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.