Why Join a Fraternity

The Power of Two Percent

Since the founding of the American college fraternity movement in 1776, fraternities have grown to symbolize leadership, independence, scholastic achievement and service to their various campuses and communities. Fraternity men represent a very small percentage, only two percent, of the male population in the United States. However, that two percent is a very powerful group of individuals! Fraternity men have gone on to hold many of the top positions in our nation, from the business world to the political arena.

Success:

I want to be successful in life. What does this mean to me?

• I want to do well academically.
• I want to graduate in four years and have a job that pays me well.
• I want to do research or have an internship in my field of study.
• I want to have a rapport with my professors.
• I want to provide leadership to my organization. I do not just want a pin and a certificate.
• I want to have mentors and friends to help me develop as a student and as a person.

How will joining a fraternity or sorority help me?

• Fraternities and sororities stress academics and reward those who excel academically. They have academic expectations for members and resources to assist members during their education and into their job search. Fraternities and sororities are committed to achieving your goals.
• Members develop relationships with chapter alumni who can assist with resumes, job placement, marketing your Greek experience, and settling in a new location after graduation.
• Fraternities and sororities provide opportunities to meet many people who will assist you. Through educational programs, you will be introduced to many campus resources that will help you excel.
• You will improve your communication and interpersonal skills. This will happen though your interactions and leadership experiences. Employers will value the skills you will develop through your Greek experience.

Personal Development:

I want to be a better person. What does this mean to me?

• I want leadership opportunities.
• I want to learn to work efficiently with others and learn how to confront inappropriate behavior.
• I want to learn how to interact socially with others in an appropriate way.
• I want responsibility, both personally and professionally.
• I want to be involved in my community.
• I want to be aware of and celebrate diversity.
• I want to develop life skills, including money management, working within a team, living on my own, and running an organization.

How will joining a fraternity of a sorority help me?

• Chapters have leadership positions, financial responsibilities, and policies and procedures to follow, much like most organizations and companies. There is an executive board of offices as well as other leadership positions in each chapter. The chance to lead others is not only available, but expected.
• Fraternities and sororities offer leadership training and development at a chapter, campus, regional, and national level. There is a specific training for new members, for initiated chapter members, and for those holding positions within the chapter.
• Within weeks of being affiliated with a chapter, you will have specific brothers or sisters with whom you will form a mentoring relationship and go to for guidance and support. Additionally, there are chances to shadow and learn from current officers.
• A fraternity or sorority is a group of men and women who work together to achieve goals they have set for themselves. You will learn how to plan events, work with people, hold members accountable for their behaviors, confront inappropriate behavior, build relationships, and praise them for a job well done.
• Part of a fraternity or sorority is that it is social in nature, but that does not simply imply drinking and partying. It allows you to meet other people in a fun environment and become comfortable getting to know people you have met for the first time.
• Campus chapters are diverse in of themselves, with members from many different racial, religious, regional, and other backgrounds. But, fraternities and sororities are sensitive to and educated upon diversity issues. Chapters celebrate their diversity and the diversity that is here on campus, in the community, and all around us.
• Fraternities and sororities hold in high regard their responsibility to give back to out community. Whether it is donating their time, working with others, or raising money for a worthy cause, they dedicate themselves to helping others.

Lifelong Friends:

I want to form lifelong friendships. What does this mean to me?

• I want to find a close-knit group of friends and create a positive .home away from home. environment.
• After graduating from college, I want to have a connection with my alma mater and look forward to returning and contributing to my school.
• I want to form a network of friends who will assist me personally and professionally in the future.
• I want friendships based on a set of common values and interests.

How will joining a fraternity or sorority help me?

• A fraternity or sorority gives you the opportunity to make new friends who will be with you long after graduation. The men and women you meet today will be the ones who stand up in your wedding, provide guidance when you are struggling, and share in your happiness for many years.
• Many fraternities and sororities have alumni who will share their experiences and help prepare you for life after graduation. The common bond of fraternity will carry beyond the members you join with and into the many alumni who have this shared experience. Their knowledge will be beneficial to you as you prepare for a career.
• By seizing the opportunity to join a chapter, you will have the chance to share common experiences, challenge your thoughts and beliefs, learn from others, and thus create the basis for lifelong friendships.
• Fraternities and sororities have a foundation of values and standards known as the ritual. Through ritual, you will learn the basic concepts of friendship and values that will bring you closer to your brothers and sisters. This common bond will be with you for your life.

Enjoy Life:

I want to have fun in college! What does this mean to me?

• I want to meet new people and do new things.
• I need stress relieving activities.
• I want to participate in campus events.
• I want to visit new places.
• I do not want my experiences clouded by alcohol.

How will joining a fraternity or sorority help me?

• Chapters often participate in campus events and go to sporting events.
• You will be encouraged to get involved in other student organizations.
• Many fraternities and sororities participate in intramural sports that will give you the opportunity to play competitive athletic ranging from football and tennis to almost everything in between. Members also often lift weights, run, and exercise together.
• Fraternities and sororities have organized and informal events and activities for members and guests,
• Many chapters organize study breaks, movie nights, or sports nights so they can spend time with each other.
• Chapters also take trips to other colleges and universities. During these trips, you will get to see new places and meet brothers and sisters from other chapters.

Each fall season for decades, on campuses all over the country, thousands of young men, most of them fresh out of high school. have joined college fraternities. The vast majority of these new pledge members, happy with their choice of fraternity, they have enjoyed their weeks or months of pledgeship and have been initiated into full active membership as a matter of course. Few of them have ever paused even for a moment to examine the reason, real or imagined. for adopting a badge of a particular Greek letter organization. much less to ask themselves why they pledged a fraternity at all.

