Yes and no, Amanda.  You even said your own campus didn’t have a Greek system so you don’t know; and Greek systems in the South are very different from Greek systems elsewhere.  (There are girls at SMU who drop out of school if they don’t get into the right sorority.)  I attended a top 20 USNWR school and our sororities were a force for helping young women build leadership experience and were organized accordingly.  We didn’t do hazing (beyond mild games) and our studies came first.  Yes, we socialized with fraternities (just like non-Greek young adults socialize with one another - Teh Horrorz!) but anyone who has the slightest bit of knowledge about the Greek system knows that you simply can’t generalize houses and/or the system from one campus to another.  It would be like saying that the students at Arizona State are just as studious as the students at Swarthmore.  If you wish to speak of a particular campus, I have no objection, but the generalizations about the Greek system as a whole aren’t appropriate.

And puh-lease, my sorority had a black president and a Hispanic president and plenty of non-white members during the time I was there, over two decades ago.  And the Jewish fraternity had a black president and a Thai-national vice-president.  And it was simply no big deal whatsoever, no one thought twice about it.  You need to distinguish between the more intellectual schools in normal parts of the country where the girls are highly ambitious and diversity is taken for granted, versus the lower-end schools where the entrance requirements are minimal and the girls are there to get their MRS.

Oh man, my sister is in a sorority, and while it doesn’t precisely match what you describe here, I think it’s been really, really bad for her. To the point that I’ve considered calling the Dean of Students out of fear for my sister’s life (and did call various heads of the organization and almost succeeded in having their charter pulled for abuse), and one of their sisters died from alcohol poisoning (which didn’t manage to get their charter pulled either). The word “sorority” is now enough to make me break out in hives, and I’m glad she’s a couple of weeks out from graduating and can get the hell out of there, and even more glad that she seems to hate her sorority nearly as much as I do now. Her descriptions of the interviews are bone-chilling, and they definitely have a token system, because they feel better if they have a black girl around. It’s just so disgusting. I think I need to go take a shower now. Oh, and now I teach undergrads and have learned that Greek houses keep files on all the professors. Fun.

(Yes, my college had a Greek system. No, I didn’t think all the sororities were as bad as hers, though nearly all the fraternities were.)

Re: sororities and eating disorders…Did you hear about the sorority with the plastic ziploc baggies of barf? I remember reading about it in a psychiatry textbook.  Basically, there was a sorority, and the pipes were broken in the bathroom.  Then the sorority pres noticed ziploc bags going missing.  Apparently the entire sorority had been vomiting so much that the pipes were eaten away by the acid.  Then they were vomiting into ziploc bags and hiding them in the basement when the toilets were broken.  Basically, it was like a breeding ground for disordered eating behaviors, with each sorority member competing to say they ate less, etc.  Now I can’t find it when I google it, though :(.

At UT, i used to watch all the pledges walking along in increasingly ridiculous outfits each day of pledge week, and I felt kind of bad for them… but then I also saw it as a kind of self-selected pool of people who were willing to play along with the stupid rules.

okay, i found it.  apparently bags of vomit is a better search term than ziploc bags:
article

Susanne, we call it ASU not Arizona State out here in the un-studious desert.

I don’t necessarily think they’re all bad—-leadership skills, social skills, Greek students get better grades on average, even.  But all that stuff is available in a less sexist context, and usually with fewer drawbacks.

This sororities-as-accessories-to-fraternities thing explains very easily why many women’s colleges don’t have them—no boys—> no frats—> no need.  That, and, as the official reasons not to have them go, having them fosters division between the women of the school, when women already have a hard enough time doing not being divisive.

t-ster, unfortunately, a lot of that stuff seemed very urban legend-y to me.  I wish she’d bothered to cite the evidence or drop it, because it made her claims seem weaker, not stronger.

That said, bulimics and ziploc bags is a pretty well-documented phenomenon.  It’s hard to say *why* bulimics keep the bags around, except that it seems to be an extension of their neurosis.  Which is more evidence for the fact that the disorder is about more than concerns about weight, which do feed into it.

Susanne is completely correct.  You can only compare sororities from different Universities and to each other on a very minimal basis.  My sorority was wonderfully diverse and we took a lot of pride in our academics.  Some of the other sororities on campus were very much superficial and chose girls based on family money, car type, etc.  You can not paint the Greek system with a broad brush and say that they are useless and/or destructive institutions.  Like most “secret” organizations, there are a lot of urban legends that people like use to demonize them.  My college experiance was enriched by my sorority and I hope that someday my (potential future) daughter will find a sorority that she wishes to join.

My spouse reported that her sorority chapter was diverse and not particularly oriented toward providing bedwarmers for frat boys, and then the national shut the place down for reorganization. Reopened with a new cast of more acceptable young ladies. Once again, everyone’s mileage differs, but it seems that the chapters that train women to be arm candy should be the furthest of outliers, and the ones that get shut down, rather than the other way around.

My biggest problem with this book when I read it a couple years back was that it doesn’t take in to account how different the experience of being in Greek Life is depending on what sort of school you go to and where in the country you are. IIRC, all of the girls who were followed for the book attend large, southern schools and the experience there is very significantly different from the experience that I’ve had in my sorority at a small, private, techy, northern school that has what is considered by much of the national Greek Life structure to have one of the best Greek systems in the country (I realize that sentence sounds really really conceited, it’s not meant to). Sure, some of the same sorts of things happen in some chapters here, but on the whole there’s nothing like what happens in this book in any of the chapters on my campus and when these things are found out, which they generally are if they happen, the punishment for the chapter can be severe. Would I recommend that everyone on earth go Greek? No, it isn’t for everyone, and at a school with a Greek system that is unlike mine, I’d actually warn against it. I do however think it’s unfair to categorize everyone who is in a historically white GLO as being the same or all of the organizations as being the same. We’re all different, even a single national has a variety of personalities depending on which campus you find them on. Some of us are just closer to the ideals of our organizations and Greek Life in general than others.

