[bane]

I always found the Greek system mildly befuddling.

A couple of my friends found their way into fraternities and I honestly couldn't see what the appeal or big deal was. But to people in the frats it seemed like the entire world was wrapped up in it.

Supposedly you get some kind of life-long connection or social network or whatever. But I've never really had a problem making friends or meeting people when I want to.

I dunno, I've never been much of a joiner, so joining any kind of club or activity, especially one with some kind barrier to entry always seemed kind of meh to me.

Maybe you can provide some color as to what exactly they're good for and why universities offer them so much special treatment?

[bros_are_people]

Ok, but only since you asked. Keep in mind experiences will vary.

Honestly, they're great for making connections and serve as an easy mode for college social life. You never have to worry about having social options. There will always be something to do every single night (to your detriment if you're not responsible). You have access to tons of events with good looking sorority members every week which increases the likelihood that you'll get somewhere with someone. You meet so many different women your head spins, the odds are just in your favor.

Those are basically the main benefits. Greek culture actually varies quite a bit from campus to campus. For example, we consistently received the opposite of special treatment from the University. There are quite a few negative aspects too (like hazing) that I don't feel like delving into here. But overall, I don't regret it. I got what I wanted out of it (my wife).

I just find it strange that an extra curricular activity someone did in college could yield such a strong emotional response from some people. It's just a social club.

[bane]

Thanks for responding.

I can't provide insight into the dislike for everybody, but I can speak for people like myself.

University for me was an educational privilege and I honestly really went there just to learn. Social activities were a very distant third in terms of what I wanted out of school. Along the way I made many friends in the classes I took, people who were also there for similar reasons. We self-organized into study groups and helped each other with course selection etc.

If we just wanted to hang out, we did that also.

Quite a few of those people have stayed life-long friends. So the social-network aspects of fraternities always seemed kind of unimportant to me as I left college with a pretty robust social network. It's simply not an appealing pitch to join.

I know there's stories of people who went to the same fraternity recognizing each other's 20 year old rings in an interview and getting a job or some similar scenario, but that too seems like a scenario I'd rather not be involved in. I'd like to be hired and I hire based purely on job qualification, not having a shared hazing history. Again, not an appealing pitch.

> I got what I wanted out of it (my wife).

As it turns out, quite a few of my friends (including myself) also found their spouses in college, outside of the greek system. As it turns out people find ways to socialize without the need for a structured system. I'm glad it worked out for you, but it's not really appealing to people like me.

> You have access to tons of events with good looking sorority members every week which increases the likelihood that you'll get somewhere with someone. You meet so many different women your head spins, the odds are just in your favor.

And I think you hit the nail on the head. It seems to people like me that frats really serve no purpose except providing yet another form of the meat grinder bar scene, except probably under drinking age (so doing it illegally) and looking for hookups. Which is fine I guess if you need that sort of semi-structured environment, but again that's not what I or any of the people I hung out with in college went to college for.

And let's not kid ourselves, I attended enough frat parties hosted by my friend's frats at various other schools that I'm well aware of the amount of underage drinking and rampant drug use that goes on inside of the greek system. Not saying it doesn't happen outside of the system too, but if I were campus cop looking to make my quota for the month, all I have to do is park outside of the nearest frathouse any night of the week and I'll find something illegal to make an arrest on. Property destruction, fights, theft, drugs, rape, illegal drugs and drinking, all happen at fraternities at rates that far exceed what you'll find just about anywhere else on any campus. That's the "special" treatment that people complain about. Yeah sure there are the twice a year symbolic busts, but if anybody was really concerned about what was going on at the local frat house, all the cops would have to do is come stand outside for 5 minutes during a party and they'd have probable cause on something to take action. But they don't and it's understood that they don't do it.

