Greek Life

[Milkster]

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.

Yeah,exactly this. It's nothing like these horror stories I've heard. I know Zeta Mu (Michigan State) has pretty hilarious practices.
Too bad my pledge brothers were/are kind of bitches and freaked out about Hell Week.

[Acturus]

Hazing is such a retarded crock. Ignoring the fact that's against the law, and every nationally sanctioned fraternity has outlawed any practices considered hazing from its chapters, it's just a wad of para-military hoop jumping that is meant to somehow 1) get the pledges to show that they'll work towards the betterment of the group, and 2) show a level of respect to those members who have come before them. When you really stop to think about those two things, it makes no sense that forced drinking/marching/exercising/slave labor/etc has any positive effect towards those goals.

A number of fraternities on a national level don't even acknowledge a pledgeship process in an effort to curb these types of activities. But the problem with building a social group on tradition is that tradition must be followed, and local chapters have a nasty habit of conforming only in public.

What really sucks is that anti-hazing measures have gone to such an extreme level to protect the individual before joiningthat anything that could be considered hazing is hazing. Ironically, once you have actually initiated into full membership, you can be "hazed" to shit. Some of the stupidest stuff that went on in my active chapter happened for 6 months AFTER a new class was brought in. Pledges are protected, FNGs (fuckin' new guys) aren't.

*edit* So that I'm not just complaining, one thing to remember is that, as a class of pledges, the fraternity usually needs you more than you need them. Most chapters are between 40 and 75 active members, and the average pledge class (at my school) was between 15-25 members.

Really think about those numbers. Fraternities often have recruitment quotas placed on them by their national chapter, and the period of time between your invitiation and your initiation is a very fragile time for the chapter. They want to get their rocks off by treating you like little shits, but they don't want you to drop from the group.

[Raen Ryong]

So what does one do if they pledge for one of these Greek thingies and they don't drink, since a majority of the pledging activities seem to involve alcohol in some form?

As for a more constructive input to the thread, I'm not even sure if it exists in the UK. Certainly not something I've seen.

[Kaslo]

My chapter didn't make people drink. We actually had some religious/sober people.

[Tagus]

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 did actually try to change them. I ran for office but was not elected because the druggies wanted to keep their friends in power to perpetuate their activies. Before every major election they would decide amongst themselves who was going to go for what, and then pad their votes. Democracy at it's finest. I also volunteered to have a guy from the head office live with me in my room for a week when we were under investigation. I figured that the fact that I didn't sell drugs would probably be a positive and he might allow us to keep our charter, but I also kinda figured that the other guys in the house would curtail their activities while he was there. In retrospect, I was very wrong about that. Shutting us down was the best decision they could have made. We were a massive liability.

Edit: Also, a funny thing about fraternities is that they claim to be good on a resume. It's very true that putting your "job" from your frat on a resume will help to fill it out and look good, but nobody ever fact checks it. I've got a friend who has put that he was our vice-president on every resume he has ever sent out, when in reality he was our assistant social chairman. Nobody has ever called him on it.

[Talus]

Edit: Also, a funny thing about fraternities is that they claim to be good on a resume. It's very true that putting your "job" from your frat on a resume will help to fill it out and look good, but nobody ever fact checks it. I've got a friend who has put that he was our vice-president on every resume he has ever sent out, when in reality he was our assistant social chairman. Nobody has ever called him on it.

I guess it depends on what the resume's for, but in my experience it can be pretty polarizing. If the person/people looking at your resume was in a fraternity, they may think more positively of you (or negatively I guess, depending on their own experience), but if they weren't in a fraternity or believe every stereotype about the stereotypical stupid loudmouth bro-type in fraternities, it could negatively impact you. Regardless, I guess the reason I have it on my resume is that I was actually VP for a year, recruitment chair another year and scholarship chair another year. If you had no positions of leadership I think it's kind of a wash to include it - could help you, could hurt you, depending on whose eyeballs see it.

[Abandon]

my hell week was nothing like the stories you hear. there were some endurance things, staying awake, but no forcing of alcohol unless you were willing, and a lot of it was learning fraternity history, and doing silly/embarrassing things. Nothing life threatening, unless you wanna count charging into a pond at 2 in the morning, trying to catch a goose.

[Zetanio]

Also, a funny thing about fraternities is that they claim to be good on a resume. It's very true that putting your "job" from your frat on a resume will help to fill it out and look good, but nobody ever fact checks it. I've got a friend who has put that he was our vice-president on every resume he has ever sent out, when in reality he was our assistant social chairman. Nobody has ever called him on it.

I put that I was President of my fraternity. So does pretty much everyone I know in the frat. We are small enough that if anyone checks the current President just says yes.

[kyod]

Throwing my hat into this.

I had no idea why I decided to join a fraternity (TKE), but it was a blast. I never know why people say it's paying for your friends, our dues money went to stuff (we had no houses on my campus, except for one group that's still on suspension). Mixers, Formals, Brotherhood events (buying pizza + beer to watch sunday football, whirleyball, barbecues and other shit) were all paid for. We saw how our money got spent (strict budget review process). The only waste of money was having to pay insurance to the national organization because it was a requirement to cover our ass incase someone ever got injured. We held philanthropic events and raised pretty significant amounts of money for breast cancer research & alzheimer's research.

We also had a very strict no hazing policy and always had sober people (everyone took turns) at events with alcohol to cut people off if they were getting out of control. For most of my time in school, my group always had a higher average GPA than the all men's and all undergrad GPA averages. One semester over half of our guys (chapter had a total of 40 or so at the time) had over a 3.5 GPA.

I held multiple positions and when applying for entry-level jobs it was great to have material to show (I work in PR/Marketing) how I got media coverage for our philanthropy events and the flyers/posters I created (in addition to my real-world internship experience). My chapter also has some nice local alumni connections in pretty big companies (Fortune 100, Finance, Tech, Law, Sports) in Chicago, which helped quite a few of our members get jobs and internships.

And hey, getting to go to our national convention in New Orleans as an undergrad was a blast. Bourbon Street was ridiculous.

Greek Life isn't for everyone and varies from campus to campus significantly. I might not have rushed at U of I, but at my particular school, it was great. If it's not for you, it's not for you.