Rethinking Greek life on campus-from Princeton's campus paper:
 

I original found this reference on the open side of SAE Nationals site.
I tracked down the original source.
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/02/13/20067/
Bicker week is over. Let the gossiping cease and the thoughtful examination on which Princetonians pride themselves begin. (Juicycampus.com fans, I’m talking to you!) Now that the air is thick with words like “associations” and “connections,” it is as good a time as any for the administration to reexamine its policies toward fraternities and sororities on campus.
In a letter to the Class of 2011 last summer, Vice President for Campus Life Janet Dickerson and Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan argued that Greek organizations do not “contribute in positive ways to the overall residential experience on campus.” Instead, they noted that they can “contribute to a sense of social exclusiveness” and that the fall semester rush and pledging process makes freshmen “restrict themselves to one set of activities and acquaintances.” As such, the administration chooses not to recognize frats and sororities on campus......

I know that by being associated in a sorority with women that, quite frankly, I only had sisterhood in common with, I certainly felt like greek life opened me up to more activities and acquaintances. Otherwise, my friends would have been exclusively those who were in political and student government groups on campus. Because of my sorority, I had more opportunity to be friends with athletes, people of different religious beliefs, and women of all sorts of majors on campus. Without knowing all that much about the campus, I certainly can't say that Ms. Dickerson and Ms. Deignan are just basing their views on greek stereotypes, but that's my initial impression.

I'd sure like to hear from some Princeton GCers to see if their experiences were similar

Wowy, talk about head in the sand attitude by some of the schools people.

That is amazing to say the very least and I congratulate the young man for his well written article.

The amount of work, time, charity events, participatation on campus should say it all when it comes to what Greeks do on and for a campus.

Being a Greek as skylark says opens so many different doors for us and envites the meeting of so many different people on campus and in the town where the schools are.

This reminds me of the stand the previous Bama Pres & his Administration took. It was commonly known he/they were anti-Greek. I remember when they changed sorority Formal Recruitment from right before the start of classes to taking place the week prior to and during Labor Day weekend. The official stated reason was to allow Freshmen time to bond with the University and adjust to to their new environment before attaching themselves to small isolated groups like the GLOs.

Fast forward to after the current Pres took over. The University hired a consulting group (the name escapes me at this time) to help in developing a plan to grow the student population. The Asst Dean of Students presented some of their findings/recommendations at one of our Greek advisor meetings.

One of the key points was that a successful Univ needed good retention of it's students, primarily freshmen. To encourage that, they cited membership in clubs, etc. as very beneficial. It helps to prevent the student from feeling totally alone in a huge sea of students. It's incredibly stressful for an 18 year old to be away from home for the first time. It's not always easy to make friends with the random people who live on your dorm floor or in your classes. When students get involved in clubs or orgs with other students that had common interests, the odds were much higher they would not only return to school the following semesters but would also become active in other areas of campus life. The support system provided by the greek system was specifically cited as being not only beneficial but should also be encouraged.

I could have sworn I hung on to the handouts from that meeting, including the stats and info from the retention study that was cited. I quickly looked through my files but couldn't find it. It was fascinating stuff. I'll look more thoroughly when I have the time.

Greek life is alive and well there. But where it's at socially is the eating clubs. Specifically the elite bicker clubs.

I think Sigma Chi is trying to re-colonize at Princeton, despite the university's disdain for GLOs.

This already happens on a campus like Princeton where all freshmen and sophomores live and eat in small residential colleges, each of which is meant to be a microcosm of the undergraduate population. People aren't dividing themselves up at the outset by choosing a themed dorm or off-campus living. They're trying to push the colleges even harder by switching to a four-year RC system like Harvard and Yale already have; there's more upperclass fragmentation at Princeton because of the eating clubs.
________
The Sanctuary of Truth Pattaya

My ex boyfriend attended Princeton for four years and I remember when I visited him once he showed me where the eating clubs were..it was similar to a greek row and each eating club had a reputation. They were strange though, they were nice, eating clubs during the day and CRAZY party zones at night. He later joined one after we split.