@Antigone: I can’t speak for other chapters on other campuses, but in my chapter and on my campus, people who have to work are excused from whatever it is that they can’t make it to because of work (or even homework depending on the situation) without being punished with not being allowed to do the fun stuff. As far as dues, they’re a necessary part of keeping the organization running and go toward things for the chapter that you as a member get to use. My sorority is local (meaning that we’re the only chapter that exists of us) so all of our dues go in to paying for things like chapter t-shirts, sisterhood retreats, our various philanthropy and service activities, mixers, and possibly if there’s extra some goes in to making the house nicer. Nationals, as far as I know, pay for those things plus the cost of keeping the national organization running, so, paying the salaries of employees and for things that the national organization gives them. Every Fraternity and Sorority I know of on my campus has options for helping people who don’t have much money pay their dues, everything from out and out scholarships to specially designed payment plans, and in some cases just reducing the dues for that person (especially when the chapter can do just fine with a smaller budget than they normally have). It may seem hard to believe, especially if all you have to work on is this book and some other horribly stereotypical representations, but for many of us, our sororities and fraternities actually are about sisterhood/brotherhood, intellectual pursuits, philanthropy, service, and diversity.

“Since fraternities and sororities are about being single-sex from the get-go, they’re corrupt at the root and no matter how you try to reform them, they’re going to trend towards reinforcing the most retrograde gender roles.”

Do you think this applies to single-sex schools as well? I can’t comment on sororities/fraternities as I never did the Greek thing in college, but I attended a Catholic all-girls middle school. When we went to dances at our “brother” all-boys school I couldn’t help but notice how much better their facilities were, how much more money they seemed to have to throw around for extra-curricular programs and such. Not to mention how much more easy-going the teachers seemed to be with the boys (we, on the other hand, were constantly subjected to uniform checks and other indignities). I often hear women praise their single-sex education, saying it gave them more confidence, which makes me think that my experience might have had more to do with religion or some other variable. However, I would feel queasy about sending my daughter to an all-girls school. I wouldn’t have the same reservation about possibly sending my son to an all-boys school, though. Weird.

At my small, private, northern college you weren’t allowed to rush a fraternity/sorority until your sophomore year. The Greeks also weren’t allowed to have official houses. There was one fraternity that I might have joined if I had a penis because it was the nerd fraternity, but I don’t have a penis. As for the sororities, well, those sorts of girls had a history of making my life miserable, so I wasn’t exactly jumping at the opportunity for more of the same. I can’t recall anything significant the Greeks did at my school, except for one fraternity that wrote a really awful misogynist, racist song that got them suspended. I’d agree that the Greek system should probably be dismantled.

Also, Sororities like Phi Sigma Rho, a social Sorority for engineering majors, are very helpful to women in fields like engineering that are usually horribly sexist. Though I myself am not a member of Phi Sigma Rho, I’ve seen how helpful that network of women in similar fields who as such have similar experiences is for its members. Just to clarify, this is a social Sorority, not an honors organization or a professional organization, so they do all of the things that the other Sororities do from recruitment to formal, they just happen to all be engineers. When you generalize about sororities you’re also generalizing about these organizations and their members who are doing wonderful things for women in the field of engineering.

Well, my school, a snooty, white, elite, northern school, had a messed up Greek system that completely dominated the social scene.  Had I realized the extent to which it was go Greek or watch movies every weekend night for four years, I probably would have gone to a different school.  Location and academic reputation is no indication of the “quality” of the sorority.

Margo, I get that some women are very happy with a single-sex education, but I think your experience is the side of sex segregation that doesn’t get talked about, but is probably the more common experience.

One thing I found really interesting about Robbins book was she was 100% prepared to see stereotypes dismantled, since she was assured of the diversity of sororities and fraternities, and deeply disappointed to see stereotypes were upheld instead of dismantled.  Since I live by a college campus of one of the more laid-back State U.‘s, I can attest that even if the school fosters a better atmosphere than the typical one, the Greek system still plays up a troubling amount of stereotypes.  But again, the system was set up to be X, so asking it to be Y is asking a bit much.

I attended the University of Massachusetts, and the extent to which Greek students wear the uniform, even in liberal, pigs-marrying-cats Massachusetts, has to be seen to be believed. For the frat boys, the polo shirts (usually striped), plain shorts and flip flops are de rigeur, for sorority girls it is the shorts or sweat pants (depending upon the season) that I affectionately refer to as “ass pants” because the logo, be it American Eagle or Hollister or Victoria’s Secret (!) is emblazoned loudly across the seat. There’s a bit more variation in tops for women. But the hair. Hey, I will freely admit that I am in no position to say anything about hair care, and I think this might come off as being more snarky than I intend it to, but my mind is blown by the revelation that these women spend so much time on their hair, since the Management Approved Hairstyle appears to be limp and lifeless long, straight hair left down.

It sounds superficial, I know, but the across-the-board dress-code conformity of Greek students at my university was, to me, one of the really creepy elements of campus Greek life, and it seemed to be part of a larger feeling of cultural… gross that I couldn’t help associating with the whole thing. Maybe it’s the circles I tend to run in, but few of the people I knew who weren’t in a fraternity or sorority had positive thoughts about the whole thing. My peers and I saw Greek life as a weird, not-quite-funny joke - though sometimes it is very funny - and I remain mystified by the glorification of fraternity life by that American film archetype, the college movie. Of course, we all know that those movies are crap, so this really shouldn’t be a surprise.

I attended a top 20 USNWR school and our sororities were a force for helping young women build leadership experience and were organized accordingly.  We didn’t do hazing (beyond mild games) and our studies came first.

That’s the same old canard I kept hearing from members of Finals Clubs at a certain university by the Charles River and fraternity/sorority members on other Ivy/Ivy-level campuses…...which didn’t really hold up from my own observations and those of friends who taught/TAed such students.  If anything, those students tended to be, with extreme few exceptions, among the most overentitled, lazy, apathetic, and demanding of grades far higher than their actual work merited. 

Also…..even if your college/university is in the top 20 according to USNWR….hate to break it to ya…but odds are that there are plenty of lazy and/or idiots even among your “studious” classmates. 

I don’t necessarily think they’re all bad—-leadership skills, social skills, Greek students get better grades on average, even.

I wonder how much of this is due to the fact most/many of its members are willing to use powers derived from their socio-economic privilege to get those better grades….....like using the promise of high alumni donations and/or their powerful social connections with the administration and alumni association to strongarm Profs, lecturers, and TAs into giving higher grades than the members’ actual academic performance warranted. 

