Fraternities and sororities
[1][2] Generally, membership in a fraternity or sorority is obtained as an undergraduate student but continues thereafter for life by gaining alumni status.
Fraternities and sororities have been criticized for practicing elitism and favoritism, discriminating against non White students and other marginalized groups, conducting dangerous hazing rituals, and facilitating alcohol abuse and campus sexual assault including rape culture.
Many colleges and universities have sought to reform or eliminate them due to these concerns, but these efforts have typically been met with intense controversy.
The founding of Phi Beta Kappa followed the earlier establishment of two other secret student societies that had existed on that campus as early as 1750.
[7] In 1825, Kappa Alpha Society, the first fraternity to retain its social characteristic, was established at Union College in Schenectady, New York.
Their early growth was widely opposed by university administrators, though the increasing influence of fraternity alumni, as well as several high-profile court cases, succeeded in largely muting opposition by the 1880s.
Phi Sigma Kappa's chapter home at Cornell, completed in 1902, is the oldest such house still occupied by its fraternal builders.
The term sorority was used by a professor of Latin at Syracuse University, Frank Smalley, who felt the word "fraternity" was inappropriate for a group of ladies.
[17] Nine years following Chi Phi's abortive colonization of the University of Edinburgh, a second attempt was made to transplant the fraternity system outside the United States.
[23] Although many of the religion-specific requirements for many fraternities and sororities have been relaxed or removed, there are some today that continue to rally around their faith as a focal point, such as Beta Upsilon Chi (1985) and Sigma Alpha Omega (1998).
[23][24] Numerous Greek organizations in the past have enacted formal and informal prohibitions on pledging individuals of different races and cultural backgrounds.
Racist policies have since been abolished by the North American Interfraternity Conference, and students of various ethnicities have come together to form a council of multicultural Greek organizations.
The main purpose of professional fraternities and sororities is to promote the interests of a particular profession and whose membership is generally restricted to students and alumni in particular academic disciplines or industries.
Baird's further indicates that the tradition was adopted from English boarding schools, similarly jostling to recruit incoming prospects, which the aggressive fraternities found to be "handy to imitate".
[39] Today, most Greek letter organizations select potential members through a two-part process of vetting and probation, called rushing and pledging, respectively.
During rush (recruitment), students attend designated social events, and sometimes formal interviews, hosted by the chapters of fraternities and sororities in which they have particular interests.
[8] Many Greek-letter organizations give preferential consideration for pledging to candidates whose parent or sibling was a member of the same fraternity or sorority.
The features and size of Greek houses play a major role in chapters remaining competitive in recruiting and retaining members on many campuses.
[45] Julian Hawthorne, the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, wrote in his posthumously published Memoirs[46] of his initiation into Delta Kappa Epsilon:[47] I was initiated into a college secret society—a couple of hours of grotesque and good-humored rodomontade and horseplay, in which I cooperated as in a kind of pleasant nightmare, confident, even when branded with a red-hot iron or doused head-over-heels in boiling oil,[48] that it would come out all right.
The neophyte is effectively blindfolded during the proceedings, and at last, still sightless, I was led down flights of steps into a silent crypt and helped into a coffin, where I was to stay until the Resurrection...Thus it was that just as my father passed from this earth, I was lying in a coffin during my initiation into Delta Kappa Epsilon.Meetings and rituals are sometimes conducted in what is known as a chapter room located inside the fraternity's house.
[8] There are approximately nine million student and alumni members of fraternities and sororities in North America, or about three percent of the total population.
[61] Not only that, but researchers at Union College studied the effects of Greek life membership on the incomes of those who participated when attending university versus those who did not.
[62] A 2014 Gallup survey of 30,000 university alumni found that persons who said they had been members of Greek-letter organizations while undergraduates reported having a greater sense of purpose, as well as better social and physical well-being, than those who had not.
New York Times columnist Frank Bruni questioned the existence of exclusive clubs on campuses that are meant to facilitate independence, writing "Colleges should be cultivating the kind of sensibility that makes you a better citizen of a diverse and distressingly fractious society.
[76][77] Fraternities, and to a lesser extent sororities, have been criticized for hazing, sometimes committed by active undergraduate members against their chapter's pledges.
A 2013 report by Bloomberg found that fraternity connections are influential in obtaining lucrative employment positions at top Wall Street brokerages.
According to the report, recent graduates have been known to exchange the secret handshakes of their fraternities with executives whom they know are also members to obtain access to competitive appointments.
[94] Nicholas Syrett, a professor of history at the University of Northern Colorado, has been a vocal critic of the evolution of fraternities in the 20th century.
"[95] Time magazine columnist Jessica Bennett has denounced fraternities as breeding "sexism and misogyny that lasts long after college".
[103] In response to allegedly experiencing racism and exclusion from solely or predominantly White sororities, black and multicultural revenge-racist anti-White groups were founded.
