Can someone explain this?

Thanks for the help. Especially to AlphaFrog for the advice regarding numbers.

I think she means in your (fictional) university what is Greek life like? Is it a huge part of that university's experience? Is it a relatively small Greek system? Part of this is yours as the writer to decide, but take into account your location. If your school is set in New England, it wouldn't make sense to have a hugely Greek school where 50%+ are Greek. If it's SEC, you can't write in a tiny Greek system.

Once you decide the basics about your campus climate, we can help you more accurately fine-tune your rush.

5% is all the colleges EVERYWHERE averaged together - including those that don't have Greeks at all. A school with 5% Greek involvement is going to be pretty boring to write a book about.

The eight fraternities with 400 guys sounds like my alma mater (on a good day) and we had 6000 students.

Like AF said, figure out your campus first, and then it'll be easier for us to help with a plausible Greek system.

On my campus greek life is not that big, although it is getting bigger. We are currently 11% of the overall campus and 10% of the men are in fraternities. Although these numbers include ALL greek life (NPC, NIC, NPHC, and MGC).

Alphabet Soup
 

My, but you people love your acronyms!

NIC - "The North-American Interfraternity Conference (or NIC), (formerly known as the National Interfraternity Conference) is an association of 74 collegiate men's fraternities "
NPC - "The National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), founded in 1902, is an umbrella organization for 26 (inter)national women's sororities."
NPHC - "The National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) is a collaborative organization of nine historically African American, international Greek lettered fraternities and sororities. "
MGC - I couldn't find this one. Could it be the same as NMGC -- "The National Multicultural Greek Council (NMGC) is an umbrella council for ten Multicultural Greek Letter Organizations established in 1998."?

I though at first, based on the way some people mentioned these things, that a university would have houses from only one of these organizations, but after some research I know that's not true. At my own school, we had house affiliated with NIC, NPC, and NPHC.

I'm guessing now that this is relevant mostly because each organization has different rules regarding recruitment, daily operations, etc. This won't help me determine how things are done at Fictional University, but it will help in writing about what goes on within the fictional fraternity.



SEC - Again, nothing specific found, but I would guess it to be South Eastern Conference. If so and if I "can't write in a tiny Greek system," then I'm guessing that all South Eastern Conference universities have a large Green system. Did I guess correctly?

I like the idea of modeling this fictional school after a real one. I'll choose some Texas university of moderate size and investigate their Greek population.

Just an additional note: At the campus-level, the equivalent is (usually) the IFC -- Inter-Fraternity Council. Chapters of NIC fraternities will typically belong to the campus IFC, but chapters of non-NIC fraternities might also belong to IFC.

Also known as The Divine Nine.
Right, but just a nit to pick -- using "house" for "chapter" is a colloquialism. One hears it on some campuses, but not on others. Not all chapters have houses, even at some very Greek schools. They might have halls/floors in dorms. They might have lodges. They might not have dedicated housing of any kind. As a general rule, houses are more common in NIC and NPC orgs.

FYI, I think you'll find the NIC doesn't set rules for rush/recruitment like the NPC does. That sort of thing is more likely to be set by the campus IFC. As for things like daily operations, that would be set a fraternity or sorority's national office and/or national governing bady, not by an umbrella organization like the NIC.

You did.

You might do something like investigate UT, A&M, TCU & Baylor (all of which are pretty major Greek schools in Texas) and make an amalgamation. They're all going to have really different TYPES of Greek activity.

For instance, I went to a very small liberal arts school where the population was 80% Greek. We didn't have "Greek Week" because for us, Homecoming, Alumni Weekend, hell EVERY week was Greek Week. There was very little animosity between Greeks/non-Greeks, all of our parties were open (after a point), we had houses but not everyone lived in them, etc. Although the population of sorority members/fraternity men are roughly equal, we have 6 sororities and somewhere between 13-15 fraternities (there were ALWAYS fraternities leaving and coming back. In my four years 2 fraternities came to campus and one left).

That's really different from a similarly sized school with only 10% Greek. And a large state school, even with a large Greek population (UT, A&M), is going to be radically different again. Any of those schools' traditions and atmosphere would look really foreign to me.

ETA: I realize everyone's basically said this already, I was just elaborating.

On my campus this is the council that is a catch all for the other greek organizations that are not part of NIC, NPC, or NPHC. So it does include orgs from NMGC but not exclusively from that council.