Also, it has been well known among the Profs, TAs, and most high school classmates who attended schools with frats/sororities that nearly all their members tended to choose the easiest courses with the least amount of work/rigor with a notable exception of a well-respected institute by the Charles. 

As for leadership skills, there are far better venues IMHO such as working a job, political activism, starting your own business, starting/running a substantial student organization/club devoted to community/societal service, organizing/planning campus academic events, and/or becoming an ROTC cadet/Officer candidate for the armed forces.

In my college-hunting I instantly ruled out anywhere with the Greek system. It creeps me the hell out, and I feel like the negatives *waaay* outweigh the positives. Maybe you can find a decent sorority out there if you wade through enough of them, but I feel no need to expend that kind of effort when it’s far easier to avoid these groups altogether. I much prefer my small, all-women’s liberal arts college, thanks muchly. We get the inclusive and supportive feeling of a sorority without the man-chasing, back-biting, and social exclusivity of one. The entire freshman class is put through a giant—and strictly voluntary—“rush” in the spring, which is basically like “everybody dress up in a silly outfit (or not!) Now let’s eat some candy (or not!) Now you’re one of us (no matter what!)”

Paul, that happened to me too.  I pledged a sorority my freshman year (mostly because I thought it would be good to have some female friends in my engineering program).  I was amazed at how not stereotypical it was…then the national organization decided that was a problem and they came to reorganize it.  I left after they decided to kick out my big sister.

I wanted to go to a small liberal arts college in New England, Smith or Mt Holyoke or Colby. My parents thought I couldn’t possibly know at 17 what I might want to major in and wanted me to have all the opportunities, including greek ones, of a large state university, so off I went with the legacy letter for Alpha Phi and an AOPi rec from another family friend. I made it through the first round of rush and that was it. Then sophomore year I switched from the generic freshman dorm to the art-fag-freak-hippie communal living house. Much better experience for me, I’m sure. We did service projects too, but no one spent any time on make-up. Hair, maybe, if you count the hours spent doing braids and dreadlocks and weaving shells and stuff into each others’ hair. Grades probably varied inversely to the amount of pot smoked. Oh, I didn’t change my major a single time. I think I’d have done well at a small liberal arts college too, and could have saved the land grant university for grad school, but no use second-guessing that 15 years later.

for example, in atlanta, the greek system at Emory is pretty different from the greek system at Georgia Tech is different than the “greek” system at Morehouse.  Georgia Tech is very, very straightlaced in a a corporate, sometimes militarist sense, and they keep a pretty tight lid on the excesses of fraternities.  Also so few girls, that I’ve not been familiar with any of the sororities.  Morehouse has some pretty much thuggish fraternities, with not so hot rep of being really creepy.  Who wants to hear people bark like dogs, anyways?  Emory?  Yup, standard southern shit.

As I understand it, the whole “Greek” system in America was developed to replicate the “old boys network” in its original form as it existed in Britain, where it is a product of which “public school” (or as we’d say, prep school) you went to combined with which college you lived at at Oxford or Cambridge. The chapter system was to create a virtual unity among members who actually attended colleges sprawled out across a continent; the whole thing was created with an eye toward networking professionally after graduation.

So, inherently elitist and privileged. Another purpose was to create some distance for the legacy students from the earnest “greasy grinds” who were muscling their way into higher education from the lower classes with the serious intention of getting ahead or even actually learning stuff.

Sure, given a diverse body of students—and even selecting carefully only from the legacy brats who appeared to conform, you’d get some divergence of opinion—certain frats doubtless evolved less viciously dysfunctional culture. But I think it is right to look askance at the system as a whole since it was rooted historically in anti-democratic, elitist notions from the get-go.

I went to Caltech, which banned the Greek system by essentially mandating it. Instead of frats, a House system was created—all undergrads were required to join one of seven Houses on-campus. (A very few were able to opt out of actually living there, but everyone was supposed to at least formally belong to one House). The system was developed deliberately in the 1930s with the theory that a tribal identity would be important for students to get support from peers. And that tribal identity was best fostered by competition, they thought. So the original four houses (three more were added later in the early ‘60s) were built physically to foster cloistering; a House designed to hold less than 100 members was further subdivided into “alleys” of 10 or so rooms and competition was to reign not only between Houses but between their Alleys.

By the ‘60s when the North Houses were built they’d given up on that particular elaboration of the concept and these were essentially dorms with standard double rooms on long corridors; their “alleys” were mere conceptual subdivisions. (Also they had no single rooms, which I would have hated…) By the ‘80s, when I got there, I wound up in Dabney, which was the hippie house that most explicitly rejected the whole macho culture the genius designers of the 1930s were hoping to foster. We had long ago broken down the walls separating adjacent alleys and turned the place into a delightful labyrinth.

At Caltech in the ‘80s, only about 20 percent of the undergrads were women, and they were picked into the Houses. So the gender divide was within them rather than between separate bodies, and even in the other 6 houses as far as I ever saw, there was no clustering into “women’s alleys” or anything like that. Perhaps there should have been?

My later college experience was at Cal State campuses; the two I saw did have a weak Greek system but no houses I knew of.

I can well believe that certain sororities are on the whole good things, given that our society as a whole stacks the deck against women. But even if some of them have evolved (or were founded by visionaries aggressively gaming the system against itself) to better purposes, the foundations remain doubtful. On the whole I’m glad I had a refuge like Dabney from what I now recognize as a dysfunctional campus culture at Caltech, but we had our own dysfunctions too. It would have been better to have the whole campus otherwise, but then it would be better to have a better world too.

Frats just disgust me. Without frats, I suppose even the best sororities would go too.

“I wonder how much of this is due to the fact most/many of its members are willing to use powers derived from their socio-economic privilege to get those better grades….....like using the promise of high alumni donations and/or their powerful social connections with the administration and alumni association to strongarm Profs, lecturers, and TAs into giving higher grades than the members’ actual academic performance warranted.”

ROFL.  First, you made an assumption that sorority membership = upper class.  Not in the least.  Maybe some upper middle class, but that’s not about it—and certainly not at the “give me an A or my daddy won’t donate another science wing” level.  Many of the girls worked several jobs to be able to stay at this school.  Second, the idea that they are strong-arming profs like that in the first place is just laughable and ludicrous. 