Looks like I better get my keyboard warmed up.

It's nice to see a non-Greek point out some of the fallacies and flaws in the Princeton adminstration's stated reasons for actively opposing GLOs (or, at least, NIC and NPC GLOs).

Once I write my response, I'll post it (or a link to it) here.

Jane
Princeton and Kappa Alpha Theta alumna

I'm really looking forward to reading your response!

You'd think a smart person like someone at Princeton purports to be would recognize that 1st week of fall semester is not the only time successful rush might be held. Perhaps Ms. Dickerson could look at the success of deferred/second-semester rush schools, and perhaps she should think a little before she makes statements that are designed to sound factual but are instead simply an opinion.

In a somewhat similar situation, an independant newspaper on campus recently published a two-sided pro/con "debate" article on sororities. On one side, one non-greek junior girl felt she couldn't "escape" sororities on campus and on the rebuttal, the girl was a new member of TWO WEEKS. Needless to say, the girl with 3 years experience on campus seemed to have won.
What brought it to our chapter's attention was that in the Con Article the girl directly cited our chapter and another on campus (a historical "friend" to our national sorority, KKG and Pi Phi, if any of you are familiar with their history) saying that our two chapters would "never hang out"--or something a bit more stylized to that effect. Obviously, this was ridiculous. In fact, the author is in a lab with one of our sisters, who is roommates with a member of KKG (our university doesn't have Greek housing, so this practice is not at all uncommon).
Our Outgoing Chapter President wrote a wonderful rebuttal, and if it is posted online I would love to share it with you all. In fact, it is being read at our annual founder's day to our chapter & alumni.
In short- Greeks (in my experience, and most especially on our campus) contribute daily, weekly and in large sums and numbers of people and service hours to philanthropy and university value promotion on campus. They are most often Tour Guides, Members of elite honor societies, heads of huge events on campus such as our Special Olympics and yes, all Greek GPA (especially all sorority GPA) is higher than the university average and the gender averages respectively. Now, our CP was being much nicer and didn't cite numerical statistics, but I won't be. Haha.
In addition to the hours we put in to our own philanthropy, we always, always, support the 9 other sorority's philanthropic initiatives as well.
It is so easy for people to put a bad rap on sororities for the occasional incidences. However, as any of us who have had some contact with risk management know, it's so so easy for something to happen even when you try your best for it not to. Furthermore, non-greeks seem to avoid (or maybe don't participate at the rate of greeks) in our philanthropic initiatives. How, then, would they see all that we do to raise awareness and funds? I guess it's easy to peg some kid in a regular joe schmoe sweatshirt as just some average kid, but so easy to peg a girl in a sorority sweatshirt (often with her hair done & makeup on, many chapters discourage girls from wearing letters when they've had a "rough night" per se...) and think she's a typical sorority girl and presume to know everything about her...
I guess this topic just gets me worked up seeing as I guess I've been on both ends, and I love being Greek!!

C'est la Vie.

I should also add that our university has second semester recruitment, which I think really allows students to integrate and make friends before joining a chapter (which is why so many students are friends/roommates with members of other chapters) and why involvement is so high in other organizations. I had already joined about 4 clubs before I ever joined my chapter, so I had learned how to sort of manage my time and had a small base of friends beforehand.
LR

Second semester recruitment has a lot of benefits but I disagree with the reasoning given by the former Bama president. GLOs are exclusive organizations but you make friends in other GLOs and it doesn't prevent you from making GDI friends either. Most of our spring pledge class is guys that were friends or roommates with our fall guys. Why don't sororities have fall and spring rush?

Because FR is a crazy amount of work and sororities have other things to do besides constantly recruiting... things like philanthropy events and sisterhood retreats... No one would want to join a chapter who was just constantly trying to get new members - how would they ever feel special or chosen? That's part of what makes being in a sorority so unique - because you're invited to join rather than you joining and just start showing up to events.