Help me convince my college to "go Greek"
 

I need help finding studies on the effects of Greek Life. My institution is currently having the first, serious, Greek Life debate in close to 12 years, as a result of my chapter and my determination to resolve this issue. Specifically my institution does not recognize Greek, nor other social societies, and currently reserves the right to expel students for being in these organizations. After extensive talks with members of the administration, and a new president of the college being hired last year, the time may be right to make my campus one that accepts Greek organizations. Here, though, lies the problem: in order to convince the board of directors, faculty, and staff that Greek life is beneficial I need evidence. For the entirety of this past summer I have been scouring the internet for studies pertaining to the effects (or correlations, if you prefer) of Greek Life on undergraduate students, and have found close to nothing. Granted, I have found “statistics”: (http://whygogreek.com/stats.html ), but the information is either non-important to the people I need to convince (in the case of percentages of “successful” individuals), or the cited sources are non-credible in the case of money raised, and volunteer hours served. I have been in contact with my Internationals, and with the NIC, however they both provided me the same study (http://nicindy.org/fraternityrights/ , http://www.uniloa.com/NationalNormPublicRelease2010.pdf ), which, while an excellent starting point, and exactly what I was looking for, does not cover all the ground I would like to cover.

If anyone has, or knows where to find, studies, or refutable statistics, concerning the following, it would be very helpful, and much appreciated:

• alumni donations (Greek vs. non-Greek)
• Graduation rates (Greek vs. non-Greek)
• charitable donations, and volunteer hours (per capita )among undergraduates (Greek vs. non-Greek)
• GPA differences (Greek vs. non-Greek)
• alcohol/drug abuse differences (Greek vs. non-Greek)

I’ve read that the first 4 strongly favor Greeks, and that the final one was only a weak positive correlation to being Greek for alcohol abuse, and no correlation on drug abuse, but without being able to cite a refutable study, I won’t be able to sway any opinions.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this, and again, any help you can provide is greatly appreciated.

First, search through Greekchat, or google alumni donations + Greekchat, for example. I know that information is hiding here somewhere.

I'd also find a school with a similar size and demographic and in the same region as yours that has a successful Greek system (and ZERO serious hazing incidents that made the papers) and find out what you can about that school.

Do you know the reasons behind the ban so far? Was there a particular incident? Is this a school that highly values inclusion or diversity? These are easy ones to dispel as well, but if you know the problems you should be able to have answers for them.

Finally, recruit help in getting your research done. If you can get a small group of people together to put up a united front, it will look better.

Also, your presentation of Greek Life needs to reflect your school's demographics. For instance, if you have a relatively diverse campus in terms of race, ethnicity, and culture, avoid the common mistake of presenting Greek Life using NPC-NIC images and standards as though those are neutral images and standards. There is Greekdom beyond NPC-NIC in which the school and the students may be quite interested.

Co-sign. And showing that "wider Greekdom" can help dissipate some of the stereotypes that people have about Greeks.

You said you contacted the NIC, and I know you are an NIC member, but I would also contact the other umbrella bodies. This may be the type of thing that the others have in spades, as both NPC and NPHC have a lot more structure than NIC (I don't know much about the others and how they compare).

I wish I had more advice to give you, but everyone who posted so far offered great tips.

You may want to see if your parents (and the parents of the members of your chapter) will write letters of support. (I am not clear if you are currently allowed to disclose your membership to the school - if not, don't do what I said.)

Thanks everyone for all the advice

Dubaisis: there are two schools geographically close (within 2-3 hours) that are of comparable size with large, healthy Greek systems and other DKE chapters. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to some data from these institutions (specifically gpa comparisons and graduation rates), but I’m really hoping for some sort of large sample size, high confidence interval study. As far as the reason for the ban, without boring anyone with a long history: local social societies existed at my institution for the majority of the 20th century, but went underground in the 70’s. My college never had any official policy on social societies until the early 2000’s when my chapter was founded, and the then-president and the then-dean of students were opposed to Greek life, and instituted a rather strict policy against all social clubs/organizations. The current president and current dean of students do not share the views of their respective predecessors, and feel that it may be the right time for the college to go Greek. The main obstacle lies in convincing the board of directors, which is largely unchanged from when the previous president shared his view of Greek life with them around 10 years ago. From what I’m told, the biggest two arguments used to detract from Greek life were lack of diversity, and hazing.

DrPhil: Thanks for the advice, I’ll be sure to include relevant information rom every umbrella group. If you were interested the school is predominantly white (Anglo-Saxon), with a significant Asian and African-American populations. I would foresee any successful system here having 2-3 NIC organizations, 3-4 NPC organizations, and 1-2 NPHC organizations based of current population.

DeltaBetaBaby: I had not actually thought of that, thanks! I just assumed that the NIC would be the only one that had a vested interest in this. I’ll be sure to end both the NPC and NPHC an e-mail today.

Senusret I: I cannot openly disclose my affiliation. It’s all rather political, really. The student body, faculty, and administration all know I’m a deke, but I can’t wear letters, submit community service done through DKE to the college, or in any other way flagrantly display my membership in a fraternity at this time. I feel that one of my strungest arguments is that the college has either been unable or unwilling to enforce its policy regarding social societies, which has fostered an atmosphere of completely unchecked, unregulated, underground local secret societies.

Just FTR, I wouldn't make an assumption on that last part. NPHC groups often operate at very different sizes from the other groups on campus, and even from each other.

Also, what about NALFO, and isn't there maybe one more I am missing?

The National Multicultural Greek Council (NMGC) and the National APIA Panhellenic Association (NAPA -- Asian interest).

Thank you. My hunch is that the councils that govern GLO's of interest to groups historically under-represented in higher education would be more interested in how GLO's affect the college experience of their members, and thus may have data of use to the OP.

I have the same hunch.

Although once, a long time ago, a Georgetown administrator (or two) told me that they couldn't recognize the cultural ones because they'd "have" to recognize all of them. They were disappointed, but felt it was a fair trade-off.

I always believed that a campus should instead recognize them all but have strict community service requirements in order to maintain recognition. Perhaps even a financial assessment to help cover to cost of a Greek life coordinator's salary. I think that's fair.

There are also other groups, like LGBT/LGBT-friendly GLOs, Christian GLOs, etc., that may not fall under an umbrella council but that may be of interest to a college or university that is concerned about Greek life being exclusive and non-diverse. I think in this day and age, it would behoove anyone trying to encourage a school to allow Greek life to show as many diverse examples of the forms that Greek life can take as possible.

Which is patently ridiculous, because they just have other exclusive social groups in place of fraternities/sororities.

Um, maybe I missed this, but do the STUDENTS want national Greek life? Or do they want social clubs, or local fraternities and sororities?

In other words, have students petitioned the college to change these policies? Are the underground groups that you spoke of thriving, or dying out?

Good point.