The generation of the nineties is different. Many young men of this age are still joining fraternities.. but they are more thoughtful, more deliberate.. more inclined to reject the cliches once readily accepted as validators of fraternity membership. They are less guided by the herd instinct, less enamored of the prospect of four undergraduate years of fratemal hell-raising, and more anxious to "do their own thing." They disdain the image of the beer guzzling, raccoon coated, utterly irresponsible "frat man" of an earlier day as a pathetic caricature. which it is. They sense. nevertheless. that the fraternity experience may be worthwhile. At least they hope so, yet they are not at all sure. For many of them, joining a fraternity represents an act of faith.

"Why did I pledge a fraternity, anyway? Why should I join any college fraternity" is a question heard more often nowadays on every campus. It is a legitimate question. and it deserves a thoughtful. honest answer. Let us first define our terms. A college fraternity chapter is an organized group of undergraduate men bound together by ties of close friendship. Customarily the chapter is part of a larger national. international or regional organization- which includes in its membership other undergraduates, and a body of alumni.

A college fraternity exists on the premise that man is by nature a social being and wants to associate with his fellow man. He cannot associate equally with all of them, or even many of them, but he may enjoy a close relationship with some of them. And fraternity provides a structure, an environment in which intimate friendships can flourish. It is by no means the only kind of organization in which a student may find friends. Indeed, the typical student requires no organization at all to make friends, nor does anyone in a fraternity confine his friendships exclusively to fellow members of the group. But a fraternity does foster brotherhood in an extremely effective way, its members drawn to ether by shared goals and common experiences. It is also. more likely than not, that a young man will find in a fraternity friends whose interests and background are different from his own. Learning to live in close relationships with members of a large group is a thoroughly valuable experience. Social action anywhere requires organization and on-campus fraternities are among the most effective promoters of group activity because they are organized.

Not everyone. to be sure. finds fraternity membership desirable. But fraternities should remain for any student. a real option on the campus, an involvement and "life style" worth serious consideration.

Fraternities are a peculiarly American institution. While comparable student organizations exist abroad. the college fraternity in the United States and Canada has grown up as a response to real needs among students in American institutions of higher education. Students created them, and they will survive so long as they serve the needs of undergraduates. A college fraternity not unlike any other worthwhile human institution- encourages its members to make a commitment to something outside themselves. to something larger than themselves. In fraternity the commitment is directed in part to the program of the organization. to the things the group does as a group, but mostly it is a commitment to people. To friends.

As students make their commitment to others, fraternity provides a structure within which this commitment can be acted out. Their dedication may be formalized in rituals of pledging and initiation ' as well as a renewal of these vows in formal meetings from week to week. Nowadays there is a tendency to eschew ritual as an outdated carry-over of "nineteenth-century hocus Pocos." But this writer has made the observation directly on today's campuses, large and small. that ritual, well done and seriously approached, makes a profound impact upon those who participate in it. Ritual is but one way of expressing a fraternity's ideals and aspirations. Closely associated with it is symbolism. We all live much by symbols. They persist as graphic, comprehensible reminders of a man's commitments in life. A fraternity's name, badge, coat-of-arms, songs, publications, and choicest traditions, whether local or national, are symbolic and can have much importance if a member is willing to permit his life to be touched bv them.

Fraternities make possible a unique experience in corporate living. The fraternity member knows that there are many things that only individuals can do, things for which no organization of people is necessary or even desirable. He knows too, however, that there are many worthwhile enterprises - on and off the college campus - which can be accomplished only, or best, by groups of people working together. Such cooperative effort is a hallmark of fraternity living. To be sure, fraternities are not the only campus organizations where one can find effective group action, but thev are often the most natural ones, and are, in many ways, supremely well adapted to the life of the campus. And, most importantly. fraternities stand almost alone as groups organized by students and still exclusively run by students.

Because fraternities foster group involvement and emphasize group loyalty, they are commonly accused of imposing conformity on their members. Fraternity men, say critics of the system, are trapped in a lock-step of conformity in dress, attitude, and behavior. Sometimes this is true, but it is also true that nearly all students tend toward conformist appearance and behavior. In the 1950's nearly all college men wore crew cuts and dressed according to prevailing fashion; today hairstyles are very individual but they still dress according to prevailing fashion. This is said neither to praise nor condemn- it is merely an observation. The point is that no one need be a conformist unless he wants to be, whether he is a fraternity man or an independent student. Peer group pressure is powerful on the campus, and intensely so in fraternities, but the notion that fraternities force their members into a mold of conformity is largely a myth.

In fact, a fraternity provides striking- opportunities for self-development. Upon examination, members of the same fraternity prove to be7remarkablv diverse in tastes and talents. in thought and behavior. if for no other reason than that it is advantageous to the fraternity as a whole that members are encouraged to exercise their talents, make their personal unique contributions, to "do their own thing." Each of them can find ways to implement the potential within the chapter and to develop his own potential as a member of the group. Members are afforded an opportunity to give of themselves in their own way. This is the road to self-realization. Because the fraternity is a structured organization. opportunities for leadership are many. A fraternity can provide its members a means of finding a humanizing experience in the midst of the crowds and masses of modem day institutions of higher learning. In fraternity they find rich personal involvement in an increasingly depersonalized world.

Fraternity teaches. From fraternity the members can learn much that supplements the instruction he receives in the classroom. And what is learned is by no, means frivolous. For, in addition to encouraging good scholarship, a fraternity helps the member to understand more about human relations and about himself The lessons learned in this laboratory of social education can serve a man for a lifetime. But after all has been said and done, friendship and brotherhood in the context of a meaningful, manageable group relationships are what a fraternity is all about. It should come as no surprise to anyone that fraternity's remarkable capacity to foster the making and keeping of friends is the chief reason for its existence and the best assurance for its survival.