Every organization is different, and every chapter in the organization is different. My chapter was considered the campus “brains” while I was there, and then a few years later were the bible-beaters, and after that, were the party girls. I have no idea of their rep on my alma mater’s campus now.
The LW’s particular chapter may be as whitebread as she claims, and the Alpha Chi Omega chapters at different universities may feed into every negative stereotype there is.
There certainly are problems in the Greek system that should be addressed, but I’m not sure that one whiny #notallsororotygirls letter should be the cause of this much angst.
I went to a small liberal arts college in the 70’s. The frats were mostly benign. I ever heard of any bad/dangerous hazing, and I was friends with a lot of frat guys. The football players’ frat was kinda obnoxious, but it was just an irritation.
I wouldn’t have joined any fraternity that would’ve accepted me as a member.
[QUOTE=Habeed]
It’s all about sleeping with as many…impressionable…young women as possible. “making the circuit” means sleeping with a woman from every sorority in the same semester.
[/quote]
Ummm, there were only two posts that mentioned SAE and one just said “Phi Beta Kappa is not a “social” fraternity like SAE”.
We all need to do some research before we start threads (heck, even just google things first), and before criticizing groups of people.
Oh, and you used Animal House as an example of how bad fraternities are, but later said you were glad you never saw Animal House.
BTW, I was at a college with multiple harmless fraternities* and sororities… and one bad frat that anyone with two brain cells stayed away from. They actually went bankrupt and their house is a dorm now. “Ha. ha!” [/Nelson Muntz]
*One was mostly anti-war weed-smokin’ Deadheads, and one was full of quiet pre-med students. How’s that for breaking stereotypes?
I for one think it’s about time someone called out those Animal House style clods in Phi Beta Kappa. When will they cease their reckless visiting scholar program? How many fellowships for students of French must they give out before decent people say “Enough!”
True, I didn’t see *Animal House; * but I don’t like to test my temper and I couldn’t see how the movie would appeal to me.
In any case, subject to correction, if the movie itself was anything like the ads and the satire in *Mad, * it illustrated the “negative stereotype” of fraternities. I prefer to drop the issue altogether.
There were two fraternities I almost joined–the one my rooommate was in that was a co-ed service fraternity cale Alpha Phi Omega, the largest fraternity in the U.S. Then there was the music fraternity that I started that seemed perfectly tame–though they did have some minor hazing, the kind that’s more silly like a practical joke.
And I was also in Chi Alpha, which uses the Greek lettering but doesn’t really have any of the trappings of a real fraternity. It’s basically a Bible club/college youth group.
If I wanted to put all those honor fraternities on my resume*, I’d look like a party animal!
*Does anyone DO that? I remember everyone from Scoutmasters to Frat Rats using the phrase “This’ll look good on your resume”. Anyone ever found anyone that was impressed by any of those? (“Well, looks like you’re an Eagle Scout who pledged ATO… can you start Monday as a VP?”)
I leave them all off, thinking I’d just look like a self-aggrandizing douche.
Just lots of honors (good grades, leadership, high test scores). I don’t even remember what all those were, they were kind of a joke. Others were academic-subject oriented (Theater Arts has Alpha Psi Omega, Music has Phi Mu Alpha etc). I hung with the artsy crowd so was in four of those.
I do feel cheated that our school had Phi Theta Kappa (a cheaper alternative to PBK).
Wouldn’t putting Phi Beta Kappa be like mentioning Mensa on your CV? I’d roll my eyes.
Best get out from under that rock you’ve been living under for the past 30 years; it’s considered a comedy classic.
And, FWIW, being a Delta at Faber looks like it would have been an unmitigated blast, even if detrimental to your GPA. (and so does Alpha Delta Phi at Dartmouth in the 1960s, which is more or less what “Animal House” was based on.)
Personally (and I was never in a frat), I think most of the behavior is pretty much the emergent behavior of any group of very young men with time, money and not a huge amount of supervision. Look at Algher’s commentary about his platoon, for example. The only place where privilege comes into the equation is the availability of money, and some degree of insulation from consequences. And even some of that is more due to the fact that those guys seem to go out of their way to screw sorority girls who are just as invested in that whole system as they are.
The key to this issue is in changing the last phrase in Paragraph One to the active voice and identifying those who consider the movie a comedy classic.
The only proper criterion for gauging a movie’s popularity is the box-office record, devoid as it is of personal opinion. I have never used that as a basis for my choices, however, having scarcely any interest in movies in the first place, let alone interpreting boorish and vulgar behavior as comedy. I sense that these days the studios hire PR firms to attract potential audiences; my sales resistance is just too high. So label me as a recluse if you choose, but I will not pick a movie that obviously won’t appeal to me.
