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My fraternity has a lot of military men and career academicians. We also have our fair share of salesmen, factory workers, Walmart greeters and casual workers. We've got a wide mix of people from all races and regions and ages.
Where we get fratty is having friends outside the fraternity. I have maybe one good guy friend outside the fraternity, and everybody is anxious for me to Rush him. It's like joining literally buys the friendship of 40 active brothers and you will remain friends for life. That's not true in its entirity, but critics claim that the 300 dollars we pay in membership dues is like a taxation and we discourage making friends from outside the fraternity, unless it's part of a Rush effort.
I suppose that's true to a certain extent. But it's easily explainable. If you Rush in a class of 20, you spend a dozen hours in pledge ed, as well as participating in events, mixers and socials and are expected to provide a serious level of devotion. So instead of spending Thursday night with friends from your dorm floor down at the student pub, you're spending them with other pledges learning the Docet (our pledge manual). And although we don't haze or expect anything from a pledge I wouldn't do myself in front of my mother, they're expected to show up for fundraisers, campus cleanups, bottle drives, workbees, etc. So their Saturday mornings are pretty much taken, as are Friday nights.
Then once they become brothers (we have a mandatory limit of 60 days on the pledge period), they've got 20 close friends they've been through pledging with, as well as a whack of cool upperclassmen to associate with. And these are people they have plenty in common with. So instead of spending time with randoms from the dorms or one of seven roommates in an apartment, they start spending all their free time with brothers. So really, we're not buying their friendship, we're paying to run an organization that promotes well-being.
If that's fratty, we're guilty.
Thomas
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