How to choose a fraternity

[isucyfan]

You need to read a little more closely, my friend.

First, I only hold McDermott responsible for the success (or lack thereof) of our MBB program. As you (and many others) are aware, I have become increasingly underwhelmed during his tenure...both in terms of our performance as well as his ability to build a team. I am not encouraging or condoning a coaching change...I just believe it is foolish to not have some serious doubt about his ability as our HC at this point with all that has transpired. The time for blind faith has passed.

Second, I never said that people in the residence halls didn't do anything in terms of campus involvement. It was just my experience and observation that people in the greek system participated in campus activities at a higher rate than those not in the greek system.

No, I wasn't aware of you becoming underwhelmed concerning McDermott. You should probably post more about that topic so your position is made clearer.:no:

Also, I wasn't insinuating that you said people in the dorms weren't involved in volunteering. I was only pointing out that they may not have wanted to be involved in the opportunities you said you tried to get them involved in...they may have sought out opportunities on their own.

Perhaps you need to read a little more closely.

 

[c.y.c.l.o.n.e.s]

You know what amazes me about this discussion? If you rolled the clock back nearly thirty years to when I was in school, this arguement would look EXACTLY like it does today. The only difference is that it would not be done on a computer.

Personally, I couldn't get into the dorms or the greek system due to a severe housing crunch at the time and a late submission of my housing form. My choices were either the floor of Hilton until something opened up or off-campus. I personally think I missed out on a lot by not being in the dorms my freshman year. I never considered the Greek system and I doubt that they ever considered me.

Maybe that is where some of these stereotypes are coming from? I think they may have been very picky about who (whom?) they let in back then.

 

[ornryactor]

I don't believe anyone ever said you couldn't have a great experience in a residence hall...did they?

Not in this thread, no. If you'd read my post, you would have seen that. For your benefit, I will restate it here: the current "advertising" being presented to greek recruits includes a significant portion of them saying, "You can't get this social activity or that academic support in the residence halls, but you can get it here." It's stuff that is flat-out lies, but they continue to sell it because it helps them recruit. I have no idea if this has gone on for a long time, or has only started in recent years, but it doesn't matter. It's going on now, and I wanted to address it.

I'd be curious to see what the "greek" percentage is in the leadership of the various campus activities / organizations like Homecoming, Veishea, MDA Dance-a-thon, etc. I know when I was on campus, it was extremely high. In fact, I was on the Homecoming committee and we went to great efforts to try and get people from the residence halls more involved and really had only limited success.

As I said before, my experience was clearly that the greek system tended to encourage campus involvement far more than any other "living option".

If you're talking leadership positions in those large events, then yes, the greek percentage is still quite high. There are two big reasons for that: (1) greek chapters "heavily encourage" (read: essentially force) members to get involved on campus. That is straight out of the mouths of a good number of my greek friends. (2) Homecoming is a greek-only event. Somewhere along the line, they decided that greek week wasn't enough attention-whoring for them, so they hijacked Homecoming and made it all about them. The greeks are now the only ones who care about homecoming, so it stands to reason that they are the only ones who apply for leadership/organizational positions. That is the reason you failed at getting residence hall students to join Homecoming committee: they don't want to help greeks plan how to celebrate their own awesomeness. Every year, homecoming committee is over 90% greek, if not higher. Dance Marathon is- unfortunately- starting to head down that road, as well.

If you're talking about the clubs and organizations on-campus, I strongly disagree. I'm involved in a quite a wide variety of activities around campus, and nearly all of them have correct proportions of res hall, greek, and off-campus students. A few of them have very high residence hall percentages. I can speak from extensive experience when I say that students in the residence halls are highly involved, even if it's not in the activities you want them in. There are many activities that are specific to residence hall students, just as greeks have their own little things- did you consider those?

In addition, most of the residence halls are large enough to be socially self-sustaining. For example, Friley Hall and Helser Hall house more people than the entire greek system. As a result, there are TONS of events and groups and informal social activity that happens just within those buildings.

It's possible that people in the dorms sought out their own volunteer opportunities. I worked for the campus organization ISU Volunteers, hooking people up with volunteer opportunities all over Ames. We built playgrounds, assigned mentors to kids, etc.

Correct. Residence hall students do stuff out in the community a lot more than greek or off-campus students do, for some reason.

 

[cyclonenum1]

Not in this thread, no. If you'd read my post, you would have seen that. For your benefit, I will restate it here: the current "advertising" being presented to greek recruits includes a significant portion of them saying, "You can't get this social activity or that academic support in the residence halls, but you can get it here." It's stuff that is flat-out lies, but they continue to sell it because it helps them recruit. I have no idea if this has gone on for a long time, or has only started in recent years, but it doesn't matter. It's going on now, and I wanted to address it.


