Greek Life

[Mikus]

Personal observation/opinion: Been a long time since dealing with people in frats (I'm 30) but in my late teens and early twenties guys that were in frats had that general "i'm a badass you better watch yourself" attitude and generally thinking they are a step up the food chain then a normal citizen. This was heavily found at MSU and Western Michigan. Not so much at Eastern Michigan and U of M. Best friend roomed with another best friend. For stories sake, my friends name is Jimmy, other is Ken. Jimmy didn't join a frat but took advantage of the parties because Ken did. His first year in his frat he just straight partied. Remaining years he joined the council or w/e they call it and concentrated more so on community service programs and doing things for the school. I don't keep in touch w/Ken, but from what I've heard, he now holds a great job making close to 6 figures (in Michigan for 30, that's hot!). I'd personally never join one because of the attitude and also the general consensus that I do not pay to have friends. People can argue that the money goes to rent, food, etc etc, but like my friend Jimmy did, he partied with the best of them and graduated like the rest of them and didn't have to pay an extra fee on top of his tuition.

This thread? If I went to the same school as Milkster and did want to join a frat, I'd avoid his as he seems like a tard. And for the sake of arguing, you did originally state you wanted opinions and when people gave negativity, you got defensive. Shouldn't of even bothered.

[solanis]

Next time I go to New York, you can see for yourself.

foopy and I will show you the good life

[tyven]

frats r tight yo

[Eeeks]

Well if you get into a leadership role, then you are managing an organization with a pretty hefty budget. That's impressive to some companies. Plus, usually greek life prepares you to deal with drama a lot more since its about 24/7 drama

My God, this is absolute truth. Think it's a bad idea to shove dozens of young, immature, stressed, and not-always-sober women into a multimillion dollar house? Of course it is - that's a volatile powderkeg of drama waiting to explode. Over and over again. You'd think fraternity houses would be more chill (and more drunk), but that's not really the case. In-house fraternity guys can gossip and backbite with the best of the girls. At times, it's amazing that they manage to accomplish anything.

And then you graduate and begin life in the great American workforce. Soon, you realize that living in-house taught you valuable lessons - because the American workplace environment is the exact fucking thing you thought you left behind in college. Sup, office politics.

Since those initial post-collegiate resumes tend to look thin, greek leadership positions and achievements (along with those from other collegiate organizations) start to look pretty good - even moreso since that kind of college experience can make for an unbelievably smooth transition into the workplace. Arcturus was absolutely correct when he stated that greek organizations are awfully similar to businesses. They are businesses, and the bigger differences are a nicer office/cube, enforced working hours, and no beer/weed/whatever in your desk (unless you're lucky, I guess).

Oh, and office colleagues aren't much more reliable or hardworking than that guy sophomore year who fell out of his second-floor bedroom window - drunk and naked - only to wake up on the lawn, next to the parking lot, to the sight of the brothers' mothers and grandmothers arriving for the chapter's annual Mom's Day event.

[Xno Kappa]

It's kind of hard/impossible to convince someone of something when they believe they already know everything there is to know about said subject, especially on the internet. If said person was more neutral in their stance, it would be no problem.



My point.

Nigga please. I already said there's absolutely nothing a fraternity had to offer me. My friends were free and the bitches were sober during my time in college. The cute little contacts you like to put on a pedestal are meaningless when I already have said connects/contacts from all over the workforce spectrum. You're trying to convince me now to pay up for this shit and join some boys club? Get the fuck outta here.

If someone want to join a fraternity by all means, I'm not going to stop anyone. My point is that some people are already well off without fraternities and this is the part where you seem baffled by the thought and don't understand. Seriously just seems like you're seeking some kind of validation in this thread, not really helping your argument on why I think most frats seem insecure.

[Acturus]

Greek life aside for a moment, there's absolutely nothing that social clubs offer that can't be found elsewhere. Social clubs just make it more convenient. There are exceptions to this, naturally, like schools where social clubs don't have enough penetration (*snicker*) into the student body (giggidy).

Greek life has all of the benefits of any other social club, but it includes all of the drawbacks associated with the stereotypes.

At the end of the day, the individual defines his experience, and the experience is all that matters.

The networking and contacts matter if they are used.
The experience and volunteer work matter if they are used.
The bitches and hoes matter if they are used.
etc.