I remember when I attended my first frat party. I was in a long gap between highschool and college, and one of my friends invited me to come hang out at his school. He had joined a fraternity and managed to get a room in the fraternity's house. I remember the smell the most, but we made it to the party and a local, very bad DJ was providing the tunes, every third song was the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" which had become some kind of de facto song for the frat so every time it played, every member of the frat stood up and sang it. Apparently this song was played multiple times per day every day and had been so for the entire semester. I was sick of it after the 3rd play. It's a social event, so I talked to people, while I was there a drunk out of her mind freshman and I started chatting it up. It quickly devolved into her bawling her eyes out while telling me about how her father used to hit her. After a few minutes of this, she asked if I wanted to go back to my room with her (she thought I was in the frat). I declined, she shrugged and went to go start over the same sad scene with another guy.

The rest of the party, and all the other frat parties at other schools and frats I've ever attended were basically similar.

The house was a mess, it reeked from one of the bongs that were constantly being smoked, one of the rooms was designated the "trip room" for people wanting to do hallucinogenics in a safe place. Animals live in nicer environments. There were parts of the building that clearly weren't up to code. There was a pool table in the basement we went to go play on for a while. But it was so old the cue ball literally shattered into pieces after a few hits.

Naked and half-naked girls were running around everywhere, the "tie on the dorknob" sign was every third door. My friend and his girlfriend ended up screwing each other while they thought I slept on the floor nearby in his room one night. Yeah, I can see that being fun for a while, but it also should get old after the upteenth time.

I never saw anybody doing anything that even remotely resembled studying.

At the end of the weekend he looked at me and was like "why don't you come to school here and join my frat, isn't this great?"

I thought he may have been suffering from some kind of brain damage.

This is all well and good in college I guess. You're young and allowed to experiment and "find yourself" and whatever. But the problem is that this lifestyle ends at some point. You graduate and go on to life. But for some frat guys they think it doesn't end. They never want to leave the parties, the easy nightly fucking, the parties, and all the rest -- and oh yeah, the parties. They find themselves in some mid-level corporate management job, or managing a startup, and mistake every social situation, even work ones, as an extension of what they experienced in their Greek life. They think that because they belonged to a social club for four years and nailed lots of girls that they know how to navigate every kind of social exchange. But they mis-read every environment and respond to it with the one social tool they have in their bag, the one they spent 4 years mastering, the frat party guy persona, and it's awkward and embarrassing and cringeworthy. But it's also annoying, stupid and childish.

And in the end you end up with unbelievably absurd interactions like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo

or this http://valleywag.gawker.com/snapchat-had-the-frattiest-creat...

[bros_are_people]

First of all, let me be clear. I was answering YOUR pointed question I had no intention of trying to sway you. I don't at all care about what other people do. I especially do not make harsh judgements about people because of their interests. I am well aware you can socialize outside of a structured system, so there was no need to condescend there.

Second, holy moly...a 10 paragraph rant, with videos! Over something you supposedly don't care about.

Wow, again, I find it odd that the mere existence of fraternities yields such an overt emotional response from some people. You really flipped out and overanalyzed a group that you decided you didn't want to be a part of, and therefore, shouldn't care about.

> They think that because they belonged to a social club for four years and nailed lots of girls that they know how to navigate every kind of social exchange.

Who is this collective they you refer to? How could you possibly know all of their thoughts? Clubs are still made up of individuals, you know. You sound like you're still in college, you're projecting a lot.

> But for some frat guys they think it doesn't end. They never want to leave the parties, the easy nightly fucking, the parties, and all the rest -- and oh yeah, the parties.

This is categorically false. Everyone grows up, eventually. A lot of successful people have been in fraternities. No one said anyone outside of fraternities can't also be successful or social.

There are merits to joining all sorts of social clubs. However all these merits are easily available to individuals as well. There is no need to be so affected by the interests of others! Even if its gasp partying, like you so cleverly pointed out.

[bane]

I was just answering your question

> Do graduates seriously continue to resent people who were in fraternities that much?

And it's not the existence of frats that's the problem, if people want to join a club at school, there's tons of them on every campus for every kind of interest: chess, forestry, asian lesbian fashion, whatever.