If you're talking leadership positions in those large events, then yes, the greek percentage is still quite high. There are two big reasons for that: (1) greek chapters "heavily encourage" (read: essentially force) members to get involved on campus. That is straight out of the mouths of a good number of my greek friends. (2) Homecoming is a greek-only event. Somewhere along the line, they decided that greek week wasn't enough attention-whoring for them, so they hijacked Homecoming and made it all about them. The greeks are now the only ones who care about homecoming, so it stands to reason that they are the only ones who apply for leadership/organizational positions. That is the reason you failed at getting residence hall students to join Homecoming committee: they don't want to help greeks plan how to celebrate their own awesomeness. Every year, homecoming committee is over 90% greek, if not higher. Dance Marathon is- unfortunately- starting to head down that road, as well.

If you're talking about the clubs and organizations on-campus, I strongly disagree. I'm involved in a quite a wide variety of activities around campus, and nearly all of them have correct proportions of res hall, greek, and off-campus students. A few of them have very high residence hall percentages. I can speak from extensive experience when I say that students in the residence halls are highly involved, even if it's not in the activities you want them in. There are many activities that are specific to residence hall students, just as greeks have their own little things- did you consider those?

In addition, most of the residence halls are large enough to be socially self-sustaining. For example, Friley Hall and Helser Hall house more people than the entire greek system. As a result, there are TONS of events and groups and informal social activity that happens just within those buildings.


Correct. Residence hall students do stuff out in the community a lot more than greek or off-campus students do, for some reason.

Wow...such vitriol and disdain for the greek system. Generally speaking, I find it interesting that many want to claim this type of thread is a back and forth of non-greek bashing greek and then greek bashing non-greek. The reality is that while there is certainly plenty of non-greeks bashing greeks...the greek posts seem to be nothing more than standing up for the lifestyle choice they made...not knocking the choices of others.

With respect to Homecoming, I have not been intimately involved with this undertaking since the mid 80s but I am quite confident that the faculty advisors to the organization today would vehemently disagree with you about it now being a "greek only event".

I can tell you that during my three years involved with the planning of Homecoming that we went to extraordinary lengths to try to encourage residence hall involvement...this included recruiting people for the various committees, trying to get halls to participate in Yell Like Hell, trying to get halls to make banners and lawn displays, etc.

In fact, we actually had one of the two Co-chairs of the entire organization that was from a residence hall during my last year on the organization. She did a great job. But at the end of the day, we only had one residence hall floor do a Yell Like Hell skit as I recall and I believe we only had a small handful of banners / yard displays from the residence halls.

Frankly, if what you say is true..."the greeks are now the only ones who care about homecoming"...I find that to be a huge indictment of all non-greek students. I decided to get involved with Homecoming because I wanted to be involved with something that was for the entire university (which is the case...your perception notwithstanding)...rather than getting involved with Greek Week.

I am not in Ames now but when I was there, the greek system was clearly more involved in campus organizations as well as with community based philanthropic endeavors.

 

[aeroclone]

Frats suck, they are full of meat-head party animals that want to buy their friends, stumble through life half drunk, and sit around all day convinced of their own sense of superiority.

Dorms suck because they are full of anti-social reject momma's boys. They never have any fun, never meet any women, and aren't involved in any activities other than nightly games of dungeons and dragons.

Obviously, you don't think of yourself as a stuck up jerk or an antisocial loser. Thus, I would recommend that you just live in a cardboard box on central campus. I can't think of any better way to get right in the middle of the experience without any of the rules or regulations to hold you down!


Seriously though, there are over 550 clubs and organizations on campus open to anyone to get involved in just about anything, there are tons of academic resources in the form of help rooms, supplimentary instruction and tutors also open to all students. And I haven't heard of volunteer organizations turning anyone down. You can get whatever you want from your college experience wherever you decide to live, so don't worry about any of that. I would just do what feels most comfortable and do what seems to fit who you are the best. In the end you've already made the most important decision, you've decided to be a Cyclone.

 

[ornryactor]

Wow...such vitriol and disdain for the greek system. Generally speaking, I find it interesting that many want to claim this type of thread is a back and forth of non-greek bashing greek and then greek bashing non-greek. The reality is that while there is certainly plenty of non-greeks bashing greeks...the greek posts seem to be nothing more than standing up for the lifestyle choice they made...not knocking the choices of others.