“Also, it has been well known among the Profs, TAs, and most high school classmates who attended schools with frats/sororities that nearly all their members tended to choose the easiest courses with the least amount of work/rigor with a notable exception of a well-respected institute by the Charles.”

ROFL again.  Not borne out by my experience, at all.  Plenty of chemical engineers.  Plenty of math and science majors.  Try being a theater major at one of the best theater programs in the country—it’s not easy either. 

“Then sophomore year I switched from the generic freshman dorm to the art-fag-freak-hippie communal living house. Much better experience for me, I’m sure. We did service projects too, but no one spent any time on make-up. Hair, maybe, if you count the hours spent doing braids and dreadlocks and weaving shells and stuff into each others’ hair.”

Not really sure what the difference is between a bunch of girls wearing sweater sets and pearls and doing each others’ nails, and a bunch of girls doing braids and dreadlocks and so forth.  Friends find friends based on common interests, and it seems to me that it’s just as “conformist” at the dreadlock-place, just conformity to a different norm / meme.

The nice thing about going to giant state school, Michigan State in my case, was that while there was a Greek system, you could pretend it didn’t exist and still party to your hearts content without being shut out of anything. While you couldn’t generally get into fraternity or sorority parties, there were plenty of equivalent parties thrown by students renting houses, so I’d say the Greek system was pretty much ignored by those who weren’t part of it.

My impressions of hanging out at Michigan Tech when I was still in high school, was that fraternities and sororities (or maybe sorority, MTU being famous for have 2.5 men for every woman) were really the center of social life.

It’s interesting the number of people posting here who were in the greek system (disclaimer: I was not, though I considered it).  It’s probably a good sign.  This site - even when I disagree with the sentiments of the authors - is very eye-opening and informative, and I think you have to be truly interested in feminism to read it seriously.  The presence of sorority members and alumnae here shows that not all greeks are brainwashed supporters of the patriarchy.

Though all the ones I knew in college were.

Just sayin’.

Witless,

The same thing (total dominance of the social scene by the greeks) was true at a few schools I looked at - specifically MIT, but to a lesser extent Cornell.  Both have gender ratios that are more heavily male than the national average.*  I wonder if the two are connected?

* MIT is male-dominated, Cornell about even, while the national average is at around 57% female.

“I often hear women praise their single-sex education, saying it gave them more confidence, which makes me think that my experience might have had more to do with religion or some other variable. However, I would feel queasy about sending my daughter to an all-girls school. I wouldn’t have the same reservation about possibly sending my son to an all-boys school, though. Weird.”

I will praise my women’s college to the high heavens forever.  It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. And, as I transferred there from a co-ed school, I can actually compare the two ideas. 

I will say, though, that grade schools and colleges are different beasts.  I don’t know how I would have felt about a single-sex elementary or high school.  Probably not so good.  Part of this, I think, is that when it comes to colleges, the students themselves are (almost always) the ones choosing the single-sex institution.  In grade school, the kids probably have a lot less say in the matter.  I also think your thought about religion is spot on.  Most, if not all, well-known women’s colleges in the US these days have a relationship with religion that is tenuous at best; that is, there are currently no religious-based rules, and the administration and profs are not religious figures. 

I, personally, would be more worried about all-boys schools.  Reinforcing the general idea that women are unnecessary and unworthy, and ending up with an all-male patriarchy echo box.  The patriarchy hurting men too and all that, by thrusting boys into unending patriarchy of a single-sex school.  For me, and for lots of the women I went to school with, being at a women’s school was mostly a relief.

There was one fraternity that I might have joined if I had a penis because it was the nerd fraternity, but I don’t have a penis.

I genuinely love the way that Entomologista makes this sound as if having or not having a penis is like having or not having a screwdriver or DVD player.  “Ah, there was one show that I might have recorded if I had a Tivo but I don’t have one, so, eh, maybe later.”

Actually, sorority membership=upper middle to upper class is a perfectly fine assumption.  I was middle class in college, and had I asked for $600-$1,000 a semester on top of housing costs for sorority fees (plus the designer clothing, bar-hopping, and other expensive requirements), my parents would have laughed me out of the house.  Some girls work a job to keep up with the expenses of sorority life, but then they don’t have time for the sorority’s time commitments.  Robbins did a magnificent job of showing that while it’s entirely possible for someone from a working class background to pledge a sorority, chances that she’ll be able to hack it without a fresh flow of cash from her parents is very small.  And even then, she won’t fit in, so there’s very little incentive there.

The presence of sorority members and alumnae here shows that not all greeks are brainwashed supporters of the patriarchy.

One thing that impressed me in the book was that the girls weren’t stupid and were tuned into the unfairness of the patriarchal system.  In general, though, they bought into the patriarchy’s response—-if you get a benevolent man, then it’s all good.  That said, it meant they did police each other’s love lives in ways that I thought was actually caring—-if you dated someone who was abusive, didn’t call when he said he would, etc. they would tell you that was fucked up.  I suspect when you put a lot of work into being a catch, you feel like you should be rewarded with a not-fucked up boyfriend.

I was pledged into a diverse, grades-oriented sorority chapter (some genius women, nonwhite, different body types, etc.); and soon after, our national chapter (which was as Amanda described, we were definitely an anomaly) pulled our charter—just shut us down. We’d been on that campus for 75 years. 

We weren’t bringing in enough girls, you see, and girls=money. Did the book go into the money aspect? Because it’s damn expensive to pledge; you have to buy outfits, you have to pay dues (and yet, you have very little control over the money and how you can spend it) and you have to invest at least some income in official garb, like pins, shirts, etc., all extremely overpriced.

With enormous effort, and “charismatic” do-it-all girls (Perfect Daughters types) sure, you can do a lot of “service” in a sorority, but it’s actually far better, in the long run, to just join a coed service fraternity—much cheaper, you can meet guys, no “house” to maintain, and no stupid rules/Rush duties. If I had to do it over, that’s what I’d do.

Sororities were always “ancillary” to frats; on my campus, frats had houses…sororities had rooms in a shared building. Yeah, pretty clear who was more important. 

