[Firehouse]

Erik, my good friend, there are shifts in the landscape that may not be as visible to you now that you don't have the opportunity to travel as much. Greeks are making a comeback across the country. It seems to be cyclical; we're up for awhile, down for awhile.
I too have winced when I see that we have expanded to a college that I consider a 'lesser light'. However - this is important - many of those schools embrace greeks as a way of building long term alumni loyalty to the institution. Communter schools in large cities (USF in Tampa for instance) start football programs and build fraternity rows for that purpose. One very direct illustration of the attitude (don't laugh, but this is a good measure) is the ease or difficulty with which you can access Greek Life information on the University's website.
There aren't many 15-man chapters anymore, and no IFC national tolerates them. They're unstable at that size within a system of larger chapters.
As far as the northeast, I'm ver pleased to see that in the alst ten years we have established chapters at Columbia, Princeton and now Harvard.
Yes, we are hated by some faculty and some administratoes, but it was also so. In the 19th century, we were hated by radical religious right-wing faculty & administrators. Today, we are hated by radical left wing faculty and administrators.
And as far as behavior, I think the boys today are much better behaved then we were (of course, Florida is a wild state). Any incident of any kind involving fraternity guys is going to get national headlines because of the political inclination of the media.