Greek Life in the Ivy League
 

I understand that there is Greek Life at some of the Ivy League universities. How would one rate the eight schools from the most Greek-oriented to the least. Just curious

Dartmouth is a HUGE greek school. We have deferred recruitment, but more than 65% of eligible students are affiliated. It's a big deal on our campus.

The other two schools with big greek systems are Cornell and Penn. I think that the affiliation rate is pretty high at both those schools as well.

Other Ivies have greek systems, but most are small, underground or not college recognized.

I would say that Greek life at Cornell has a strong, very visible presence. We also have deferred, fairly competitive recruitment and a high participation rate. I guess I wouldn't know how to really rate that relative to other schools but I hope that helps.

ETA: To be clear, Cornell's recruitment is only deferred 1 semester, whereas I believe at Dartmouth it's deferred until sophomore year (but please correct me if I'm wrong).

I would say that, Dartmouth, Cornell, and Penn's Greek systems are closest to "traditional," in terms of the influence they have on campus, housing, and relationship to the administrations. It looks like there are people from Dartmouth and Cornell who can say a lot more, so I will let them do so.

Greek life at Columbia is pretty popular, but is dampened somewhat by the fact that it's in NYC. I believe all of the chapters except one is housed, in houses close to campus that they own themselves. Women's sorority recruitment is during first semester.

Brown has a pretty small Greek system that is given a lot of leeway by the University. All of the NIC/NPC chapters are housed on campus, and have been since the 1950s. Rush is deferred until the Spring semester.

I don't know that much about Yale's Greek Life.

Harvard and Princeton do not officially recognize Greek Life, but there are NIC, NPC, and NPHC chapters at each school that are well-known and thriving.

I would just like to say that the Columbia houses are actually owned by the school, not the orgs.

Maybe for your organization. I attended Columbia as a graduate student not too long ago and was briefly involved with the Housing Corporation which was working to buy my sorority's CU chapter a house in the same area as the rest of the Greek houses. They were unhoused as of May 2009 and are working on it, but brownstones in Manhattan are expensive! :)

From what I understand the current houses are all owned by CU and run as dorms. Again I just know this for a fact for our lambda chapter, but that was the impression I got from them about all of them. Maybe the older ones are CU owned?

That may be the case. My knowledge is about 4 years old, so take that as you will. I know that again, not all the sororities are housed in part because of the price of real estate. If the U. owned the houses, that wouldn't be as much of an issue.

I agree but some of the houses predate WWII. I remember hearing that the Lambda chapter sold their house to CU during the war, and I assume that a lot of the others did the same. That can be it.

There's a lot of apocrypha that goes on about Greek Life on any campus (hence why it's so damned hard for us to stop that stupid brothel law rumor!), so it's hard to know how much of that's true without doing a ton of research. A lot of stories, legends, and flat-out lies have been spread from generation to generation. If I didn't previously work for a firm that did a lot of work on Columbia's physical plant, and if I hadn't spent a brief amount of time working with the Housing Corp., I would probably agree with a lot of what you said.

I wrote my senior thesis on the postwar architectural program of my college (not Columbia). Some--not all of the fraternities--did indeed sell their houses to the University in order to be able to move to the new Greek housing, but there was so much hearsay about why they did it, and for how much, that I couldn't confirm without reviewing property records. It had nothing to do with the war, but a changing attitude of what it meant to be in a college fraternity throughout the country.

Alpha Phi Omega
 

Alpha Phi Omega has chapters at Cornell, Penn and Yale, we have inactive chapters at Brown, Columbia and Princeton. No clue why we haven't gone to Dartmouth and as for Harvard, our bylaws require that for a chapter to be at a school it must be recognized by the administration. However should Harvard change their rules enough to allow Alpha Phi Omega on campus, we have a strong chapter at MIT and experienced staffers in Boston who would jump at the chance to go.

HI Munchkin03:

The "Go Greek" section of Columbia's Greek life site says:

"A woman is eligible to participate in Formal Recruitment and join a sorority if she is enrolled at Columbia University as a full-time student and has completed one full academic semester of coursework. First semester freshmen are ineligible."

As I understand it -- and as last year's dates for formal indicate -- NPC formal recruitment is now held in second semester. That may have been a change from previous years.

I haven't been able to locate Columbia's dates for formal in 2010, and I've searched moderately hard a couple of times so I could report to irishpipes. I'm thinking either 1) I'm searching too sloppily and stupidly; or B) "they" haven't updated the relevant parts of their site quite yet.

The smart money is on 1) above.

Cornell and Dartmouth at the top. Princeton doesn't recognize GLOs at all, even though Kappa, Pi Phi and Theta are there. Brown, Yale and Harvard are the least Greek oriented.

