I have a generally positive feeling, as I was a member of one during my undergraduate studies.
Think of it as a largish single gender group of friends who rent a house and take meals together, with some structure to the process of choosing the friends and organizing the finances.
There was joking around hazing, but no actual hazing.
We did some charity stuff, like collecting for St Jude’s or cleaning up a playground in Chicago. It wasn’t the focus, but it was real.
I have fond memories of my days living in the house and hanging out, and I keep in touch with many of the brothers decades later.
We used to have service fraternities, and those seemed okay. I went to a major public university where most of the fraternity behavior was abhorrent. Sororities weren’t much better. They aren’t the only groups engaging in bad behavior, but they seem to set the tone for university culture.
[quote=“Dr_Paprika, post:3, topic:974601”]
also a degree of socialization, charity work, tradition and school spirit.
[/quote] These are often part of the bad things
Fraternities–traditional social fraternities–are part of the infrastructure of maintaining privileged classes in our society. They help maintain and perpetuate dangerous cultural problems, such as alcohol abuse, and prejudice based on superficial characteristics.
On a more local level, they constitute a major risk to the physical and mental health of college students and other people in their vicinity.
Incidentally, the fraternity movement was dying out until Animal House was released. The perception of fraternities being the place where “real fun” happens in college–fun like binge drinking, neglecting academic studies, public mayhem, vandalism, sexual harassment and violence, date rape, statutory rape, etc.–became a huge recruiting draw for colleges, and the fraternity system exploded. People wanted to join for the very reason that they wanted a context to facilitate their anti-social behavior.
And then of course is this masterpiece in The Atlantic, which went into detail about how national fraternal organizations pretend to uphold standards of behavior for local chapters, while cutting loose anyone who runs into trouble.
Any attempts by universities to curb fraternity misbehavior or axe them altogether have often been stymied by the power of the purse held by fraternities and their wealthy alumni.
Cliquishness, hazing and boorish drunken partying are long-standing fraternity traditions. It seems like in the post Animal House era, more extreme behavior has gotten normalized (or were there deaths we never heard about in the '50s and '60s, for instance?).
Hazing especially disgusts me, in frats and service academies. It should be entirely banned, “innocent” or otherwise.
I’m curious how strong fraternities are in this day and age. I went to college in the early 90s and there was a general sense that the fraternity scene was much wilder in the 80s. Students seemed to get away with a lot more. There were some very specific practices and hoops the fraternities had to jump through when throwing a party. Kegs were no longer allowed. Some years after I graduated, fraternities were required to do additional stuff like hire private security for the parties.
A number of traditional social (predominantly white affluent) houses were kicked off over the years for one reason or another and tended to get replaced by service fraternities or more “international” or “diverse” student groups.
And now with everyone having smart phones with cameras and what I think is far greater awareness and less tolerance (or even interest) of douchey frat behavior, are fraternities something that college kids are even into? Like what do you even need to live with a group of dudes throwing parties every weekend when you can meet girls more easily on a dating app?
I was close to the guys in one frat, and did things with them. They asked me to join several times, but working two jobs, going to school and still mostly broke, I didn’t have money to join.
There are dues; they seem to be in the range $500-$3000 per semester (depending on what school, what fraternity) from perusing various sources on the net. This is not for living in the fraternity house. (I’m looking at a 2020 article from the school newspaper of my university, and one student is quoted at $2400 annual dues for his frat.)
IIR our “social dues” were about $300 a semester in 1995 (about $500 in 2020 dollars). That would be money pooled together (x 30 or so brothers) to be used for alcohol or anything else we couldn’t pass through to our housing budget.
So that’s basically $10,000 a semester for throwing parties.
Sure, the system is designed somewhat to perpetuate social elites. Which was obvious from the fancy cocktails parties we used to throw all the time.
Then again, the same could be said for the college as a whole. Isn’t that sort of the point of going to college in the first place - to join the social elites?
I’m surprised at how few here were actually in college fraternities. Not sure why, I guess I assumed there would be more.
I was in a social fraternity during my first 3 undergrad years. Ditto my wife. Our respective “houses” were across the street from each other on Greek Row, and we met at various gatherings, but barely knew each other.
I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was one of the happiest periods of my life. And it was nice to have a Cheers-like place where: “Everybody knows your name.” It consumed far too much of my time though, and studies suffered. [skipping long involved story] After leaving college I married the former sorority-girl from across the street and we returned to school in earnest, without frat-life. Her graduation as Summa Cum Laude and mine as a member of the Engineering Honor Roll supports the assertion that fraternities are detrimental to grades.
My son joined a similar frat at his college (not mine), and I think the results were similar. Grades and studies improved after leaving the organization. Despite being a 4th generation legacy in her Mom’s sorority, my daughter declined greek life entirely. She graduated with a double major (STEM/Fine-Arts), a long list of honor rolls, finished her Master’s within a few years and continued on a full-ride PhD program. Probably a coincidence though.
One thing I recall - when I was in college, I thought so many of the Greek houses were beautiful mansions. When my kids attended the same school 20 years later, so many of them were decrepit dumps.
The first time I went to college (right after high school, class of '72) I attended an all-women’s college that had a brother school. I went to a frat party there. No one spoke to me the whole time. There was much drinking. Then someone set off a stink bomb. I left and never wanted to attend another.
I was not impressed, but honestly, I don’t really think about frats or sororities much - just wasn’t interested.
