LOL. Are you sure you went to W&L?

It's true that the administration tells you that the parties are all open. And that's mostly true. BUT

A) Most important exception: sorority parties are by no means open and often have a guest list, due to NPC risk management requirements. Also impossible for first-semester freshmen women to go to sorority parties, or for any sorority member to go to any other sorority's party, oftentimes even if it's a off-campus informal party (exception: extremely close friend of individual who is throwing the party).
B) Fraternity-sorority mixers are NOT open and others do not come, unless they want to make awkward butts of themselves.
C) Fraternity formals are NOT open and you would be very awkward showing up at one without at date.
D) Many smaller fraternity house parties, while technically open, would be awkward for someone who is not a close friend of the members to attend.
E) Fraternities often "ball" particular people and call them and ask them never to come to their house again

There are some other less flattering incidents I could recount of people being denied admission to fraternity parties at W&L. I have half a mind to recount them, but I'll hold back for now.

I agree with you that most parties are open, but I think things have changed over time (founding of sororities, fraternities moving most parties off campus and into the country to avoid administration/Lex police eyes) that have caused the "open party" thing to be less true. It just annoys me when people say this because it's not really totally accurate.

I agree with you that *Greek life in general* is not viewed as pretentious at W&L. That doesn't mean it isn't and that doesn't mean that there aren't men and women both who desperately want to be in GLOs that can't get in. Or that want to be in particular GLOs and can't get it. W&L is a very competitive recruitment school and I think it does have many pretentious/elitist aspects.

Basically you're spouting the stuff that the administration wants to believe and that I myself told potential students as a tourguide. But after four years of W&L and a lot of reflection afterward, I'm not so sure it's true or that W&L's Greek system is any more egalitarian than any other school's.

Glad to see you here - please PM me and introduce yourself further. I'm a Pi Beta Phi who graduated in 2005.

I have some good ones.

Denying people at the door is perhaps one of the best things ever.

Arkansas fraternity parties are 100% closed if they're registered.

You know, you pretty much just described what it was like to be Greek at Brown as well (at least not one of those crazy co-ed houses), and Brown's Greek scene was not intense at all, at least as of 2003.

At schools where 65-80% of the students are Greek, what do the other 20-35% do?

Denying people at the door IS the best thing ever.

Wow, sounds like a lot of work to throw a fraternity party these days. Back in the stone age, we could walk off campus and there would literally be 52 open options of parties to walk into, out of and in between. Socials (our term for "mixers") between a fraternity and sorority were closed, but after a few hours, the house would open and soon be packed. The fraternities, of course, always had brothers at the door and turned some people away, but compared to the lists and "registrations" of today, it was all pretty free-flowing and open.

A few years ago UT, Knoxville was rated the numer one party school! Back in the day I contributed to that image, I do remember some of the parties being open and others closed to the members of the specific fraternity and sorority. I still graduated with honors, actually managed to learn something, and have had a productive and lucrative career. I'd take those rankings with a grain of salt.
ZTA72

Yeah, and while I understand the need for increased security and RM as society has gotten more & more litigious, an unintentional side effect is that Greeks are thought of as snobs who won't let people into their parties.

I remember those days. kinda went the other way toward the end of the 90s. I remember toward the end of the 90s, people sensed that everything was going to change. Especially after the MIT incidents in the mid 90s.

94 and 95 were the best years of my life.

Ah, well, folks, I'm sorry to say that because the W&L administration required "all" fraternity parties to be open (read: registered parties at the actual fraternity house), if you were denied admission to a frat party at the door it was usually because A) you'd been balled from that house or B) racism par excellence. So I sincerely hope it's not B that everyone's celebrating here.

I can think of a couple of times African American women were denied admission to parties because "they must not be W&L students."

UH, gross

I read somewhere that each school has something like 360 students take the survey. In big schools like Georgia or Texas, that seems a bit silly to me as you'll most likely not get the whole picture because you're only surveying like .01% of the student body--but where as if you are at somewhere like wofford where there are only about 1,300 kids, thats more like surveying 30% of the school...personally, i think if they really want people to view their surveys and take them to heart, they should probably make the number of students they survey proportional to the amount of students at the school.

Surprised to not see TCU. Over 60% of our students are greek.

I've heard from Pi Kappa Phi brothers at Penn State live in a HUGE mansion with 200+ brothers. Maybe more now, I heard this a few years ago.

Re: US News and World Report: their 2009 "Best Colleges" issue is out now. They have some info posted on their site too. Here's an address for their "most fraternities" list:

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandre...ege/most-frats

I notice that there are a few entries that're odd, but it looks like those are small specialized / religious-focused schools with locals. ,For the most part, the list seemed in line with that I've observed or read elsewhere. Note, though, that the US News list isn't necessarily the "most intense" Greek life just "the most" (percentage) of students.

And it's not necessarily "the most" in number overall, it's "the most" in terms of percentage of their own enrollment. For instance, Penn State may be "only" 12% greek, but that's out of 40,000 students. Clearwater Christian has "100%" (though I think they're all local groups), but that's of their (less than) 600 total enrolled students.

Yes, I believe what I remember hearing about Clearwater Christian was that they have a bunch of locals and everyone is required to be in one - thus the 100%.

W&L is #3. :)

I find the list to be a tad misleading, actually, because if it was fraternities they were counting and not Greek life as a whole, the number for W&L would be higher. Women's enrollment in sororities is around 75% usually and mens at 85% usually, so it balances out to 80%... but the list makes it seem as if it's only FRATERNITIES being discussed when in reality they are talking about both.

(And yeah, yeah, many sororities are technically fraternities, but this list is aimed at the general population who doesn't realize that.)