There's always this attitude that gets applied between greeks and non-greeks, because each side wants to believe that the other side is deluded by their own insecurities and overcompensation. That's pretty much bullshit for both sides.

Greek life is only a problem when it's presented as necessary in an emerging adults life.
Rallying against greek life is a problem when it's based on the stereotypes and misinformation.

But let's be fair here. Social clubs exist in all facets of society. Greek organizations are no different than Lions Club, Shriners, Rotary, etc. etc. There's a foundation of service, a community atmosphere, and a strong desire for a social bond.

Greek organizations get labeled differently because of the same reason that everything about college is labeled differently. It's fucking college.


And here's the other side of it too: Social clubs, and by extension greek organizations, aren't for everybody. If you really want to hang on to smug satisfaction, tell yourself that you didn't need to join a fraternity in college to have fun. Those who are part of greek life will smugly tell themselves that they wouldn't have let you join anyway.

And both sides would be right.

[Kaslo]

That may be post of the year material right there.

[Abandon]

Oh shit another Phi Kap on BG haha, what chapter were you?

And I can agree with pretty much all the above statements, I joined Phi Kappa Sigma and in my opinion was one of the best things I ever did in college, and I am far from the shitfaced 6 days a week typical frat guy. I do feel that the "Buying Friends", can apply to a few of the fraternities or sororities on campus but its pretty blatant when you look at them.

One positive fraternity story for at least me, is over last christmas my dad passed away from cancer, It wasn't to sudden but still a very rough time, through no planning on my own I think about 25 of my brothers showed up at the funeral and stayed around the house helping us out with chores such as taking out the trash or bringing in more firewood. But it was amazing to see how much support I had, Try finding 25 people in a group that you feel comfortable enough, and are willing to show up to funeral right around christmas when they are normally on vacation. It's nice to know that if you really need help for something theres 20+ people in my phone who I can call who are willing to drop everything and be there.

On another Note, Sororities are a whole different monster. 50+ Women in a group

rofl, you're kidding me. Beta Eta chapter (University of North Texas), pledged spring '04

[Tagus]

You know, I was thinking about what might make this thread fun, and came up with an idea. We should all share our stories from hell week. You know the stories... the shit that you were sworn to secrecy on... the hazing, the drunkenness, the bafoonery. I'll start!

So the rules of hell week leading up to the hazing thing were, you had to stay up for 24 hours straight and drink whatever alcohol somebody gave you, but you couldn't miss a class. No matter what. You had to stay at the house for the week, so that the bros could make sure that you didn't sleep. They stayed up with you in shifts to make sure that you were constantly drunk but didn't fall asleep, and then would drive you to class so that it was guaranteed that you would make it. I kept some of the notes I attempted to write in class from that week, and I think by the end I could see through time. Kurt Cobain's notebook makes more sense.

So then at the hazing ritual we were, you guessed it, forced to drink a shitton of beer. Then we were stripped down to our boxers, blindfolded, and given seats in the warehouse room. They dumped cold water on us and left windows open so that we would freeze our asses off. I actually had a little brother of mine have a mini-seizure from it the following year, which was pretty creepy. When he came to, he couldn't stop balling, so I pulled him out and brought him to my room to wait the thing out. People were actually pissed at me for removing him from the ceremony, which struck me as pretty fucking incredible at the time. But anyway, they let us sit there for 8 hours, yelling at us, throwing stuff at us, and dumping cold water on us. Every once in a while, one of the nice people would whisper in your ear what was going on so you didn't get too freaked out. It's kind of amazing when you're half naked, drunk, blindfolded, and freezing your nuts off how disoriented you can really get while people are shouting at you. So then at the end, they make you lay on a table and they walk you out into the main room dumping more water on you and singing some gay-ass faggot song, and then you get to take off your blindfold.

And that was pretty much it! 8 hours later, and you're a brother of delta sigma phi.

P.S... fuck those guys.

[hey]

I was considering joining a frat this year.


Milkster quickly put an end to that consideration though.





By the way, bg is probably not the best place to try to recruit people.

[Zetanio]

This has been pretty well combed through but i'll toss my hat in here.

Joined a very small (1 chapter, 20 actives) frat because they were my buddies. Tough but dry pledge season and all that but it didn't bother me much. Our dues were under 500 bucks a year. I had tons of friends inside and outside the fraternity, including in other frats.