Here are some of the types of things I thought you should be considering:

-Is your school public or private?
-Are the chapters housed in their own houses? (With fraternities they can run from grand mansions to one inspection away from being condemned, often all on the same campus. from my experience, sorority houses are almost always well maintained, even if the chapter is failing.) Are they housed in dorms on floors?
-Are the fraternity houses wet or dry? Are they able to have epic theme parties on campus? Do they have parties off campus instead? Do they do away parties?
-Do the students come to your school from all parts of the country or mostly regionally/locally? (so there is lots of spring and summer recruitment of nearby incoming freshmen or it's mostly a commuter school.)
-How traditional and old is the Greek system? Do legacy relationships play a big part? Are the tiers fluid or set in stone since God was a freshman?
-The percentage of Greeks is less important than the influence of Greeks on the campus. Many schools have relatively small Greek populations when compared to the entire population, but the Greeks run the campus and are very high profile (your own UT is a good example of this.) Some schools have much larger Greek populations but it isn't such a big deal if you aren't. And of course there are those schools where an overwhelming percentage is Greek and not being Greek is odd.

What was said about the number and sizes of fraternities versus sororities is true almost everywhere I know of. There are almost always small socially awkward fraternity chapters all the way up to large and elitist chapters. From my experience, most guys tend to understand where they fit best, but the girls sometimes have a harder time realizing it themselves. (Just read some stories on GC!)

I did some checking on five schools in Texas so far. Check out the first one, the one I graduated from. It has 8 fraternities and 8 sororities, just like I remembered (though they're not all the same ones that I remember).

Texas A&M Commerce
enrollment: 10,647 8 fraternities 8 sororities

Tarleton State University (A&M System)
enrollment: 10,500 6 fraternities 3 sororities

University of North Texas
enrollment: 28,548 22 fraternities 16 sororities

Austin College (private college)
enrollment: 1,350 8 fraternities 6 sororities
Stephen F Austin

enrollment: 12,954 25 fraternities 12 sororities

A&M Commerce is an anomaly though. All of the others have fewer sororities than fraternities, just like you guys described. It's hard to get numbers on the membership of each organization, so I can't estimate what percentage of the student body is involved in each. I'll keep looking, though.

More thanks, some shock, and another question
 

Thanks to Barbie's_Rush for some great points. It will help to pull this together.

There are dry fraternity houses?! Quelle horreur! Things really have changed since I was an undergrad.

Time to reveal my ignorance again. What are these "tiers" I keep hearing about?

In the days of liability and lawsuits, many if not most of the NPC and NIC fraternities have strict rules against drinking and yes, on many campuses, both sorority and fraternity houses are dry. That began to change while I was in school, dare I say it, 25 years ago. That REALLY depends on the campus. Some are decidedly NOT dry and even still include alcohol in rush events, a HUGE no-no on my campus (and I think probably most).

Tiers is kind of a dirty word that describes the social ladder in Greek life. You have the top tier houses (spoiler alert: I'm using generalization and stereotype here!) that are the most sought after, the best looking, the most money, etc. Then you've got the middle where the houses do just fine, get the members they want but maybe not ALL of the members they want, are financially stable, etc. And then you have the bottom tier houses that can't get the members, are the least attractive, have the ugliest house in the worst condition (this applies to fraternities only - even sororities that struggle maintain their houses). On some campuses these rankings are fixed in stone and being in the RIGHT house is everything. On many campuses those tiers are subject to interpretation. This is virtually the entire plot of Revenge of the Nerds. In fact, it's the primary story line of almost any movie or TV show about Greek life.

If you read through the sorority recruitment stories, if you can read between the lines you can see these tiers described over and over again. "I just couldn't see myself fitting in with these girls" is code for "they're the bottom tier."

I love you for using this phrase.

Marry me?

One of the "best" fraternities on my campus is dry. All it means is that all of their parties happen off campus, and there's (theoretically) no alcohol during pledgeship. I'm not sure most people even realize they're a "dry" house, because there's so little difference between the way they operate and the way the "wet" houses operate, just a matter of logistics and location.

On the other hand, technically some campuses (Oklahoma, for instance) are dry campuses, so NONE of the fraternities can have alcohol parties in their houses. I'm sure they still drink there, but no administration-approved parties happen on the premises.

Fictional University described
 

Okay, so I have made a first draft of our fictional university that is home to our fictional greek system. All this is based on what I've read, what I remember from my own university, and what a lot of you have suggested to me here.

Please give it a read and tell me if it sounds plausible.

Westlake College is a small private college, located in a small city 90 miles east of Dallas, Texas. With an enrollment of ~10,000, it's the largest private college in the state that's not affiliated with a major church (e.g. Baylor and TCU).

The college has ten fraternities and six sororities, of various sizes. Nine of the fraternities have houses: eight in residences of varying sizes in one neighbourhood, with the ninth "house" being a non-residential place (large rooms for events, kitchen, storage, restrooms, no bedrooms) in another part of town. The tenth fraternity is housed in one section of one of the larger men's dormitories.

At Westlake, the GLO members are not a big portion of the student body, though they are very active socially and very prominent in several student organizations, including the student government.

For the purposes of our story, we'll focus mainly on two of the fraternities, the one our boy Stephen wants to pledge and the one his father belongs to. The others are mostly going to be background, but they'll already be established if we need them to be more than background for later episodes.

So, does this scenario pass the obvious bullshit test?