During the rush week at my University there was an ad in the College newspaper advertising the rush week. The ad claimed that a large majority of CEOs and Politicians in office where in fraternities when in college.
How true is that?
I just don’t want to believe that the guys in the Greek system are running the country…the thought of that just scares me on some level.
Depends on the era and the location of the school. The popular of fraternities goes up and down.
I went to college in the 1980s, Reagan era, and fraternities were quite popular.
But find people who went to college in the late 1960s through the mid 1970s. Fraternities were not as popular then.
Greek societies usually don’t have a much of a presence at liberal arts colleges or commuter schools. They are more prevalent at bigger universities, where there is a need for students to find a smaller group to identify with since the scale of the college is so daunting.
Wow, I made no judgmental comments about frats! I’m so GQ!
Not only is it true that a large majority of CEOs and politicans were in fraternities but it is a fact that 17 Presidents were Phi Beta Kappa. In fact, every U.S. President and Vice President, except two in each office, born since the first social fraternity was founded in 1825 have been members of a fraternity. Futhermore, Yale has graduated a disproportionate number of Presidents, many of whom have belonged to Skull & Bones.
Here are some more statistics:
Of the nation’s 50 largest corporations, 43 are headed by fraternity men
85% of the Fortune 500 executives belong to a fraternity
40 of 47 U.S. Supreme Court Justices since 1910 were fraternity men
76% of all Congressmen and Senators belong to a fraternity
63% of the U.S. President’s Cabinet members since 1900 have been Greek
http://orgs.l3.drake.edu/panhellenic/statistics.html
I don’t want to scare you but statistics don’t lie; how to interpret them is another matter. I would like to believe that there is a correlation between fraternity membership and running the country in that nearly all Presidents are frat brothers because the same qualities of being President are also the same qualities of Phi Beta Kappa. That would be logical; however, I am not that naive.
Be sure to research on the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Club of Rome. Conspiracy theorists might be discounted as paranoid but being paranoid is just what they want you to associate conspiracy theorist with. Investigation of membership in organizations, finding correlations and making conclusions is respectable research. If you decide to pledge and are accepted, please tell us what you find out. In the mean time, check out this website and tell me what you make of it:
http://www.trilateral.org/moreinfo/faqs.htm
Kozmik, you’ve quoted your “Greek facts” from the website of the Panhellenic Council, which provides no primary citations of sources whatsoever. The page to which you link says “Statistics taken from the University of Nebraska Greek Affairs Website”. I didn’t see any primary sources there either.
Similar statistics are proclaimed by many other pro-fraternity websites (Google “50 largest US Corporations” for several of them), with only the very occasional vague reference as to the source of the statistics (e.g. “Two-thirds of the nation’s most influential business and political leaders are Greek (Source: Fortune Magazine)”, from here.)
The OP is clearly aware of some of these claims, but is asking for the Straight Dope. Quoting the same old fraternity sites isn’t going to cut it in the General Questions forum.
Some of the statistics have mutated during their passage from one website to another. I can believe that the number of “Greek” CEOs of the 50 largest US corporations can vary from 40 to 43, but I’d still like to see an independent cite for either number.
What I find really hard to reconcile, however, is your linked “76% of all Congressmen and Senators belong to a fraternity” and another fraternity site’s (more believable, IMHO) “52% of the U.S. Senate and 33% of the House are members of Greek organizations”.
( let’s not even get into whether an academic group touting its own merits should be talking about “Congressmen and Senators”.)
I’d love to see some sources for some of the “Greek facts” you quote. Perhaps, as you say, statistics “don’t lie”, but they can certainly be “made up”. Just sayin’.
Also, you say:
Any Presidential alma mater has “graduated a disproportionate number of Presidents”, given that there have only been 43 POTUS and there are thousands of institutes of higher education in the US. Also, looking at famous Skull and Bones members, I count Taft and the two Bushes as having made POTUS; noteworthy, perhaps, but three isn’t “many”. Are there others that I’ve missed?
Am I correct in guessing that perhaps you’re a member of a fraternity yourself?
Also, it is a bit disingenuous to include academic and professional “fraternities” in any statistics, as membership experiences in them are quite different from the social fraternities advertising during rush week, as in the OP. In my experience, most members of academic and professional societies never attend more than one or two functions, if any. And very few plot how to get revenge on the evil dean, or how to smuggle a keg of beer into the football game.