I don't diagree with you. The folks here generally have good heads on their shoulders. It's too bad we don't have more of that type of greek on campus these days, or have the ones that are speak up a little more. The common perception is that while ISU greeks may not always fulfill the standard stereotypes (though some unfortunately do), they have an extremely elitist attitude towards non-greeks. That can't be disputed; I and many others experience it on a daily basis. People don't generally have any problems with the greek system or its members, but when they start getting treated as second-class citizens, they tend to develop a dislike for the greeks. This happens quite a bit. Living in a large residence hall that houses lots of freshmen every year, especially large clusters of freshman sorority members (who can't live in-house), I've had the vantage point to watch the process in action. It's pretty consistent.

With respect to Homecoming, I have not been intimately involved with this undertaking since the mid 80s but I am quite confident that the faculty advisors to the organization today would vehemently disagree with you about it now being a "greek only event".

I can tell you that during my three years involved with the planning of Homecoming that we went to extraordinary lengths to try to encourage residence hall involvement...this included recruiting people for the various committees, trying to get halls to participate in Yell Like Hell, trying to get halls to make banners and lawn displays, etc.

In fact, we actually had one of the two Co-chairs of the entire organization that was from a residence hall during my last year on the organization. She did a great job. But at the end of the day, we only had one residence hall floor do a Yell Like Hell skit as I recall and I believe we only had a small handful of banners / yard displays from the residence halls.

Frankly, if what you say is true..."the greeks are now the only ones who care about homecoming"...I find that to be a huge indictment of all non-greek students. I decided to get involved with Homecoming because I wanted to be involved with something that was for the entire university (which is the case...your perception notwithstanding)...rather than getting involved with Greek Week.

I would love to see the entire student body get involved in homecoming activities; that would make my day more than you can imagine. (If you're curious what I mean, feel free to PM me. It's too long and too much of a tangent for this thread.) Likewise, I would love to see the rest of the student body return to VEISHEA activities, instead of just greek chapters. (Did you know that every single residence hall used to enter a Varieties skit back in the day?) I'm certainly not cheering for non-greeks to continue ignoring homecoming and similar events; that's happening of its own accord.

The fact of the matter is, this has been going on the same way for so long that its an entrenched "tradition". Regardless of what the official stance is (I'm sure that the Homecoming faculty advisors aren't going to say the event is just for greeks), there is a reality that has to be faced. That reality is that greeks took over homecoming and became essentially the only portion of the entire student body that participates. There are so many other activities throughout the year that only greeks are allowed to participate in, that I think people see that and see homecoming and assume it's the same way. You can remove my "perception" if you want, but it changes nothing. My perception is the same one held by thousands and thousands of other students; an unfortunate truth.

I honestly don't have many good ideas on how to convince the residence halls (let's just start with that, instead of everyone) to "buy into" homecoming again. Activities like lawn displays and banners are restricted to greek houses by default; residence halls don't have the space to display those, nor will the university give us permission to do so in the few green areas we do have that are large enough. Likewise, we can't hang or plant banners the way off-campus greek chapters can. For major stuff, that pretty much only leaves window painting and Yell Like Hell.

The other problem: the residence hall tradition for all of this stuff is long-gone. We would have no idea how to do it and actually be competitive. It would take members from the greek system actually getting involved with residence hall leaders to help introduce the traditions back into the res hall community. That's actually something I'd been planning on looking into, but I haven't spent any time on it yet.

I am not in Ames now but when I was there, the greek system was clearly more involved in campus organizations as well as with community based philanthropic endeavors.

I've already stated that if that was true for campus organizations then, it isn't now. That's fine; times have changed. Large, organized philathropic events are still the domain of greek chapters. Residence hall groups (and the occasional off-campus group, though it's usually a religious organization) tend to do less-publicized and/or smaller things. Some houses organize once-a-month volunteering; many houses have community service chairs that help individuals connect with a community service opportunity that fits their particular interest or ability. There's far less large-group activity and far more individual activity. Both are fine, but not having t-shirts doesn't make one any less worthy than the other.

 

[ISU4ME]

Oddly I found myself wishing Phaerus would keep posting under the "Personal Trainer" thread about how much he knows about strength training even more so than the folks who have spent time taking actual courses. :wink:

Yes I am just yanking your chain. I myself workout daily and agree with 99.9% of what you said. (I like to hold back 0.10% just in case :smile.

 

[gocubs2118]

Did you guys know that 95% of the leaders for organizations and groups are greek. Shows you how much leadership you gain by going greek!

 

[ornryactor]

Did you guys know that 95% of the leaders for organizations and groups are greek. Shows you how much leadership you gain by going greek!

I would love to know where you got that "statistic". I bet there's some other funny ones in there, too.


Lol, Google Ads can't figure out what to do with this thread. We have ads for a bar, a church, a home security company, a Cyclones gear store, a Volkswagen dealer, and a "Meet Greek Singles" website (which I doubt will connect you with the same kind of "Greek").

