Greek Discrimination....
 

I'm a newly iniated member and even in the few months I've been active I've noticed that being greek can suck sometimes, I've had a few situations where I feel that I've been discriminated against because of sterotypes I can just list a few instances..

I was going around to local businesses in our town to get donations for our annual philanthropy event and I went into a local cigar shop who someone suggested helps with charity and I walk into the store dressed professionally with a sweater, collared shirt, clean cut, kakis etc. (somthing I might wear to an interview) and i introduce myself and say i'm with Alpha Tau Omega his first words were, "i'm sorry?" so i repeat myself and he says, "no i'm sorry to hear you're in a fraternity." i didn't end up recieving a donation from this owner because he said he didn't want his business associated with under-age drinking...YOU SELL CANCER!!! I'M HELPING HOMELESS PEOPLE!!! I was pretty pissed at that so I thanked him for his time and politely said, "Don't believe all the things you hear about fraternities some of us try and make a positive impact on the community." Also when I tried to reserve space for our event I was frustrated by the lack of attention they were giving me and at one point the secretary told me, "We have real charities to deal with." It was really REALLY hard not to freak out at this girl who was busy texting/helping me.

I was in class wearing my letters and I asked what seemed to be an intelligent question because i got stares from everyone in the classroom like they thought all frat boys had brain damage from crush beer cans to the scull. Even the prof seemed suprised when i spoke up. But in their defense there was a guy sitting next to me from another house passed out from the night before.

And that was just this week.

at a school with 3% greek population it's hard getting respect. do you guys have any experiences like this?

Yeah, it is just like that saying, "Looking in they will never understand, looking out you will never be able to explain," or however it goes. I'll tell you a story about discrimination for being Greek.

When we went into a hotel for our Officer's Retreat we had already put a $50 deposit on the bedrooms and on the conference room that we would be using for the majority of the day under our fraternity name.

The lady at the desk then asked for us to prepay for the rest of our stay and for it to be in cash. We looked at each other and said, "Well $300 is kind of a large money to carry in cash." We stepped back from the desk and assessed the situation while an older couple walked up and got their keys with just a credit card.

We then decided to say well we already put down $50 lets go ahead and just stay. So the lady then told us she needed to photocopy our driver licenses to give us hotel keys.

At this point we became upset and asked for an explanation of their policies and some written proof that this is how they conduct business. The manager came out and said they don't have a written policy but this is how they conduct business when they have people who they "feel iffy" about in their hotel.

Needless to say, we went to a different hotel that day. On a side note I told my mother about the story later and she said, "Well Mr. 'White male' welcome to discrimination. This is what goes on with people everyday."

There are definitely people who are biased against fraternities and sororities. I think the best option in these cases is to be as professional as possible, thank them politely and demonstrate what you are really all about. I think that, in the second post, leaving that hotel meant that you missed an opportunity to possibly change their minds and see just what polite young men you could be. All they really know is what they read/see in the media, which is often "Fraternity causes $XXXXX of damage at blah blah hotel", etc. Sieze the opportunity to help them see the other side of Greek Life. We can't deny that some groups have screwed up the reputation for all of us.

Hmmmm, interesting. We have cities campaigning to get our regional conference and national convention business, and convention bureaus wine and dine our national board. In fact, not only do they give us good discount rates on hotel rooms, convention center meeting rooms, etc., but in a couple of cases cities have donated thousands of dollars to our org. for choosing them. For example, Philly gave us a check for $25,000 to compensate for any added expenses due to it being controlled by unions.

The reason? We are known to drop mucho dollars at our national and regional meetings. In 1988, we spent so much money in San Francisco that they were able to retire their city debt.

The NPHC frats get even deeper discounts from hotels, because of the money they spend in the hotel bars. LOL

AGDee - I understand what you are saying, but it shouldn't have happened in the first place. I don't read and article about the Puerto Rican Day Parade where 208 were arrested and assume that anytime there is a gathering of Puerto Ricans arrests are eminent. Maybe I'm just an idealist?

Ladygreek - This was for the 9 officers in our chapter, not our national fraternity. Our national conventions certainly put a boom on the economy too I'm sure, though I doubt think we could fix someone's debt.

I understand, but even on as local basis we have no problem booking rooms for retreats, etc., or getting charitable donations. Major coporations such as General Mills, Cargill, Medtronic, etc. have never hesitated to support our charitable programs. Not to mention the support the collegiate chapter gets from the schools in their service area.

In terms of fund raising, I haven't really experienced that because it is a small town that the school is in, and they are fairly supportive of any organization (sports teams, community service, greek, etc) but I know that it IS hard to fund raise because it is a small town, not enough resources to go around.

In terms of classes, it is a fairly common practice to NOT wear letters the first few days or even week of classes, because members don't want to be stereotyped. The hope is they can make enough of an impression during that time to change people's minds. It works for the most part, but sometimes it does take a few conversations to change people's mind set's of what we're all about.

It is incredibly frustrating, but it goes with the territory, like AGDee said, it's a few org's/ chapter's that can ruin it for the rest of us. I'm sorry that you have to go through that, but you also realize the benefits of being greek, and hopefully your passion and desire to change people's minds/views will benefit the entire greek community.

Our school's pretty big on Greek so I've never gotten any discrimination ... except some annoying-ness from my younger cousins when I first pledged. They were all like "So you're goign to party all the time now, huh?" and I was like "what? no!" But then, they're in high school so they pretty much believe everything they see in the movies and tv about greek life.

If this is the attitude you have about this man's business, it's pretty pricklike of you to expect him to donate money to your cause. Plus, I'm guessing he would have expected to have his name displayed as a benefactor in some way, either on a program or on a t-shirt or something, and then your fraternity's name would have been associated with his "horrible" business.

:D

Greeks many times get no or little respect because of the stupid and ignorant things that they do and are hot topics on the local media.

Ergo, while not all the same, we are all lumped into one group.

With 3% of GLO of campus population you are in a tough situation as my Alma Mater is near those figures.:o

PM me if you feel the desire and we can compare notes.:)

I had a class once where there were only about 18 people in the class and only 2 of us belonged to GLOs (myself and an Alpha Xi Delta). The teacher was pretty nice to everyone, but one day we both wore letters to class (all the GLOs had to go a service thing inthe student center) since we had somewhere to go after class and we both noticed that he looked at us differently. Maybe it was a fluke, but it happened. he was one of those really OLD professors and probably had certain ideas about GLOs.

I didn't pledge Alpha Gam until halfway through my freshman year (I was picked up during COB). I had been actively involved in a religious organization on campus, and continued to go after I joined AGD. Within the first week or so, some of my "friends" stopped talking to me, and most of the people in the religious organization started ignoring me whenever I would go to the weekly meetings. Things will change when you go Greek, but you also find out who your true friends are.

For the record 20 years later San Francisco is hundreds of millions of dollars in debt! How do you do that in such short time?

Yeah! We've gotten to the point where we don't have to pay to rent out bars because our average tab is over $1200.