I don’t think this is true. More went to William and Mary and Harvard than attended Yale, IIRC.
toga!!!
Don’t despair. I was a GDI in college and fancied myself less of a sheep and more of a self made man because of it. Of course I was 17 and niave as well.
Just like civic organizations like Lions, or Optimists, fraternities (for whatever reason) contain disproportionately large numbers of people who are A) highly motivated to suceed or B) from a well conected / influenetial background. If you are going to go into public office, or aspire to a position as lofty as CEO of a major corp. then that is the kind of networking you need to be doing from a very early age. And in my anecdotal experience, the kind of people that go on to these careers, especially the politicians, have been working toward that position, or that kind of position, all their lives and making decisions accordingly.
Another anecdote, a friend of mine who is 35 is now at a point in his life where he wants to, and thinks he can, do some good by being in local politics. He’s a smart guy, well intentioned, and with a good business savvy. Like me he was GDI in college. So now in preparation for when he may run for office, he is becoming a part of several civic organizations. It’s all about the networking. Never underestimate the value of common ground in any dealings/negotiations you may enter into in life.
rainy
Yeah, Phi Beta Kappa shouldn’t really be thought of as a “fraternity” in the stereotypical sense, since (a) one can’t have to apply for membership, but must be nominated by the local chapter; (b) you become a member of PBK at the end of college, not during; and © women are allowed to be members. If the Panhellenic Society statistics are including PBK as a frat, then they’re being misleading.
YRC. A page of school/fraternity associations of US Presidents.
Score: Harvard 5, William and Mary 3, Yale 3, West Point 2.
As do very few members of social fraternities, Fear.
–Cliffy
I am a member of a co-ed business fraternity which is technically not a fraternity since it is not affiliated with the Panhellenic Conference nor does it have a fraternity house. I was surprized by the differences between the statistics on members of Congress! When I said ‘statistics don’t lie’ I meant that will the correct statistics interpreted give one view. But of course poor research will get bad statistics. I wonder what the correlation between fraternity membership and elected officials will turn out to be?
As always, your mileage may vary, but we Phi Tau’s actually did put a sheep in the dormitory elevator. But of course, fraternity antics like that are isolated, right?
This is a claim made in an advertising enviornment. It’s not meant to be taken as a precise, mathematical statement. It’s a vague statement trying to get you to join the faternity. One should have a healthy disregard to puffery, as those who say it do so with a motive.
Well, to be absolutely accurate, PBK doesn’t count. They’re an honor society, and can hard ly be called a “fraternity” anymore, since it includes men and women. Should I say something snarky here about George W…naah, guess I won’t.
Another data point: Forbes says that “about a quarter of all chief executives on the Forbes Super 500 list of America’s largest corporations were members of college fraternities” while a “mere 8.5% of full-time university undergraduates are members of either a fraternity or a sorority.”
I would speculate, though, that it may be misleading to compare current, country-wide fraternity membership to the percentage of CEOs that were in a fraternity. I imagine that it would present a more accurate picture to look at fraternity membership at the time when, and in the institutions where, the crop of CEOs did their undergraduate work.
Fraternities came into being at a time when to be at college at all was pretty much restricted to the elite, and tended to attract the most socially prominent members of the college as their members. Sons and younger brothers of alumni had a leg up during rush week, and so the class features tended to be perpetuated. It would be natural, therefore, that over history we’d see that most successful politicians and business leaders came from that background. I don’t know how true that is today. What probably still is true today is that fraternities tend to invite guys to join who are naturally at ease in social situations, and who make friends easily, and those are character traits that foster success in leadership and politics, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the correlation will continue.
FTR, being in a fraternity or sorority, in and of itself, is not prohibitively expensive. Members usually don’t have to pay much more than they would for living in the dorm.
Some fraternities (although a small percentage of the total) allow women to join. Also, the term “fraternity” is part of the official name of some of the oldest sororities, which were founded before the word “sorority” was established. Although most fraternities are strictly male, the fact that a group is co-ed doesn’t mean it isn’t a fraternity.
–Cliffy
I don’t know much time anyone needs to spend debating whether the presence of women scholars in Phi Beta Kappa renders the term “fraternity” unfit, because Phi Beta Kappa itself doesn’t use the term. It calls itself a society.
Who wants to do the secret handshake?
You mean I was the only guy who to stand naked on Westwood Boulevard singing the Phi Beta Kappa song during my initiation in to PBK back in the 1980s?
That’s it. I’m getting even with somebody.