eating houses
 

I wanted to bring up the subject of eating houses to discuss. I have a friend who is an eating house in the south. I find the system a bit interesting only because you can switch eating houses but they operate similar to sororities in terms of membership and parties.....

What is an eating house? :confused:

Gotta admit, I've never heard that term either! Although, my imagination is running wild right now...

I'll try my best here. Eating houses are like greek orgs in terms of social, rush and sisterhood aspect. I know somewhat about the system at Davidson College. There is a "rush" per say but really each new member can choose wherever they want to go as long as there is room for them. Davidson has fraternities but no sororities. So basically the eating houses there function like female greek organizations, I think there is a new member process as well. The term eating house basically implies that the function of the house is strictly for meals, no one resides there. It is purely for a social aspect. I know that students at Davidson who are interested in the system may eat at the house in order to get to know the members of that particular house better.

Here is a website:
http://www.davidson.edu/administrati...tWeb/index.htm

Princeton has eating clubs. They also have fraternities and sororities but I think the eating clubs are more popular. I have a friend that is a member of KKG and Cap and Gown eating club.

Here is a link to some of the eating clubs at Princeton.
http://etc.princeton.edu/Campus/chap11.html

wow.. that is all really interesting.. i had no idea these existed

I also knew about this since i also have a friend who goes to davidson and is in an eating house there.
I guess the thing im still confused about and maybe some of you more experienced people could tell me if you know really about the switching thing. I think thats whats intruiging to me because of the fact i heard you can kind of rush and then get placed but if you dont like your house you can switch. To me that seems so crazy but then again an eating house is not the same as a sorority.

I was picturing a gingerbread house when I saw the title of this thread. :p

I have heard of eating clubs. I had no idea that there was a selection process. It's very interesting to learn the different ways that colleges do things.

Interesting, I did not know such houses existed.

I also find it quite interesting that their Order of Omega chapter accepts women in eating houses.

OMG! I just went to their page to see more info about these eating houses and i noticed that their advisor- Graeham Hesp. He was our IFC advisor at Elon and was fired when they found him giving alcohol to underage freshman girls in HIS OFFICE! it was a big scandal in 2000, i can't believe davidson hired him!

Wow, I just read more about this "self-selection" thing. I don't think NPC would touch that with a ten-foot pole!

Wow, that's kind of bizarre.

This is all definately interesting since it's the first time I've heard of it.

do "eating houses" have new member/pledge periods and initiation?

I'm not a member of Order of Omega myself, but I had always assumed it constitutionally limited membership to members of Greek lettered organizations. Is that true, or is it left up to each individual chapter? Maybe it allows exceptions for scenarios such as this where being a member of a Greek lettered organization isn't possible.

I also found myself wondering how often women elected to switch eating houses. Is it a very rarely used escape hatch, mainly put in place to prevent a woman from leaving the system entirely, or do many women switch in a year? I think it would be hard to develop a sense of sisterhood if the latter were true.