And after we were gone? A new sorority was brought in to campus; made up of white rich girls who liked to party with the frats, just like all the others.

Never joined a sorority. I can say as an adult observer who works at a university that I was surprised by the sexist set-up of the Greek system. Every time you turn around there is an event where the girls are basically performing for the boys. Date auctions, talent shows, etc. are ALWAYS girls only with an audience full of boys. Sickening.

The Greek system wasn’t big at my school, but it was notorious.  I never had any desire to join a sorority, mainly because I didn’t see the need to pay to have friends.  Maybe I’m just cheap, but I had plenty of good friends (both male and female) without ever paying dues.  Beyond that, I knew right away the about half of fraternities and sororities on campus were trouble.  Part of this is because my brother went to the same school before me.  Several fraternities were suspended by the school for varying amounts of time.  For one, this happened multiple times while I was there.  There was also one that got shut down permanently.  I did not go to any frat parties, because the boys did not hide the fact that they only hosted them for the purpose of getting girls drunk enough to pass out so they could rape them.  There was even an incident when they took pictures of the passed out girls (they were smart enough not to take pictures during the actual rapes) and posted them on facebook.  I think it was reported on a local news station, but they basically got a slap on the wrist from the school and the local police and continued on their way.

The other half of fraternities and sororities that weren’t as bad weren’t active at all.  They were essentially inactive groups that you can put on your resume.

Susanne, femmina, AmberChi: Absolutely, your experiences with sororities were unicorns and puppies and all things win.  They, and you, are special, special snowflakes.  That stipulated, do you recognize any of this?

anyone who has the slightest bit of knowledge about the Greek system knows that you simply can’t generalize houses and/or the system from one campus to another.  It would be like saying that the students at Arizona State are just as studious as the students at Swarthmore.

“No, you can’t generalize, and to demonstrate that fact I will employ a broad generalization.”

Second, the idea that they are strong-arming profs like that in the first place is just laughable and ludicrous.

Upper/upper-middle class undergrads with entitlement issues borne of their socio-economic status have used their status to strongarm Profs, lecturers, and TAs for a long time.  Heck, several Profs & TAs I’ve known have had LAWYERS sicked on them in order to gain a favorable grade change. 
I’ve not only heard such accounts from friends who teach/TA undergrads currently, but also encountered one of those overentitled kids IRL when he mistook me for a TA in his class and screamed at me for giving him a C level grade which upon examination…I thought was overly generous….

And the phenomenon has gotten worse since I graduated.  At least when I was an undergrad, socio-economically overentitled undergrads would, at least, attempt to strongarm the Profs themselves without involving their parents too much.  Nowadays, the parents of the socio-economically privileged undergrads including a high rate of frat/sorority members are mostly the ones who scream, yell, and threaten legal action if their darlings get any grade lower than an A- or *shudders* a B+....even when the actual work concerned really merited a grade more in the C or even F range. 

Google the term “helicopter parents” and how they are seen as a menace by Profs, lecturers, TAs, and campus administrators since the late ‘90s/early part of this decade….

I never had any desire to join a sorority, mainly because I didn’t see the need to pay to have friends.  Maybe I’m just cheap, but I had plenty of good friends (both male and female) without ever paying dues.

Catgirl,

I agree 100%.  I also see no reason to pay to have friends or spend a ton on booze, paraphernalia, etc…..especially when I was attending a private liberal arts college on a near-full scholarship and working during the year/summers to pay the difference.  Spending $200+/semester for Greek dues IMO seemed like a frivolous way to spend money….especially when I could not fall back on parents for financial assistance back then. 

Then again, I was fortunate to have attended a college where frats/sororities have been banned for over 100 years…..though I have encountered far too many frat/sorority members on their worst behaviors when I was living in the Boston area and going about my life as a young working professional…..

ROFL.  First, you made an assumption that sorority membership = upper class.  Not in the least.  Maybe some upper middle class, but that’s not about it—and certainly not at the “give me an A or my daddy won’t donate another science wing” level.  Many of the girls worked several jobs to be able to stay at this school.

My assumption is on the basis that I knew no one from working-class or even most middle-class backgrounds could afford to pledge $200+/semester or more for Greek dues….even after working several jobs as the money earned often went to tuition, textbooks, lab fees, dorm fees/rent, and other educational expenses.  If you had $200+ to spare per semester after all of that, especially at a private college….you’re upper-middle class at the very least….and more likely upper-class. 

As someone who had the experience of being a near-full scholarship student who had to work to pay the difference and cover other expenses without parental assistance, sparing $200+/semester for Greek dues is very hard to justify as a legitimate educational expense….especially when most members I’ve met or know within my own family tend to be those who prioritized partying at the expense of their studies.

I attended a very small state school and the greek system there is pretty much dead on what the book & Amanda have described. You get sucked in by an idealized version of it and only realize once you’re in, what you’re really a part of. My experience was that most underclassmen are very involved and enthusiastic, whereas the upperclassmen tend to fall away from the activities and are pretty much done with “greek life” by the time they graduate.

The idea that sororities are there to funnel “proper” girls to the frats is pretty much dead on. By “proper” I, of course, mean white & blonde. This actually hit us over the head like a sledgehammer when I was a sophmore we invited a traditionally black sorority to a mixer at our frat house. The campus police were there at 11:00 PM to shut the party down (that was the curfew for parties on campus, but it had NEVER been enforced to my knowledge) and we were told by the “greek council” (think Alpha Betas in Revenge of the Nerds) that we would not be allowed to have a party w/them again.

In light of the post from later today about Men Studies curricula, I’d love for Robbins or another feminist researcher to study the fraternities and male role modeling.  I would love to see a sociologist investigate why so many men’s organizations emphasize secrecy. 

Stupid me - I pledged a fraternity first semester of my freshman year.  Hell on earth.  And this was even at a large state school where Greek didn’t run amok on campus.

Susanne, femmina, AmberChi: Absolutely, your experiences with sororities were unicorns and puppies and all things win.  They, and you, are special, special snowflakes.  That stipulated, do you recognize any of this?

Oh. the special snowflakes, puppies and unicorns snark. Can I ever get enough.

Given the comment about how students at Susanne’s exclusive private school (Swarthmore, in the example given) were studious while those attending a big state school (Arizona State University) were not, a little snark about unexamined privilege seemed to be in order.  Your mileage, of course, may vary.

