How Powerful Are The Greeks On Your Campus?
 

Sort of a weird question. Associated Student Government elections are this week. The two frontrunning tickets are both Greek and as long as I've been around, Greeks have always won both President and Vice President (and almost always Secretary and Treasurer). The majority of the Senate seats are controlled by Greeks.

There's a deep split between Greek and GDI, in terms of support. Except, GDI's don't vote.

Anyways, what the status on y'alls campus?

When I was at UGA, the SGA didn't have any real power.

There's a clause (or used to be) in the SGA constitution that gives students a chance to abolish the SGA every so many years. So, since you couldn't rely on using the SGA for anything since it could disappear every four years, I think it was, the big power issues for SGA, like student activity fee allocation, etc. had to be handled by different organizations or committees.

It was still dominated by Greeks, but there wasn't anything to dominate. Some years not even a full slate of senate candidates ran in the election.

From what I understand from talking to my former students there now, SGA elections are a big deal and are hotly contested. I suspect that Greeks can still put together a voting block but that other non-greek kids are pretty type A as well and are probably pretty well represented.

But again, I'm not sure what really power SGA holds these days.

FIU
 

At FIU, it's pretty much the same thing.

The SGA elections were held last week. The frontrunning team was composed of 2 Greeks, and their only competitors were a Greek/non-Greek. The school's newspaper went as far as endorsing the team with the non-Greek because of the argument that SGA and FIU is already ran by Greeks.

Needless to say, the ticket with the 2 Greeks won- they got about 61% of the vote. The Reps-At-Large, Housing Reps, even representatives for individual colleges like the College of Architecture and College of Business are ALL Greek. Which is pretty big, because SGA has about $10 million to allocate to student activities, organizations, etc.

The GDI population doesn't do that much at FIU. And luckily for us, the administration is very pro-Greek (our president, Modesto Maidique, is a SigEp).

Last fall, there was even an article in the newspaper by an incoming freshman complaining that at Freshmen Orientation, "the emphasis on joining Greek Life was higher than the emphasis on education" lol. (You can read it here)

So I would say that Greeks at my school are pretty powerful.

^^^That article put a burn on Panhellenic so bad, she was so full of it...then the Beacon had the nerve to lie and say we invited her to go through recruitment...even though our deadline for registration had passed. Um, yeah right. :rolleyes:

Not very powerful at bama. I would say overall greeks are the least powerful student group on campus. they are completely apathetic and not involved in anything.

Actually Greeks while not as powerful, are more involved than GDIs as they do not give a damn!

Greeks are involved as most chapters do things more so than GDIs.

What if Greeks were not involved in Homecoming?

Who or what would be in the parades?

HS Bands, maybe horses, Shriners, but how many floats? What about the activities that go with it?

Maybe House Decorations?

If there is a coalition of Greeks, then, it may mean more to the University.

It was funny to me because, no offense to your school intended at all, she apparently thinks she's at Harvard since she's in the honors college. I think the line that gave away the most about her character was when she mentioned "rigged homecoming" stuff in high school, just to claim she was above that sort of thing.

this is sarcasm, right?

I thought the same thing. Remember the Machine articles?

Unless things have changed drastically in the last few years, UF is the same way. The Greeks run pretty much all of SGA. When I was an undergrad, they hung charts of who to vote for in the sorority houses (Greek candidates, of course) and counted the 'I voted' stickers that we placed on it. The chapter with the most stickers won...something. I can't remember what it was, but all that means is that it wasn't a shopping spree at J Crew.

Same goes for NMSU but just because they are Greek really doesn't mean anything. They are just more involved in things then most GDIs.

Wow that article was hilarious. My friend writes for the Beacon too and when I told him that I was planning to Rush when I start in the fall he asked me why I wanted to "buy my friends". He did finally see things my way after we really talked about but I was amazed that someone who is usually so open-minded said something like that.

Yeah, I know how you feel.

I feel like at a school where pretty much everyone is open-minded and there have never been any problems between Greeks and non-Greeks, that The Beacon is the ONLY student org that is anti-Greek.

Every few months an anti-Greek editorial comes out. And they "officially" endorsed Ruiz/Cadeno (I think that was their names) just because the VP candidate wasn't Greek, even though they said themselves that an increase in tuition for SGA funding would be a great thing and they wouldn't ask the students how they felt about matters before making decisions.

:rolleyes:

Of course!

At Central Oklahoma, we typically are at the head of all bodies of student government, except for the judiciary part (but they don't really count). This is not done without some serious collaboration with non-greeks though.

I can say this though -- our student body's Constitution was written by a member of my chapter, I'm not aware of a Senate Speaker Pro Tem (that's the dominant legislative branch), a President or Speaker of the House who hasn't been Greek.

