Will Farrell's Statement About Today's Fraternities
 

Actor Will Farrell, a brother of DTD, chimes in on the current state of Greek Life Organizations today.

http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/...50323/b638794/

I wonder if other celebrity GLO members will speak out on the issue.

Why should we care what he has to say?

Because some other people will.

His comments were made at a promotional tour press conference in response to a question asked by another member of his fraternity. It sounded like he was speaking off the cuff, not making a targeted protest statement.

I find it ironic that the very movie he's promoting seems culturally insensitive. The trailers have raised my eyebrows.

I feel like he is talking out of both sides of his mouth. One one hand he is saying that greek orgs are exclusionary. Yet on the other had he then says that he enjoyed being in a fraternity? Even if it was an off the cuff remark I would have hoped he would put a bit more thought into what he was saying.

Agreed...especially when he mentions how his chapter had exchanges with the "good sororities."

You continually have a very "head in the sand" mentality.

Things Greek do everywhere can and should matter to the community as a whole. We don't get to pretend that our little chapters exist in a vacuum and aren't affected by the climate of public perception of us.

Let me preface this with saying that I absolutely love Will Ferrell but, I get where Kevin is coming from. I somewhat agree because Bill Maher did the same thing--though he is not Greek. Why should I care what Bill Maher says about my membership? I also get what you are saying too because there are people out there who will care what WF has to say. We need to work on bettering our organizations from the inside out though.

As opposed to the Chicken Little displays we see every time an 18-21 year old kid does something stupid, I prefer my way.

I'm not sure public perception is all that big of a deal. I care about public perception really only insofar as it interferes with our ability to recruit and retain quality members. The proper response in these cases is to point out that almost always, the HQ of the offending chapter shuts it down and there is full cooperation with the authorities.

The problem is that you seem to dismiss every reaction stronger than your own as a Chicken Little response, whether that's a fair characterization or not.

He said something that caught my eye and that I'm still trying pondering:

Quote:

"I was lucky in that the one I was in, we were really kind of the anti-fraternity fraternity."

.
I see or hear statements like this fairly often—some variation on "my fraternity wasn't like other fraternities" or "I never thought I'd be in a fraternity, but this chapter was the stereotypical frat." It's almost apologetic: "Don't judge me just because I am/was in a fraternity."

This is the kind of thing where I think public perception is important. How many quality potential members did we fail to recruit because the view they had of a Greek life made them unwilling to really consider it? How do we counter the stereotype of the "standard frat"?

If they "still had exchanges with good sororities" I doubt he was truly in an anti-fraternity fraternity at USC. His anti-fraternity fraternity dues probably cost 10x what the average person at my alma mater or a lot of schools would have paid.

So many people in the public eye make statements like this just to increase their street cred - and end up looking like idiots. It's like Eddie Vedder talking about how he was miserable in high school and not treated well - then it came out about how he was in all the school plays and one of the cutest and most popular guys in his class. But that doesn't play well for an angsty rock musician. Debra Messing did the same thing. It's some kind of ridiculous bit of human nature that we feel like degrading outselves or our achievements will make us more well liked.

When the standard response is that fraternities are facing an existential crisis and now that is somehow much worse because some kid was a dumbass or because some celebrity says something, that is a definite overreaction. We are doing fine.

This kind of thing only applies to predominantly white fraternities, not black.

Some of it does not apply. Some of it does. Other things exclusively apply to BGLOs, such as:

Perception is a very big problem on some campuses with BGLOs. At my alma mater, in particular, a lot of good guys were so turned off by one particular chapter that they either chose to pursue alumni chapters or chose not to be Greek at all.

Thanks for illustrating my point. The standard response here has been that fraternities face a problem; some have said it's a serious problem. You characterize that as saying "fraternities are facing an existential crisis," which can then be easily dismissed as "a definite overreaction"—except it's not what anyone here has actually said, as best I can recall. And it's been pretty clear that the questions and concerns people have raised aren't because of what one celebrity said or one "kid" (who is, of course, an adult) has said or done. But again, easy to dismiss others' responses when what people are actually responding to is ignored or minimized.

BTW, if fraternities actually were having an existential crisis, that would mean fraternities were themselves questioning whether their own existence has any meaning or value.