In need of some help and information
 

Hey guys, I go to a small Catholic university in Ohio. There is no Greek life what so ever and it seems like there are very few organizations that have many activities. And because of this I have been thinking about starting up a Student Organization that will hopefully become the epicenter for fun events around campus. Which led me to the thought of a Fraternity. I have a good friend that goes to the University of Pittsburgh who is a Tau Kappa Epsilon, TEKE as they say, and he is an officer there. He is constantly raving about how much fun he has being in a Fraternity and I have been around those guys a few times myself and it is always a great time. Now I have no allegiances with any Greek organization but Tau Kappa Epsilon is the only one that I have had experience with. So because of all of this I was hoping to start up some Greek life on campus. And I've been wondering how to go about doing this. Whether or not to try and start a branch of a preexisting Greek organization or to start one up from scratch and how I would go about doing either one of those. So any help and/or information that you could offer would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks.

First off, to establish a fraternity will take a lot of work, a lot of work, but it also depends on what you want to do and which national fraternity you would want to go through, that is if you want to be affiliated with nationals, it also depends on the rules your school has on greeks. So go and talk to the carreer and leadership and development center, or whatever your school has that is similar. If you want to be estabilished in no time than go with teke, but they are not exactly the most respected glo, they are everywhere, even at community colleges, that is from what i know, and the tekes at my school werent exactly the most respected guys i know of, they got kicked off for hazing, bad stuff. I would find a copy of Baird's Manual American College Fraternities, that way you are well informed and that way you aren't being fed a line of lies. But good luck on getting a chapter established.

^^^ What the fuck?

To the OP: You need to check with your university to see if they would even support Greek Life. Talk to Student Affairs or Student Activities (not sure why the career center was suggested by the other poster...) If not, there's no point. If you want to affiliate with a national organization, you'll need to contact that organization directly. If you want to start from scratch, read this thread. It says sorority, but a lot of the information applies. Either way, it's going to be hard work.

As far as "Go with someone else because TKE doesn't have the best reputation," you can ignore that shit. TKE at University of State can be the exact opposite of those at State University. Pursue an organization that aligns with your goals.

because the student affairs/student activites is the Career and Leadership and Development Center at my university, we don't have two separate departments, but just one condensed department.

I would look at both Otterbein and Capital as examples of thriving local greek life in your area. If you want to start a local, then maybe contact the president of one of the locals at either school and see if they would be willing to give you some advice. That is, contingent on ODU allowing it.