IME, the Greek system often reflects the students who are at a given university.  While there are smart people at every college, and dumb people at every college, the overall campus culture of, say, an MIT is going to be different from that of an SMU which in turn will be different from that of an ASU.  With respect to what it takes to get in there, what kinds of students self-select into these campuses, and where they are in the country from a geographical standpoint.  Therefore, it’s no surprise that the Greek systems at MIT, SMU and ASU (three schools I am familiar with, for different reasons) simply don’t resemble one another.  The student bodies don’t resemble one another.  That’s not elitist; that just is.  My school was a private one, located very near a large and extremely reputable state flagship with an excellent academic reputation.  But the campus cultures were different, which is why their parties were far wilder than ours, LOL, and their Greek system was different. 

I have NO DOUBT whatsoever that there are Greek systems that are awful and promote eating disorders, subservience to the frats, etc.  It’s just not a universal function of being Greek.

Are the social norms in Austin different from the norms in the Texas panhandle?  Sure.  Is that a generalization?  Sure.  Why can’t that same generalization be made about certain schools and their cultures?

Given the comment about how students at Susanne’s exclusive private school (Swarthmore, in the example given) were studious while those attending a big state school (Arizona State University) were not, a little snark about unexamined privilege seemed to be in order.  Your mileage, of course, may vary.

She also fails to account for the legacy/developmental admits/trust-fund kiddies who attend exclusive Ivy/Ivy-level colleges because their parents/grandparents attended and/or their families/parents are socially well-connected and/or famous.  Though some are as “studious” as the stereotypical perception of said schools, most IME and those of friends who attended/taught/TAed at such schools tended to put in the bare minimum and coast at best.

Though my college didn’t have frats/sororities, such catering to the socio-economically privileged…yet academically marginal classmates with the ending of need-blinds admissions was one reason why my friends’ intermediate and advanced courses ended up frequently repeating material which should have been covered in the intro courses. 

For the “studious” students who want to benefit from learning the intermediate/advanced material the class was supposed to cover, this experience tends to get frustratingly old pretty quickly, especially when those students are paying a portion of the costs themselves rather than relying on mom and dad’s dime.

I attended several universities and the Greek system differed from campus to campus.  Even different chapters of the same fraternity varied from school to school. When I went to a large state school I found that the Greek houses were much, much different than at my small private liberal arts undergrad school and were a better fit for all the negative Greek stereotypes. 

I enjoyed my four years as an undergrad in a fraternity, but my house was the theater/nerd fraternity and was pretty diverse.  (and no, there was no hazing, although other frats at the same school did).  The chapter of the my frat at the bigger state school was a real animal house and after attending one chapter meeting I had as little to do with them as possible… Although, I do remember my girlfriend my Junior year was harassed by some of the “mean girls’ in her sorority because she was dating a boy (me) from the “wrong” fraternity, but the pressure seemed to come from one small, nasty clique.

Oh the whole though, I am somewhat relieved that the school where I teach now does not have a Greek system other than the major-specific honor societies….

I have NO DOUBT whatsoever that there are Greek systems that are awful and promote eating disorders, subservience to the frats, etc.  It’s just not a universal function of being Greek.

The eating disorders and subservience seem more like a feature in Greek systems than a bug, though… This seems like a case of (your) exception proving the rule, in the bad-Greek-systems-are-so-common-that-exceptions-are-notable way. It feels weird to say this on a feminist blog, but sometimes there’s a stereotype for a reason. :p

Besides, Swarthmore students aren’t all that studious.

BAIT

Susanne, I’m afraid we’re going to have to invoke the “if it’s not about you, it’s not about you” custom.  If you feel you’re an exception to the rule, go with god on that.  That means this isn’t about you.

Exholt is right.  At Harvard, the rich/legacy kids could graduate with a degree in Econ without ever taking any higher math.  Middle class kids who actually wanted an education had the option of a different track with intense calculus and deep theory.  The legacy/jock track kids were pretty much the only people who managed to have a regular social life; everyone else was studying.

One of the best things about transferring to Illinois was that I could have fun without having to sacrifice my schoolwork or shell out big bucks to join a secret society or frat.  Illinois has a really great social scene for non-greeks, despite its huge greek population.  Part of that is because the party scene is at the [relatively safe, 19+] local bars and clubs rather than at private houses.

SMU’s Greek system looks the way it does because the school is elitist in the sense of the first paragraph of exholt’s comment at 1:25 PM.  It is a school where many students protested when Marian Wright Edelman was invited to speak at graduation, where fraternity pledges were marched down Yale Street in blackface by full members in replica Confederate Army uniforms.  And white were baffled and hurt that black students tended to sit with each other in meal halls and were unwelcoming of white students who tried to insert themselves, wondering why they weren’t more inclusive, because it would just be mean to think that they weren’t those kind of white people.  Awesome place, my school.  (I’d throw in the fact that SMU feeds only the football team dinner on Sundays, but I’m afraid I’d come off sounding bitter.  Which I am.)

There weren’t a lot of people coasting in the advanced chemistry courses I was taking, but organic chemistry is famous for weeding out the unprepared.  (It very nearly weeded me out, but then I got to physical chemistry, which had pretty math, and things got much better.)

Dave Fried:  Is that how George W. Bush got through Yale?

DC,

Not sure about the Preznit.  But you could do absolutely nothing at Harvard and get B’s.  It was hell to get into, but graduating was a breeze.  We used to joke that you could do anything short of plagiarism - even kill your roommate - and they’d just ask you to “take some time off to reevaluate your goals.”  If you didn’t have the credits to get a degree in anything after eight semesters, they’d just hand you a general studies degree and send you home.

Despite the fact that I left and actually graduated from the University of Illinois, they still had me listed as a student on a “leave of absence” forever.  My old student account website is even there, though I can’t edit it anymore.  (Honestly, I think it’s just a ploy to keep their non-graduating rate artificially close to zero.)

The Ivy schools have some great educational opportunities for certain majors, and for students who really want to be challenged.  But they can also be a total joke for students who want to coast.  Cornell is the major exception I can think of (maybe because it’s part public?) and maybe UPenn.  Brown is probably the worst - when I applied, you could take all of your classes pass/fail and make up your own major.

