Hahaha. Look it up, having a blood relative or longtime friend of a member in your house pledge another house is a pretty common tactic. You can find out if they haze, how much money and members they have, their secret rituals. You can even snipe other pledges from their incoming class sometimes.
The activity fee thing is true too. Many universities have a student government of sorts, and some of them allow the student government to decide what happens with a significant amount of the school's budget. At my school it was 5% ish. At the school with 20k students that's a ton of money for 40 elected students to slosh around.
The Greek system would commonly ally as voting blocks to make sure their candidates were elected, so student government is frequently run by Greeks.
Watching other houses parties was really important too. You need to see how far other houses go in breaking the inevitably unenforcable rules for parties. If you stray from the pack the school will shut you down. Finding out how many people went to social events at other houses was probably the most accurate gauge of a house popularity and reputation.
I came from a school with a very competitive Greek system, so I'm sure a lot of this doesn't apply everywhere
The activity fee thing is true too. Many universities have a student government of sorts, and some of them allow the student government to decide what happens with a significant amount of the school's budget. At my school it was 5% ish. At the school with 20k students that's a ton of money for 40 elected students to slosh around.
The Greek system would commonly ally as voting blocks to make sure their candidates were elected, so student government is frequently run by Greeks.
Watching other houses parties was really important too. You need to see how far other houses go in breaking the inevitably unenforcable rules for parties. If you stray from the pack the school will shut you down. Finding out how many people went to social events at other houses was probably the most accurate gauge of a house popularity and reputation.
I came from a school with a very competitive Greek system, so I'm sure a lot of this doesn't apply everywhere