I'm a bit puzzled as to why Harvard wouldn't recognize APO. My understanding is that Harvard will not recognize single-sex organizations aside from singing groups and sports teams - hence the NPC sororities there are not recognized - but APO is coed.

To weigh in on the Ivy+ side, MIT has six NPC chapters, 25+ NIC chapters, at least 3 NPHC chapters, a handful of local orgs, and (as naraht pointed out) a chapter of APO.

My sister recently graduated from Columbia undergrad and the only knew a few people in GLOs. It's probably the kind of place where if one is involved with Greek life, if feels big, but for people who aren't involved, there isn't much presence. When I asked her about it, she said that it really just wasn't a big thing there. Whenever I visited her and we walked around campus, I never saw a single set of letters except a banner for DG's philanthropy event. I think it's that way at a lot of schools. Outsiders think it's not big on campus, but people in GLOs thing it has a big presence.

Because APO, like most national organizations, Greek or not, doesn't guarantee local autonomy of the chapter:

Local autonomy of the organization. The criterion for local autonomy shall be whether the College organization makes all policy decisions without obligation to any parent organization, national chapter, or charter.

From the Harvard club recognition process

When my dad was at MIT in the 50s, they pledged before classes began and immediately moved into the house. Otherwise, there was nowhere else to live unless you rented a room in someone's house.

That's how it was in the 90's for my brother. Members from various MIT fraternities hosted functions in the Boston area during his rising freshman summer. He accepted a bid in July or August and never spent a night in a dorm.

That has changed somewhat. I believe all MIT freshmen must live in the dorms.

There was a hazing or drinking issue some years back which I think is what put the kibosh on the "moving right into the house" concept.

Thanks for the update! I helped out with recruitment in 2003 and 2004; at that time it was first semester, and freshmen were allowed to rush. I know there was some chatter about deferring recruitment at that time, but wasn't sure if it had changed. I am not an active Columbia alumna (it was grad school, after all). So like I said, my information may be outdated to some extent.

I wouldn't be surprised if "they" don't update their Greek Life website as much as say an Auburn or Ole Miss. I think a lot more of the information is through word of mouth and information posted on campus boards, etc. So, you are probably searching just fine. :)

Yeah, there was a freshman who died of alcohol poisoning, which got people all heated up about moving right into the house. During a risk management session in college, they made us listen to the 911 call that the guys made when it became evident that he wasn't waking up. Gross.

Taking copious notes since my daughter is really hoping to go to Columbia or Cornell (her first choice is Columbia, her more realistic option is Cornell). She considers Michigan her safety school (and my only current hope for her to be an Alpha Gam). Yes, she's a maniac.

I see. Thanks for the info.

I was at MIT in the 1990s. At the time, freshmen came to campus about a week and a half before classes started, and were assigned temporary rooms in the dorm system. Rush (not recruitment ;) ) took place right away. Men who wanted to join fraternities would participate in fraternity rush, and the moment a man signed a bid, he moved straight from his temp room into his new fraternity's house. Same thing with men and women who were interested in independent living groups. (There were six ILGs when I was there - five coed and one all-women.) Women interested in joining an NPC sorority would go through sorority rush.

At the same time, we also had dorm rush. Freshmen would visit each dorm, take tours, and try to get a feel for each dorm's distinctive personality. People participating in fraternity or ILG rush were told to go through dorm rush in case they didn't get a bid. Freshmen who didn't want to go greek pretty much had to go through dorm rush. Same thing for women rushing NPC sororities - only one chapter had a house when I was a freshman, and that house wasn't big enough for the whole chapter, so almost all freshmen in sororities lived in the dorm system.

There was a summer rush program as alum described, however, bids could not formally be offered or accepted until fall rush. (ETA: It wasn't confined to the Boston area. Also, sororities could do summer rush (strict silence didn't begin until freshmen started arriving on campus), and we could pair up with fraternities. I attended more than one summer rush party in NYC as an active AEPhi.)

In the fall of 1997, Scott Krueger, a FIJI pledge, died of alcohol poisoning, allegedly as a result of a pledging activity. (This incident is what 33girl is talking about.) As a result, some VERY strict alcohol rules were put into place. A new dorm was built, and now all freshmen must live on campus. NPC recruitment was deferred to the start of the spring semester for a few years, but now it's back to the start of the fall semester. IFC recruitment was moved from August to September. So freshmen can join GLOs, but they have to wait until the start of their sophomore year to move into the house.

Yale
 

Yale has a really small Greek Life that is almost non-existent. There are probably about 8 fraternities on Campus and about 3 sororities.

There are 5 Secret Societies at Yale that include Scroll and Key, Book and Snake, Wolf's Head, The Order of the File and Claw and of course Skull and Bones Society.

Regards,

Boodleboy322