Quote:
Originally Posted by DannyM
The college he's looking at is about 1,700 students, with about 50% Greek.
> On the other hand, a school could have an enrollment of 9,000 with 75% of students involved in Greek Life.
I appreciate and agree with your main point -- every situation is different and has to be judged on its own merits -- but I've gotta say, there are limits. I hope I'm not insulting your alma mater, but that would be an automatic "F" in my book. I've never been involved in college administration but have spent some time on the other side of the lectern as an instructor, have observed some things from that perspective, and have discussed some of these issues with other teachers. That seventy-five percent number tells me that (a) the school is making no effort to facilitate other avenues for student social life; (b) there's far too much unhealthy peer pressure going on among the students (and perhaps being tacitly endorsed by the faculty and administration); and/or (c) the school's student body is unacceptably homogeneous.
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For a former fraternity member, you're assuming a hell of a lot of negative things about schools with high percentages of Greek life.
Why would a high Greek percentage automatically mean a homogenous student body? Greeks at my alma mater were rich, poor, black, white, from the city, from the country, gorgeous, not so gorgeous. Your assuming that every Greek on a campus is from the same type of group is ludicrous. At a school with 75% Greek involvement, it's probably even MORE ludicrous.
It's possible that the school provides oodles of other opportunities. It's also possible that, compared to Greek life, they just don't measure up. That's called a free market. If anything, schools these days seem to be busting their balls trying to invent "theme houses" and weak substitutes for Greek life. My perception is that the students see these for what they are - the college trying to exert more control over young adults' social life than they should - and reject them in favor of something better when it's offered.
As for peer pressure, like I stated, it may just be that at a certain point in your college career, you go Greek. If you saw statistics that said 75% of students moved off campus their sophomore year, would you automatically assume "peer pressure" was making them do so? Or would you think that maybe, just maybe, the students didn't like either the rules and restrictions or the physical dorms themselves and were smart enough to look elsewhere? Again, that's a free market.
Let your child make his own decision and quit worrying about problems that may not even exist. This post really rubbed me the wrong way.