[MXDKE]

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.