Quote:
Originally Posted by GeekyPenguin
I would say that on a whole the NPC/IFC organizations still tend to be conservative. Certainly I've observed this in the south, but even in the midwest it's there. Why is that? Probably because GLOs were a place where people could be excluded. At first, you didn't have to let in the Catholics or the Jews. Then they slowly became okay, but you still didn't have to let in the African-Americans or Latino/as. Greek organizations have always been a little behind the civil rights movements (with the possible exception of women's suffrage) and more conservative people probably flocked to them as a place where their values were being "upheld" as the norm still.
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For what it's worth, I think the chapters to whom religious, racial, and and ethnic exclusion are their primary motivations for "conservative" people to flock to them are pretty few and far between.
I agree that the ability to exclude may have kept the groups the same over time and didn't present many social challenges to the members internally, but I don't think it explains WHY anyone joins. It's effect is secondary to the other traditions and purposes of the groups.