Frats appear to serve the interest of "party and screw around". Like I said, whatever, you only live once and you may as well have fun when you're young. It's not like there aren't other kinds of clubs on campus that aren't exactly promoting a studious approach to life.

But it's the after college that matters. And the kind of behavior I provided links to is the kind of behavior that matters to people and rubs them the wrong way.

> Who is this collective they you refer to? How could you possibly know all of their thoughts?

Why do a bunch of former frat guys create an interesting startup but continue to behave like a group of douchebags? I don't know what their internal motivations are, but I know they're presenting the public image of an asshole in a behavior pattern that's associated with the frat-life. Why they chose to do that is not my problem. I frankly don't care what thoughts they're having that leads them to behave like a barely tamed group of hormone charged teenage gorillas.

But the end result is asinine stuff like this story.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8489273

And this behavior really affects people. Lots of people. It's not a "victimless crime".

It's the people who don't stop realizing they're in a frat long after they're out, the aftermath of the frat-life that real people have to deal with. I know it's a minority of frat members, but the size of the bad behavior overwhelms almost all other conversation you can have about frats, even the relative merits.

> This is categorically false. Everyone grows up, eventually.

I basically agree with you. But we've all met the 45 year old bro who hasn't grown up yet. And a disturbing number of them have been floating up the corporate ladder by riding the coattails of their greek brothers. Some of them even get put into position where they're running companies and are responsible for tens of millions of dollars. There's a specific kind of life this kind of guy has been trying to replicate for a couple of decades, and it's annoying and stupid to everyone around him.

Yeah it's a stereotype, and yeah it's a bad one. I'm not saying it isn't. But it's an immediately recognizable one that most people have come into some kind of unfortunate contact with.

You asked what the problem was that people have with fraternities, I've answered it.

[logfromblammo]

The university is composed of several different colleges, in a formal education alliance.

Fraternities and sororities are a separate college, in an informal alliance. They offer their own courses, for which you pay them tuition directly, instead of through the university bursar. They have their own admission requirements.

Here is a sampling from their course catalog:

FSS (fraternity and sorority system) 101 - Finding Your Clique FSS 102 - Building Common Experiences Through Hazing FSS 103 - Introduction to Social Hierarchies FSS 104 - Basic Social Interactions FSS 201 - Party Management FSS 202M - Informal Rules of the Brotherhood FSS 202F - Informal Rules of the Sisterhood FSS 203 - Essential Duties of the Wingman FSS 204 - Hooking Up and Cockblocking Awareness FSS 301 - Organizational Public Relations (Shut Your Mouth, Bro) FSS 302 - Advanced Pranking ...

Just think of it as a school devoted to the practical study of human interactions, based loosely on the apprenticeship model. The right fraternity or sorority will teach you how to get more out of life with less effort.

The downside is that it produces a lot of illusory conformity. There are plenty of people who don't even like Natty Light and football; that's just the center of gravity and safe fallback for their social interactions. A guaranteed safe common cultural basis is essential for knitting together a lot of disparate personalities into one social club.

That is a form of systems hacking, albeit one that many of us may have trouble recognizing, because we are more accustomed to hacking things that aren't people. If you can find common interests with a "bro", you can have perfectly normal interactions with them. But they have already established a default among themselves, wherein they can skip the awkward protocol handshakes and acquaintance-building exercises, and jump right to the profitable social interactions. This doubles as a rudimentary trust network to support immediately elevated privileges.

(I am not a "bro", but I have an outsider's understanding of the system.)

[bros_are_people]

> That is a form of systems hacking

Yep, pretty much how I viewed it the entire time. I had no friends in a new town, and it bothered me (this doesn't bother everyone and that's fine). I needed a quick hack so I didn't have to worry about it for years to come. It worked great, but I'm sure there were other ways to tackle the problem.

[xorcist]

What has this to do with Greece?

[andyjohnson0]

Fraternities and sororities in North America have names made up of Greek letters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternities_and_sororities_in_...