What makes a strong fraternity?

[CuriousGeorge3]

Anyone involved in any greek system has probably heard of been involved in the never ending debate of "Who's the best house on campus?" We have all had our opinions, but how did we come to the conclusion we did?

I want to extend this a little further and ask, what's makes a strong house? I doubt many of us have answered this question in writitng. Is it numbers? Sometimes bigger houses (120+) aren't as close knit as smaller houses (<120). Parties? In the end we are social fraternities, but are the houses that throw ragers every other weekend as good as the house who throws an even bigger one once a month? Looks? The personalities of the people in that house? Philanthropy hours? Money? A combination? Then what do you weigh more?

We can also expand this out to what make a strong sorority as well. Feel free to let us know the "strongest house" on your campus, and why they were considered the best. Let's not worry about being politically correct and give some honest responses.

[banditone]

before the lock.

Membership Size (membership at a given time).
Alumni Size.
Physical Plant (house and structures).
Alumni Support (to the house).
Alumni Support (to the University).
War Chest (house money for events).
Campus Involvement / Leadership roles.
What Sororities they interact with on average.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by CuriousGeorge3

Anyone involved in any greek system has probably heard of been involved in the never ending debate of "Who's the best house on campus?" We have all had our opinions, but how did we come to the conclusion we did?

I want to extend this a little further and ask, what's makes a strong house? I doubt many of us have answered this question in writitng. Is it numbers? Sometimes bigger houses (120+) aren't as close knit as smaller houses (<120). Parties? In the end we are social fraternities, but are the houses that throw ragers every other weekend as good as the house who throws an even bigger one once a month? Looks? The personalities of the people in that house? Philanthropy hours? Money? A combination? Then what do you weigh more?

We can also expand this out to what make a strong sorority as well. Feel free to let us know the "strongest house" on your campus, and why they were considered the best. Let's not worry about being politically correct and give some honest responses.

Well, in my time, I would have had to say the strongest fraternity was Sigma Chi.

Reasons:

They were not the smallest but not the largest either - i.e. there weren't many "who is that random Sigma Chi?" sightings, as in they were a Sigma Chi and didn't do anything else. (The fraternity that was the largest had this issue.)

They were cute.

They were fun to be around.

They threw good parties with good music.

They had a diverse mix of brothers and many of them were very strong individuals (i.e. famous on campus).

Several of them had beaucoup $$.

They were kind of closer with one sorority but definitely tried to get past it.

Most important - they showed that they truly cared about each other and about their fraternity. I still remember how the brothers talked about their history, their different programs, their alumni - it was with a level of pride that no other fraternity on campus had.

Then again, this is one person's opinion, and female opinions are different than male opinions.

[ree-Xi]

In my opinion, it's the way that the chapter treats women, men outside of their fraternity, and the adminstration. Respect goes a long way.

[PhiGam]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Well, in my time, I would have had to say the strongest fraternity was Sigma Chi.

Reasons:

They were not the smallest but not the largest either - i.e. there weren't many "who is that random Sigma Chi?" sightings, as in they were a Sigma Chi and didn't do anything else. (The fraternity that was the largest had this issue.)

They were cute.

They were fun to be around.

They threw good parties with good music.

They had a diverse mix of brothers and many of them were very strong individuals (i.e. famous on campus).

Several of them had beaucoup $$.

They were kind of closer with one sorority but definitely tried to get past it.

Most important - they showed that they truly cared about each other and about their fraternity. I still remember how the brothers talked about their history, their different programs, their alumni - it was with a level of pride that no other fraternity on campus had.

Then again, this is one person's opinion, and female opinions are different than male opinions.

Great post

[SigmaChiGuy]

Lift a lot of weights. Take sterioids. Run.

IN!

[AGDee]

We had two that were equally strong but for different reasons.. TKEs and LXAs.

They were the two largest chapters and ran about the same size. They were tight rivals for Greek Week, Intramurals, Homecoming, etc.. they generally ran neck in neck and one of the two always won those things. The TKEs held a lot of leadership positions on campus and were more preppy. They had weekly happy hours and were always well liked. They had higher scholarship than the LXAs. They weren't quite as warm and friendly as the LXAs though and sometimes seemed more like a business than a brotherhood.

The LXAs strengths were more that they were really friendly and warm and well liked. Their philanthropy was known campus wide (A Gangsta Party/Kidnapping of RAs and student leaders who then had to raise "ransom" to get out.. the money for MDA) and was a lot of fun. Their brotherhood was more evident as they were truly really close .. often stopping everything they were doing at a party to sing "We are all good brothers..." or "Magic Carpet Ride" and they just seemed to have a really strong bond.

