororities. I’d say that I never missed them, but I clearly wouldn’t even know what I was missing. I didn’t feel like there was a social hole left from their absence or anything, though.
I object to this poll because there is no option between “essential” and “mostly harmless.”
My involvement in a greek organization in college was useful to me. Maybe not essential, but I learned some things.
I absolutely met alot of people who I would not have met otherwise, and broke down alot of stereotypes I had. Alot of the skills I developed there have helped me throughout my post-college career. I’d say thats a pretty positive experience of any sort.
At the same time, it’s not that I couldn’t have learned those things elsewhere, the greek system was a convenient way for me.
So I vote for “Useful for some people, maybe not for everyone.”
Caltech thought this through over a generation before my time (1931). They disbanded the existing fraternities, phased out some other (but not all) clubs that were a social network connecting students and groups of students living in Pasadena boarding houses, adapted/Americanized the residential college system of Oxford and Cambridge in England, and built 4 undergraduate dorms (the “old” or “South” student houses), each with its own diverging culture (Blacker House, Dabney House, Fleming House and Ricketts House).
There was a system of allowing incoming freshman to list their preferences among dorms, and for each student house to list its preference. No “sorting hat” needed. In 1960, some years before I arrived in 1968, 3 “new” or “North” student houses (Lloyd House, Page House, and Ruddock House) were added, bringing the total to 7. Cultural diversity continued to proliferate. Supra-house events kept some coherence, athletic and academic competitions, dances (“Interhouse”) and weird rituals and pranks.
A new facility, Avery House, opened in 1996, not initially considered part of the House System, as freshmen were not allowed to live there. Beginning in the 2005â2006 school year, freshmen began to rotate into Avery, changing its status from an undergraduate housing option to a fully represented House.
Almost entirely self-enforced (a student “Board of Control”) and with guidance from a Dean of Students, a stability and/or controlled chaos resulted, which seems to have many of the advantages and few of the disadvantages of the Greek system. But Caltech students are not a valid statistical sample of college students, even of extreme geeks.
Dave Brin’s novel, first he wrote though not first published, The Practice Effect (1984) Paperback ISBN 9780553252156, Bantam Books, has 7 kingdoms, each bearing the name of one of the 7 student houses.
I also use them in my Metaverse novel “Axiomatic Magic.”
Where I went to university, they were somewhere between irrelevant and silly. So irrelevant that you rarely encountered them, and when you did they were not problematic. That underage drinking was tolerated in the dorms played a role in this. The substitute, dorm-centered groups, could and did lead to some isolated problems. More recently, drinking was driven off campus and the problems are less isolated but not tied to fraternities.
Where I have been more recently, they are a major problem for the community and the university. All of those problems are drinking related, often involving rape or death by driving 80 in a 25 zone.
What really matters is the campus culture, not whether Greek organizations are at its center.
I think it varies a great deal by institution and chapter. I was in a fraternity at the University of Chicago, and as with many things at that school, we were as much a nerd club as anything else.
Partly, this is affected by the house system in the dorms, which does much of the heavy lifting in establishing early friendships. Most additional activities, whether greek or academic, are focused on a particular interest set rather than a social experience.
At my current teaching gig, there are no Greeks. I don’t miss them a bit from when I was an undergrad. I was a Little Sis’ for a house, probably just to round out my activities profile. I didn’t see them as a BLIGHT on education, but I did get pretty pissed off at my Greek classmates who did better than I did because they had the test banks to study/cheat from.
Greeks do, however, go against the idea of diversity. People will naturally surround themselves with people they have something in common with. Greeks institutionalize that. You live with, socialize with, study with, serve the community with, people JUST LIKE YOU. It doesn’t broaden your horizons much, does it???
maybe greeks have a place, my current instiution has no greek orgs, and is 10000000% more inclusive than my undergraduate institution (which in most other respects matches pretty cleanly to my current institution). both small liberal arts institutions
In addition, as an undergrad, I was jumped a few times by greek orgs having stood up to them, and the admin did nothing (I got my revenge the fun way later, and yes it included some physical violence on my part, advantages of staying sober) (its also why they get no money from me)
So I say greeks suck in general….
that said, I have seen some good (outside of the get drunk and get laid culture) in greeks particularly at large schools. but only where the greek orgs do respect diversity and sobriety.
Fraternities and sororities are…
… strange institutions that appear in US college movies.
I fear the Greeks, even bearing gifts.
From my experience at two flagship state universities with reputations for high alcohol consumption, I can only say that they are a blight. I knew some folks involved in the Greek system, and some of them were perfectly nice people, but their fraternities/sororities were perfect enabling devices for their worst instincts.
I am also troubled by the exclusionary and gender-segregated aspect of a large majority of Greek institutions. They seem to be an excellent means of perpetuating the status-quo-maintaining “good ol’ boys” networks that are much more a part of the problem than the solution on most issues.