 

[aeroclone]

I would love to know where you got that "statistic". I bet there's some other funny ones in there, too.


Lol, Google Ads can't figure out what to do with this thread. We have ads for a bar, a church, a home security company, a Cyclones gear store, a Volkswagen dealer, and a "Meet Greek Singles" website (which I doubt will connect you with the same kind of "Greek").[/quote]

If the ad delivers like the picture, she can be Italian as far as I'm concerned!

 

[CloneIce]

Never did the frat thing, and don't have anything against them, but the amount of intrusiveness and control the dorm system tries to foist on its residents just chafed my butt. I can't imagine doing the frat thing without physically killing someone.

I was way too independent to live with that many people without being ordered to, so I moved out at the earliest opportunity and lived on my own.

My thoughts exactly! It all depends on your personality, whether or not your can handle being told what to do.

Frat system would definitely not be the place for someone like me who can't stand authority and being told what to do. Also why I won't work for a boss who micromanages me.

 

[gocubs2118]

I would love to know where you got that "statistic". I bet there's some other funny ones in there, too.


Lol, Google Ads can't figure out what to do with this thread. We have ads for a bar, a church, a home security company, a Cyclones gear store, a Volkswagen dealer, and a "Meet Greek Singles" website (which I doubt will connect you with the same kind of "Greek").

Its true. While the greek system makes up only11% of the school population, that 11% does a huge amount around the school.

 

[ornryactor]

Its true.

You'll pardon me if I don't take your word for it. Do you have a reputable source for this information? And no, your chapter's Assistant Deputy Under-Secretary to the Vice-Co-Chair of Totally Awesome Statistics does not count.

 

[isucyfan]

You'll pardon me if I don't take your word for it. Do you have a reputable source for this information? And no, your chapter's Assistant Deputy Under-Secretary to the Vice-Co-Chair of Totally Awesome Statistics does not count.

I'd like to see that link as well. I couldn't find any statistic like that. I'm a "proof" kind of guy.

 

[isucyfan]

I do know that people from residence halls have grade point averages 60% better than Greeks, and a dropout rate 38% lower as well.

 

[CloneFan03]

I do know that people from residence halls have grade point averages 60% better than Greeks, and a dropout rate 38% lower as well.

Actually, as of this past semester, The All Greek GPA was a 2.99 with the All Undergrad average being a 2.95 (including women/sororities)

The All Fraternity average was a 2.90 with the All Men's Undergrad Average being a 2.86.

As for the dropout rate, I can't help ya there.


http://www.greek.iastate.edu/resources/IFC-S08-Grade-Rpt.pdf

 

[everyyard]

I already found out who my roomate would be in the dorms and let's just say he's "special".

He probably thinks the same of you. Branch out and befriend people unlike yourself and you are much more likely to grow as a person. THAT is what college is about. Not buying your way into friendship with 30 guys pretty much just like yourself and making fun of the "special" people of the world.

 

[Phaedrus]

Did you guys know that 95% of the leaders for organizations and groups are greek. Shows you how much leadership you gain by going greek!

If you just want leadership experience, go ROTC, get commissioned, and lead a Platoon in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Or maybe try working for any number of NGOs providing relief in Africa, or the middle or far-east. TONS of leadership opportunities there.

I would guess that would be more intensive and challenging than being co-chair of the "Homecoming Flower Committee." (cough... resume padding...cough):wink:

None of those things are mutually exclusive; frat/sorority members do all three. But if we want to get into a "weenie comparison" thing, we could go all day....

 

[isucyfan]

Actually, as of this past semester, The All Greek GPA was a 2.99 with the All Undergrad average being a 2.95 (including women/sororities)

The All Fraternity average was a 2.90 with the All Men's Undergrad Average being a 2.86.

As for the dropout rate, I can't help ya there.


http://www.greek.iastate.edu/resources/IFC-S08-Grade-Rpt.pdf

Yeah, I made those stats up.

Just illustrating the point that anyone can say anything (talking to you, gocubs2118:wink but statistics/evidence is needed at least for me to buy it.

Way to bring the numbers, CloneFan03.

Good to see that the academic difference between frats and dorms is virtually statistically insignificant.

 

[Phaedrus]

He probably thinks the same of you. Branch out and befriend people unlike yourself and you are much more likely to grow as a person. THAT is what college is about. Not buying your way into friendship with 30 guys pretty much just like yourself and making fun of the "special" people of the world.

This kind of bothered me, too. A lot.

Makes me think the OP is an elitist snob. I could be wrong, but how stereotypically "frat-boy" of him if so....