It’s better to go to an Ivy as a graduate/professional student than an undergrad.  You can get a great, relatively inexpensive undergrad education at your local public university.  As a bonus, you’ll probably have access to a diverse social scene that doesn’t require you to compromise your values to find a niche.

When I was picking colleges, an active Greek system was a big minus to me; it was one of the reasons I decided not to go to University of Chicago, because what little social life there was on campus was entirely centered around frats. I think frats and sororities *can* be a force for good—a friend of mine belonged to a frat that was focussed on volunteer opportunities and social works—but they rarely *are*, but are instead an opportunity for drunken debauchery. I have nothing against drunken debauchery but I don’t need to join a club to do it.

That’s leaving aside the patriarchal aspects of Greek life.

Not sure about the Preznit.  But you could do absolutely nothing at Harvard and get B’s.  It was hell to get into, but graduating was a breeze.  We used to joke that you could do anything short of plagiarism - even kill your roommate - and they’d just ask you to “take some time off to reevaluate your goals.” If you didn’t have the credits to get a degree in anything after eight semesters, they’d just hand you a general studies degree and send you home.

That was exactly what my high school classmates who attended Harvard college said about their undergrad curriculum.  Even the ones who majored in the natural sciences or the most rigorous econ tracks were able to excel and yet have an extremely active social life. 

From my high school classmates’ experiences, they managed to have an active social life, maintained high B+ - A level averages while taking the most rigorous undergrad/grad level courses they were allowed to take, participated in community services, and managed to get much more sleep than in high school.  Most of them came from working-class immigrant backgrounds and all of them attended an urban public magnet high school in the NYC area. 

The Ivy schools have some great educational opportunities for certain majors, and for students who really want to be challenged.  But they can also be a total joke for students who want to coast.  Cornell is the major exception I can think of (maybe because it’s part public?) and maybe UPenn.  Brown is probably the worst - when I applied, you could take all of your classes pass/fail and make up your own major.

Columbia undergrad grading can be quite rigorous and demanding from what I’ve heard from several undergrads who attended from the mid-90’s till the present.  Not to say you can’t coast through the place, but you probably won’t end up with a aristocrat’s B like at certain institutions like Harvard. 

As for Brown being worse because you can make up your own major and take all you courses pass/fail, I think that reasoning is debatable as there are valid educational reasons for students to do so beyond trying to coast along. 

Up until a few years ago, my own private undergrad liberal arts college had a similar grading policy.  In practice, however, the only students I knew of who availed themselves of the “all pass/fail option” tended to be dedicated principled radical progressive-left activists classmates who saw grades themselves as a sign of corporate capitalism’s corruption of the educational process and felt their activism was too important to allow grades to be a distraction.  The vast majority of us continued to be graded conventionally with the one or two exceptions as with undergrads at more mainstream colleges.

Actually, Exholt, my experience at Harvard (re: social life) was the opposite.  If you were unlucky enough to be pre-med or in the applied sciences (or in any other really challenging major), you had two options: work your butt off and get an A, or settle for the “gentleman’s B/C”.  For students without connections looking for a top job or entry into a top-tier graduate program, that meant a ton of work and very little free time.

Plus, unless you were going to go out in Boston (i.e. you were 21 or had a really good fake), the social scene on campus was almost completely controlled by the Final Clubs (like fraternities, but with much higher dues) and athletes.  This was not nearly as true before upper-class housing became completely randomized, since communities self-selected, but it was definitely true by the time I got there.

I remember trying to round up people to try to see a movie one Friday night.  A friend of mine declined, saying that she had a test the following Wednesday that she had to study for.  She’s now a neurologist with a degree from a good med school, so it seems to have worked out…  but there’s no reason one shouldn’t be able to succeed academically and see the occasional movie (and I didn’t manage to tear a single person away from work that night - I ended up spending it with my then GF, just chilling in our dorm room).

(I should add that there was the occasional hard-drinking, which usually happened with the same small group of people, over and over, in the same dark, slightly sticky place.  These were, at best, depressing things; I later stumbled across parties at U of I by accident that were far better than anything I’d experienced in Cambridge.)

Actually, Exholt, my experience at Harvard (re: social life) was the opposite.  If you were unlucky enough to be pre-med or in the applied sciences (or in any other really challenging major), you had two options: work your butt off and get an A, or settle for the “gentleman’s B/C”.  For students without connections looking for a top job or entry into a top-tier graduate program, that meant a ton of work and very little free time.

A lot of it could have been the high school my high school classmates and I attended.  None of them felt the undergrad curriculum at Harvard was that demanding…including the ones in the STEM fields. 

If anything, the most common complaints I kept hearing from them was having to put up with academically marginal/lazy legacy/developmental admit students who slowed down the class because they were woefully underprepared and/or they didn’t bother to do the assignments/pay attention in class* and Profs who basically ignored their undergrads and had the TFs do most of the office hours/help with class which aggravated the problem. 

It also didn’t help that the Profs/TAs who taught at Harvard and other private colleges of similar standing recounted that it was these types of students who would throw temper tantrums, use social connections borne of socio-economic privilege, and even hire lawyers to strongarm them into giving higher grades than their work actually warranted. 

Had a taste of this when I took a stats course one summer at that university on the Charles while working full-time after college and was surprised at how so many Harvard college students…mostly econ majors were complaining to the dean because the instructor was “too difficult” and they were worried about actually FAILING** the course.  Though I was nervous about not excelling, I didn’t find the course THAT demanding.  In the end, I did well…..and math was one of my worst subjects in high school**.

Another thing about social life, my high school classmates did go into Boston, had circle of friends both within and outside the Harvard campus, and were involved in activities on and off-campus. 

* To be fair, many legacy/developmental and other undergrads also tended to hate on graduates from my high school for adding to the difficulty of their classes.  Encountered this firsthand when I happened to be wearing my high school t-shirt while walking around the Berkeley campus a few years ago and overheard several undergrads grousing about how we “drive up the curve” and made it hard for them to get the As and B+ grades they wanted. 

** Talking about getting Fs here, not “only a B” grousing that I hear from so many of my high school classmates back in the day.

I dunno - not to offend, but you might be thinking too highly of your school.