Beer and pussy. Yep
Connections. Even with a small alumni system (still under 1000 members after 85+ years) I have had financial gains due to my fraternity. Far more then anything from other group I joined.
Stereotypes. Hell yes, but it's college so you can't really avoid being typecast.

I think people should do whatever they want. I don't like the idea of large frats but I have friends who love it.

Whatever.

[Milkster]

Shit storm

Sucks that you went you went through Hell. Did you try to change their practices or just let them happen when you became a brother?

I was considering joining a frat this year.

Milkster quickly put an end to that consideration though.


By the way, bg is probably not the best place to try to recruit people.

You should still check them out for yourself, sorry I did that to you. I wasn't trying to recruit people if that's what it seemed like. I just wanted to get a general consensus on how people felt.

This has been pretty well combed through but i'll toss my hat in here.

Joined a very small (1 chapter, 20 actives) frat because they were my buddies. Tough but dry pledge season and all that but it didn't bother me much. Our dues were under 500 bucks a year. I had tons of friends inside and outside the fraternity, including in other frats.

Beer and pussy. Yep
Connections. Even with a small alumni system (still under 1000 members after 85+ years) I have had financial gains due to my fraternity. Far more then anything from other group I joined.
Stereotypes. Hell yes, but it's college so you can't really avoid being typecast.

I think people should do whatever they want. I don't like the idea of large frats but I have friends who love it.

Whatever.

P. much. We're at 94k Alumni and I've found in the last couple of months, that I'm pretty much set for life no matter what path I take. Also, getting as much Jack Daniels until the Master Distiller quits for life.

[Talus]

There's no such thing as a "hazing ritual."

There may be hazing traditions, but there is no hazing ritual written into a ritual book or sanctioned by the HQ of any national/international fraternity that I know of today. I can't speak for local fraternities but I'm sorry you went through that bullshit, Tagus. Some of the hazing-type events I've heard of in particular:

- one of the traditionally black fraternities had a chapter where whenever they had a particularly light-skinned pledge, they'd hold a space-heater near his face to "blacken" him up
- pledges being blindfolded and driven out in the middle of nowhere and being made to find their way back to the chapter house/campus
- blindfolding and loud music in particular seems to be a common occurrence
- different fraternities and chapters of fraternities have certain events like for the night you get a big brother - like the little brother having to almost finish drinking a fifth (saving the last shot for post-initiation) or share and finish a case of beer w/ the big brother
- definitely have heard about pledges cleaning up after parties or being made to clean individual houses that a brother or group of brothers live in.
- "pledge donkey kong" - find a hill, brothers stand at the top and toss empty keg shells down the hill at the pledges, who are trying to scramble to the top
- lineups are pretty common - take pledges somewhere, they stand shoulder to shoulder and brothers intimidate them/force them to drink/tell them how worthless they are, etc.
- the worst things probably happen during people's i-week (initiation week).

Honestly the worst things to happen to me during my pledging that could be considered hazing were an alumnus brother showing up to a house party and making everyone in my pledge class shotgun multiple beers (I didn't care, I don't mind you know.. drinking). There was definitely a lot of standing around blindfolded as well... but not butt ass naked, wet and in a drafty room.

[Moss]

no mention of elephant walks?

[Eaglestrike]

- "pledge donkey kong" - find a hill, brothers stand at the top and toss empty keg shells down the hill at the pledges, who are trying to scramble to the top

That actually sounds kinda cool.

[Aksannyi]

That actually sounds kinda cool.

I agree with this. Fuck all that other shit though.

[archibaldcrane]

I hope this helps you know why a lot of people say "yeah, fuck that" to greek life Milkster.

I know you're thinking "not all frats are like that" - but once you pledge, how do you know until it happens?

Veil of secrecy (something I think exists in virtually all fraternities) has these side-effects.

What practices does your frat perform on its recruits to initiate them, Milkster?

[Milkster]

I won't be spilling secrets like a jaded ex.

But I will say, I had an amazing time doing it.

Besides, you don't care as you stated earlier.

[Kaslo]

That actually sounds kinda cool.

In the movie Going Greek (which is pretty hilarious) there was a "Pledge Space Invaders" too

[tyven]

Milkster and I are of different chapters of the same fraternity. if his is anything like mine, hazing and hell week are not bad at all. no homo erotic shit, nothing harmful, maybe some slightly embarrassing stuff but our pledge events were always more fun than demeaning. We didn't want people looking to be tortured, we wanted people we could have a good time with.