Drop or Not
 

I am having a little dilemma at my school this semester. The fraternity that I decided to pledge is not the greatest influence with most focusing on parting, girls, and drugs. My fraternity got into trouble with the IFC after one night. Long story short this led to my fraternity being put on seise and desist until present day. While on seise and desist, a few pledge brothers and I were being dumb and got arrested in someone else's dorm room. My parents are both making me pay for legal/lawyer fines and fraternity dues (around 2,000 a semester). Although I do have a few close friends in my pledge class, I feel as if I do not connect with a majority of them (large pledge class). With a fraternity that does not know if we will get kicked off campus, legal fines, being in trouble with the school (it did happen on campus), poor grades, and family concerns, I am strongly considering dropping my fraternity and focusing on myself and bettering my life. If anyone could help guide me to make the right decision, I would be greatly appreciated.

Why would they even want you after this?

I appreciate that you recognize the destructive behaviors that don't align with your long term goals. If you joined your fraternity for life long friendships and leadership opportunities, I would suggest trying to find others in the house that joined for the same reasons. You say that you don't know everyone well, maybe take the rest of this semester to try and seek others out who are interested in more than parties, drugs and girls.

There will be people that you meet in the dorm, fraternity or class that aren't focused on academics and making themselves better men. Leaving the fraternity won't eliminate those types of influences. Limit your time with those type of people and choose to spend time with men who you respect.

I would give your fraternity a bit longer to see if you can make the experience one that enhances your life. Self control and maturity are going to move you in the direction you want to go--with or without letters on your chest.

It sounds like he was far from the only one involved and that the fraternity doesn’t really see his arrest as a negative (my guess is alcohol or pot).

OP, it sounds like any positive friendships you have made in the fraternity are being outweighed by the amount of bad decision making that goes on in the group. And it’s freaking expensive! I would go ahead and drop.

Too good not to move to a different forum.

Am I the only one who sees the irony in this post vis-a-vis the two current threads in the forum? Which I can't link (not motivated), but they're easy enough to find. One is about KKG and the other is about Ohio University. The ones where's there's discussion about the undeveloped brain... and ... yeah. Okay. Once again I'm here seeing the emperor with no clothes. Oh well.

ETA: is it irony, or something else?

Carry on.

Hahah. :D