Having spent the last 26 years exposed to movies, comics, songs and books that feature fraternities and sororities I’m curious as to how important they are in American college/university life.
To the best of my knowledge they don’t exist in Ireland. There are Clubs and Societies where kids with an interest in a particular thing can get together and drink, there are also Alumni associations for netwanking and the like but no frats/sors.
Do all colleges have fraternities/sororities or only some?
Do most or every American college kid try to get into one of these groups?
Last I heard the University of Illinois (I’m a student there) has the largest Greek system in the US. They don’t matter at all for pretty much everybody I know. I used to go to their parties when they were recruiting when I was a freshman and sophomore because they had free beer.
They’re just a way to meet people, mostly. Different frats have different priorities. If you want to get drunk all the time, there are frats that are for you, if you are serious about your education and want to network, there are frats for you.
Some places are more “Greek” than others. My alma mater has a small Greek presence, but it isn’t a centerpiece of campus life by a long shot. They’re there if you look for them, and maintain a bit of a presence during Rush Week, but definitely in the minority.
It depends on what school. Fraternities are a bigger deal in more established traditional schools. I went to UCSB, and I think after the Viet Nam war, there were something like 3 fraternities left. It was “uncool” to belong. It’s gotten a lot more popular since then, but still, I don’t know a single person who went to UCSB that belonged to a fraternity.
My nephew is president of his fraternity at UCLA. It completely occupies his life. He tells me that if he went to UCSB, he wouldn’t have been in a fraternity, but at UCLA, it was a done deal for him. His dad was a frat dude, which obviously was the influential factor.
My husband went to UCSB and was in a fraternity. It was a big deal when he was there (late 80’s). I was in a sorority in college and have to say that in retrospect, it is the silliest thing in the world.
Depends on the school. However, they are usually a significant presence in most of the large State Universities, less so at elite schools and smaller schools (although this rule doesn’t hold 100% at all). Movies/TV about generic “college” experiences usually portray the big state schools, when in reality there is a great variety in college experiences in the US.
Also, the amount that they are regulated varies a lot. At some schools the Fraternities/Sororities own their own property and are semi-autonomous organizations, at others the frat houses on campus and the University has a lot more of a hand on the wheel.
At the same schools, Fraternities and Sororities sometimes are not equally popular. At my college, 50% of men belonged to a fraternity, but only 25% of women belonged to a sorority.
Definitely depends on the school. I’ve been to two large (25,000+) universities but Greek life wasn’t/isn’t big in either because both are relatively new (established 1969) and both were considered commuter schools, that is, a large majority of the student population lived off-campus. My friends who went to older schools were in frats, though.
Yeah, it depends a lot. I went to Berkeley, and Greeks were a real minority. Most students considered fraternities and sororities to be very uncool. But there are always some people who want to join. And sometimes there are sort of different groups–like I had a friend who joined a ‘multicultural’ sorority and wanted me to join too. I don’t think it was really anything like most sororities–though there was still plenty of drinking. I would not have been caught dead in a sorority.
Now I live in Chico and AFAICT the Greek scene is huge. A couple of the frats have been shut down for hazing in the past few years; one guy died in a hazing incident, and before that a guy drank himself to death (not at a frat, though), and in general there’s been some cracking down.
The larger Greek systems are in public schools. Impressionistically, they are bigger in Southern and Midwestern states. Religiously-affiliated schools seem even less likely than other private schools to welcome frats.
Even on campuses that have big Greek systems, participation is far from universal.
In a previous thread about this subject, I looked up the statistics. Maybe 10% of students are members of a fraternity or a sorority according to what I read. Actually, from my personal memories of college, even 10% of students belonging to them is an overestimate. It’s quite variable, with no fraternities or sororities on some campuses but a large proportion (but still not a majority) of students belonging to them on other campuses.
An important thing to realize is that the picture you get of American college life from movies and TV is wildly inaccurate in many ways. (Well, this is actually just part of a more general rule: Hollywood movies and American TV shows are utter lies.) First, you hardly ever see older students in American movies and TV. In fact, a large percentage of students are out of high school for a few years before they enter college. Second, you nearly always see students living in dorms on campus in American movies and TV. In fact, many students live with their parents or in shared houses with other students. Third, you nearly always see students going to college fulltime without having to work at the same time in movies and TV. In fact, many students work fulltime or parttime while they are students and thus can only go to college parttime. Fourth, it appears that a large proportion of students are on college sports teams if you go by movies and TV. In fact, it’s not very many who are on such teams. Fifth, it seems that many students belong to fraternities and sororities in movies and TV. In fact, it’s not really that big a proportion. Sixth, you get the impression that students take it pretty easy in college and just skate through from movies and TV. Yes, there are such students. They are part of the large group who flunk out of college.
American movies and TV shows aren’t interested in accurate portrayals of life. They’re interested in stories that viewers want to see. The life of a large proportion of American college students - working while studying, living at home, having no time for sports or fraternities or sororities or pretty much any other extracurricular activities, often long out of high school, really trying hard to study to be able to pass their courses - just doesn’t make good stories. Hollywood thus ignores the truth to make more interesting stories.
I go to the University of Pittsburgh, a pretty big school. There are a lot of frats and sors there and a lot of people in them…but there’s a lot of everything at a big school. To answer your questions directly: 1) Yes, all colleges have them (well, AFAICT). 2) A small fraction of students try to get in. In my experience, if you try to get in, you will, unless there’s a reason for them to actively reject you like drugs or a criminal record or you did the head guy’s mom.
No, not all colleges have fraternities and sororities. I just tried a search on some terms to see if I could find a list of colleges with no fraternities or sororities. I couldn’t find any such list, but I found websites for a number of colleges without fraternities or sororities.
It seems a number of Catholic-affiliated universities don’t. Whether this is resentment at a history of blackballing, etc., I don’t know, but it is certainly not the case that every school has them.
Also, there can be a highbrow-lowbrow distinction. I get the impression that some schools that pride themselves on doubleplusgood academics find the Greek stereotype a bit downmarket. Plus, you can always achieve a similar clqiquish effect by instituting “eating clubs” (Princeton) or secret societies with weird rituals (Yale).
Huh - UCSB has even fewer Greeks then I take it? I still don’t feel like UCLA even has a big Greek scene, but then I was already a curmudgeonly old fart when I went.
I graduated from UCSB in 1983. I could be mistaken about the Greek influence these days. UCLA probably has more commuter students, so that probably has an influence on the percentages. Also since my experience of UCLA frat life has a sample size of 1, I suspect that my impressions are not statistically significant.
Many Catholic colleges don’t have fraternaties. Before 1968, it was against church rules for Catholics to belong to fraternaties or secret societies. The official reason given was that it promoted division amongst churchmembers, but the long history of anti-Catholicism in most secret societies probably was the bigger reason. Some Catholic colleges have added fraternaties since then, but many (such as my alma mater Gonzaga) haven’t. There wasn’t much demand for them to be added either from what I recall.
Not buying it. The first chapter of PKT was at Belmont Abbey in the Fall of 1960 I believe. This was after the merger of 2 much older organisations, going back to Brown in the 1880’s.