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Old 06-06-2003, 01:48 PM
MysticCat MysticCat is offline
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Re: These are some of those Greek Statistics

Quote:
Originally posted by decadence
Agree 100%. At least with the over 80% of US Presidents since 1900 being greek example, we know have a 100% verified situation, based on information from official bodies. Only a few more to verify

Without further ado...

Every U.S. President and Vice President, except two in each office, born since the first social fraternity was founded in 1825 have been members of a fraternity.
Debunked as Greek Urban Legend by the Center for the Study of the College Fraternity. Their list, which you posted in this thread, shows that R.B. Hayes, who became president in 1877 and was a Deke, was the first "Greek" president, at least if considering an NIC group.

Simple logic backs this up. Yes, Kappa Alpha Society was the first social fraternity and was founded in 1825, but for a while fraternities were relatively few in number and were limited to relatively few campuses. (Professional, service, and other "specialized" GLOs did not come until later.) Add in the constitutional requirement that a president must be 35 years old, and it would appear to be at least 1848 or so before any man who went Greek in college would even be eligible to be president, much less be elected.

Quote:
Over 85% of the student leaders on some 730 campuses are involved in the Greek community.
Good luck verifying this. This semester? Last semester? Ten years ago? And why "some 730 campuses"? There are lots more college/university campuses than that. Do they mean the campuses that allow Greek life? Then say so.

Quote:
There are 123 fraternities and sororities with 9 million members total.
See, now here is an example of a statistic that looks straightfoward, but is actually misleading and inaccurate. Just take a look at ariesrising's pages or GreekPages.com, and you can easily find more than 123 fraternities and sororities.

Do they mean 123 NIC, NPC and NPHC groups? Then say so. Do they mean national, social GLO's? Then say so. Are they including professional GLOs? Service GLOs? Multi-cultural GLOs? Latino/a GLOs? Local GLOs? Better make it clear.

But it probably won't get made clear. And yet someone will pick up this "fact" and run with it, placing it in rush info and posting it on the web, and we'll still be seeing it 15 years from now, when even if it once was accurate it won't be any more. This is why I am so leery of these Greek "statistics."
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