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It's very easy for a fraternity to exist without school support. Take Amherst College. Greeks are supposedly "banned", but there's actually a very strong underground Greek system- 4 or 5 chapters with about 45 members each, about 10% of the school. A few members in each chapter rent an off-campus house together, and that's that. Now, if they ever got caught wearing letters or openly recruiting, they'd get expelled (the College is quite serious about that), but as long as they keep things quiet, and recruit in secret, they're fine. All their groups are national, too- Chi Psi is the only one I can think of by name right now, though.
At UMass, PKA is still there, underground, about 25 of them I suspect, though it's hard to tell sometimes. Phi Mu has renamed themselves $ (who knew Prince would start a trend?) and are living down the street from us next year, I think. Sometimes it's a little hard to tell the underground Greeks apart from just normal tenants, until they get drunk and forget themselves and the old letters come out.
Not only do you have underground groups, there are whole campuses that are in the middle- they don't officially recognize their Greeks, but also don't persecute them- they just ignore them completely and let them do what they like. Colorado is like that to a degree, I believe- anyone from Boulder out there who can help me out on that?
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