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If it's only 10% of the school (and the "old money contingent at that") I think they'd be pretty easy to ignore if you didn't care about them 
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That's exactly right. And it's less than 10% of the school -- it's around 10% of the eligible students (they are upperclassman-only at both Harvard and Yale). The Yale ones don't have social events at all; they are solely for members. At Harvard, the old-money ones operate the same way: a drinking club for members, closed doors, no guests. The ones that have parties with guests are basically just local frats and not so hard to get into. They are strongly associated with certain sports teams, just like frats at most campuses.
Re: the silliness of a selective, elite institution believing in an egalitarian social scene: a lot of people think that competition belongs in some arenas and not in others. Anyone who applies to HYP is inherently agreeing to be judged on academic achievement, extracurricular involvement, and diverse life experience. It doesn't mean that they want to be judged based on looks, popularity, social connections, and being the life of the party. Realistically, that's what GLO selection is about when you're selecting from the HYP student body: everyone is an excellent student, ambitious, talented, a leader, etc. Students compete to get into those schools; once there, they compete with one another to lead orchestras and publications and service groups; they compete to get into Yale Law and Hopkins Med; when it comes time to socialize, they want to chill out for a change and not worry about who's who.
Re: the fact that Theta is at all 3 of HYP: I know we don't like to talk about tiers here, but it's the "hot," socially elite group at all 3, too, and has chapters at all the other Ivies except Dartmouth, where its chapter went local.
The embarrassment about sorority membership that you find at HYP, and sometimes at Brown/Columbia, is nonexistent at Dartmouth and Cornell. Penn is in the middle; sororities are pretty cool for freshman women and totally uncool for seniors.
Re: tech schools: Caltech groups students into houses where you live/eat/party together, like Harvard, Yale, and Rice do. Schools that do this typically have much lower interest in Greek life. MIT does not, which explains the thriving Greek life there vs. none at Caltech.
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