There is a difference between “too hard” and “too much work”.  I did well in most of my CS classes (that was my major), but many of them required massive amounts of coding (the worst was easily 30+ hours/week).  And because they didn’t believe in intro classes, I had to work many times harder in the first theory class I took than it should have warranted (I went in with zero experience in rigorous mathematical proofs).

I’m sure there are kids at Harvard from all different walks of life that picked even challenging majors and found them easy and had lots of free time just because they were brilliant and didn’t have to work very hard, but that was just not possible in the applied sciences.  And most kids, while very, very smart, were not so brilliant that they did not have to work very, very hard if they wanted to get the A’s that would get them into the top med and law programs.

That was the other gotcha - it was trivial to get a B or C at Harvard, but still quite difficult to get an A in a challenging class.

Ironically, if I had stayed in Chemistry and had gone premed, I would probably have done a lot better there.  I was one of those lucky people (despite being from a generally crummy high school) with a real gift for it, and I pretty much set the curve in my Organic Chem class while the premeds were all killing themselves.  I just liked computers better, which is one of the reasons transferring to an engineering school was a good move for me.

Of course, the caveat is always YMMV.  But a series of studies has shown that Harvard students are less happy and less satisfied than their peers at similar colleges, so I feel like I can safely generalize my experiences a bit.

This is a question I used to discuss with friends while I was in college. Despite the apparent reputation my college had for a huge fraternity system around which the social life of the school revolved, the truth was that the entire campus was extremely social and revolved around a work hard/play hard ethic in all dorms and fraternities.

Culturally, we might have a problem with the sort of people who lived in (some) fraternities, but my reaction to this was that people with those sorts of personalities are better off with each other than living in my dorm. Like Mike Foxwell describes with CalTech, we were all very attached to the people we lived with and our own culture, and if someone wanted that from living in a fraternity, that was ok, too.

The point off dispute was a “which came first, the fratboy or the fraternity?” Since it didn’t mean the “end of your social life” or anything if you didn’t live in a fraternity, my take on things was that joining one was primarily a matter of choice and social comfort.

However, at SMU, this would have been a completely different situation. I can understand that people might resent the idea that one could make generalizations about the culture of the fraternity system in southern universities vs. northern state schools or private universities, but I think there’s something to be said for the claim that there’s a divide in culture and circumstances when it comes to fraternity/sorority systems.

“When we went to dances at our “brother” all-boys school I couldn’t help but notice how much better their facilities were, how much more money they seemed to have to throw around for extra-curricular programs and such.”

Word. 
I went to an all girls private school, and the brother school, aside from costing 30% more that parents happily paid, had more extracurriculars, more sports, more labs, more rehearsal space for the bands, more computers, more trips, more everything.  Even in the same family, separate is never equal.

I have to say, the phrasing of “and in fact, there’s evidence that if you don’t go through this exploratory period at this age, you run a higher risk of sexual problems later in life” really rubbed me the wrong way—even with the parenthetical disclaimer at the end, the if-then construction really, really makes it sound like there is, somewhere, any evidence at all that not going through the exploratory period might be the CAUSE of sexual problems later in life. What that article seemed to be saying, when I read it, was that they found a correlation, but no reason not to continue sticking with the basic scientific rule that correlation is not causation, and that it’s more likely simply that the same stuff that would cause later sexual problems could also result in people not being so quick to jump on the sexy bandwagon as everyone else. And jumping into ‘sexual exploration’ you don’t really want to do because other people insist it’s healthy really doesn’t sound like it’d *reduce* the chances of developing issues of some sort to me. I realize that you’re intelligent enough that that’s probably not quite what you meant and you probably did read the article and not just the headline, but the way you put it in there really makes it sound like you’re claiming that x is good ‘cos it stops y.

While I’ve certainly seen much more blatant offenders on this count (faux-sex-positive NiceGuys positively crawl out of the woodwork anytime I take my asexy ass anywhere… it’s become something of a pet issue), shaming, preaching, frightening or threatening people *into* being sexual is no less reprehensible than trying to shame, preach, frighten or threaten people out of it. Everyone develops their own way, and for some people this includes just not being bloody interested even when they’re ‘supposed’ to.

I did well in most of my CS classes (that was my major), but many of them required massive amounts of coding (the worst was easily 30+ hours/week).

Sounds like par for the course at any school with a rigorous respectable CS/engineering department/program from what I’ve heard from high school classmates and co-workers who graduated as CS/engineering majors.  For the ones who did CS at schools like MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, or Caltech…..most would be puzzled as 30+ hours/week of coding would be considered on the light-reasonable side by the standards of their department/program.  Then again, for most of them…coding is so much fun they’d be willing to do far more coding at the drop of a hat. 

Though I wouldn’t count the CS program at my private liberal arts college as one of the referred rigorous ones, I did recall most classmates except those who already learned the material or a talent for programming easily spending 15-20+ hours/week coding for their CS classes*.....and despite the Prof’s earnest efforts to help us succeed in the class….there was still around a 40% washout rate…which I heard was very low for intro CS courses, especially at schools with rigorous CS/engineering programs. 

* I include myself in the majority who had to spend 15-20+ hours/week coding for my CS classes

But a series of studies has shown that Harvard students are less happy and less satisfied than their peers at similar colleges,...

I can believe that.  The explanation I heard from high school classmates, friends, and co-workers who attended Harvard college, though, was that it was more to do with social tensions between students of different socio-economic classes and the pressures arising from being associated with such a famous name…whether for positive (i.e. Others gushing about it being the college of several Presidents) or negative (i.e. Nasty jokes/remarks about attending the same school as the Unabomber).

The general discomfort with the sexuality of her subjects bothered me, because I think that dating and finding yourself sexually is a fine, well-established college tradition that has more benefits than drawbacks, and in fact, there’s evidence that if you don’t go through this exploratory period at this age, you run a higher risk of sexual problems later in life.

That article really struck close to home.  That’s been exactly my experience.  And it sucks.

Hey Amanda -

You should read Guyland as a perfect parallel to Pledged (maybe not perfect).  It tries to figure out why fratboys exist, etc…  Anyway, it was a wonderful and compelling (albeit depressing) read.

This book is about a hundred pages longer than it should be.