GLOs are far and away the most active participants in general campus life events, sports, intramurals, etc.

At UNF I would say the majority of people in SG are Greek, but there still is about 35% that are GDI. However, over the years most people that come into SG end up going Greek! I was an officer in SG for a while, and I can say that the last 3 Student Body presidents and the president-elect (He was elected last week) are all Greek. Most of the Senate Leadership has been Greek for the past 5 years or so and a couple times there have been cases where GLO presidents have been officers in SG.

UT-Arlington
 

At UTA, the majority of the campus offices (Student Governance, Ambassadors, Senate) are held by Greeks. There are, however, several other organizations (Campus activities, for instance) that are run by non-Greeks.

I don't know if it's power, per se, since Governance doesn't really "make the rules," but it does give Greeks more presence on campus.

Not particularly strong at my school because Greeks are only about 1 or 2% of the population, but we usually manage to get at least 2-3 Senate seats a year.

I honestly think we'd be a lot stronger with formal rush and have been pushing the idea for the last two years, but, well... let's just say our Greek advisor is adamantly against the idea. :rolleyes:

At Otterbein, the majority of students in leadership positions, at least while I was there, were Greek. I think its the nature of the groups...being local, you've got a heck of a lot of work to do to keep things running smoothly, so they attract self-starters and multi-taskers. I know our newspaper editorial staff was, at one point and time, almost 90% Greek (yeah, writing articles about Greek life was rough!), the Trustees and Senators were often Greek as well.

But the thing is, that it wasn't just Greek life. OC seems to have this thing with people who multi-task like no tomorrow. They're in Greek life and Res life and Religious life and x, y, and zed. I don't necessarily think that Greek Life is the key to their involvement, but it is complementary as it gives you an understanding of the ins and outs of college policy and administration, which can be useful in other student organizations.

(Readers Digest version: Otterbein students are overachieving nutters who love their school and their organizations...and that's the way we like it! :))

Texas State
 

I don't know the situation now, but back in the 80s SAG was full of Greeks. In fact, a Sigma Chi was running for ASG president, and a non-greek was so close to him in votes that they had to have a run-off. An obnoxious Young Democrat kept going "Sigma Why? Sigma Why?" while we were waiting for the results. The Sigma Chi won, and I sweetly said "That's why Sigma Chi!". This "gentleman" actually said he wanted to hit me. Ah, the good ol' days. . .

W&L is for the most part completely controlled by Greeks, but this is basically a function of the fact that like 85% of the student body is Greek. There are certainly non-Greeks in positions of leadership. To some degree it depends on the organization.

I would say that 9 times out of 10 members of the Executive Committee (EC) and Student Judicial Committee (W&L's two major forms of student governance) are Greek. I can think of some instances where this was not the case. The one that's coming to my mind, though, is of a woman who was my class's representative to the EC for three years. We all presumed she would run EC President as a senior but she ended up not running at all. She was elected as a non-Greek (elections were held in the fall before freshmen pledge) and pledged a sorority. But she had disaffiliated with said sorority by the time she was a junior...

This is pretty pitiful, but I think for a while it was harder to get elected as a woman than as a non-Greek. Although by my senior year the gender thing seemed to be working itself out (finally). This is in part due to the fact that the early 2000s saw the advent of the first 50-50 classes.

This is kind of off topic but does the SGA at any campus have the power to do any major things?

That's what I was saying in my post a few days ago. Student Governance is in charge of all organizations on campus, but the student leaders don't have any real "power."

In general I view SGA as total BS. At UT they mostly pass resolutions on this and that. The major things they've done since I've been at UT that seem the most notable to me is levy several fees to pay for student projects. They've raised money to build statues of Cesar Chavez and Barbara Jordan on campus this way, and they've done the same to build a new student activities center (which I'm really skeptical if we actually need).

At W&L the EC and SJC were empowered to rule on matters relating to the Honor System and student misconduct (respectively), including the ability to suspend and expel students, so those were pretty serious duties. They also allocated money to student orgs. Those basically seemed like the two most notable things they did.

The Graduate student government at UT gives us free pizza for grad student appreciation week. And free beer once a month or so. Quite frankly I'd rather have free beer than a Student Activities Center. LOL.

SGA over here has actually done a lot, such as removing ridiculous late fees that should never have been implemented in the first place. The financial aid office over here is a complete joke, the SGA has really gotten on them recently and the results have been much more satisfactory. I'm pretty confident they will be fixing the tuition situation(raising 5-7% annually, I think it's 7% for fall 08, approaching UT and aTm costs quickly). There are a few members that are Greek, but my school isn't the most supportive of Greeks in general.

I don't think so at my school by one of my Sorors (my LS) has been the USGA president for two years! Yay!!