If the TKEs seemed a little closer and the LXAs had a few more student leaders, they would be almost perfect.

[Firehouse]

Who is best?
"Best" is subjective, but it's very predictable within the greek world.

Fraternities are judged & evaluated by their peers, by rushees and by sororities on five "external" criteria. If you want to know who's considered the best on a given campus - provided that campus has a competitive fraternity system in terms of number of chapters and size - then chart these things and you'll have the answer.
One caveat: don't think of this in terms of a snapshot of a given moment in time. Fraternities that compete to the the "best" are likely to remain strong over time. Think of these criteria expressed over, say, three years:

Size: Size matters. If you have a 50-man chapter at Penn State you can compete. If you have a 50+ man chapter at Ole Miss you cannot compete. The top fraternity doesn't have to be the largest, but it has to be size competitive.

Appearance: Looks count. Yes, the best fraternity may have a few sketchy guys, but as a group the best fraternity looks like you'd expect the best fraternity to look. The men are strong, manly, handsome (or at least not scarey) and in sufficient numbers for that image to be associated with the chapter.

Athletics: Sports count with men. The best fraternity doesn't have to win the IM trophy every year, but they do have to be competitive in the "manly" sports. The best fraternity won't field a weak football, basketball or softball team that carries the stench of loser. Varsity and club athletes are points of pride. Eli Manning and his dad Archie Manning are both Sigma Nus at Ole Miss. Tiger Woods is a Sigma Chi. Bobby Bowden was president of his Pike chapter in college. Big names count.

Power: The best fraternity attracts many of the best men on campus. The best men on campus routinely hold important offices and have impressive titles. The "best" fraternity always can point to a few of the most prominent campus leaders in their chapter.

Social Preference: Fraternities with the top reputations pair up naturally with their sorority counterparts. If the fraternity has men that girls like, and if the fraternity as a chapter acts decent toward women and has a good time, they will be socially preferred.

If a fraternity dominates all five categories, then they are the dominant fraternity in terms of reputation. They are the best. If, say, five different fraternities each rank #1 in a separate criteria, then there is no clear #1 on campus. If you WANT to be considerd the best, then you must focus on winning the Five Criteria.

There are "internal" criteria that are very important to the strength of the chapter. However, no one is judged by their rivals, the rushees or the sororities on these things.
Outside of your chapter (to which these things ARE important) NO ONE CARES about:
The pedge program;
The alumni program;
Winning Homecoming;
Community service (trust me - no one cares in terms of ranking the "best");
Financial management;
Scholastics (unless your grades are horrible, then that could be trouble; but that's usually a symptom of other problems);
The meal plan;
The themes of your parties;
Any number of other things.

There are small campuses where the criteria have to be adjusted slightly, but these are universal principles within the fraternity world. REPUTATION follows performance in the five external criteria.

[Kevin]

Why would anyone lock this thread?

Other than the fact that the answer to the question is obvious, I see nothing wrong here.

[BigRedBeta]

Impressive post by firehouse. Lots of good stuff in there that I definitely agree with. That distinction between external and internal factors is important.

I'd argue though that it's always a campus specific question (like everything usually is when it comes to greek life), and there are somethings, even at large greek schools which are on the "internal" list but matter a great deal.

I think what defines those key elements is where can chapters compete to be the best. Regular competition in which it's a struggle from semester to semester can make the relative importance of things shoot through the roof. On the flipside, one chapter's continued dominance can completely de-emphasize one of the main criteria to irrelevance.

On my campus, the one chapter without a house (and thus no limiting factor on the number of guys they can manage) has dominated intramurals since they rechartered. The main sports (football, softball, etc) are always competitive among every one, but this chapter (which is automatically 3rd tier because of their lack of a house) spends so much time getting points in sports like ping pong and water polo that it's never a question they're going to win the overall title. It's made the fraternity system as a whole pretty apathetic towards intramurals - certainly people want to win because that's more fun than losing but there aren't any super intense rivalries. Further, it's so rare to have a varsity athlete join a fraternity on my campus, that when does rush, it's a complete anomaly and conveys nothing to the chapter (in fact for the most part the most recent athletes to rush have always joined second tier houses).

In a similar vein, the Betas at KU have so completely dominated grades over the past 50 years (winning something like 95 of the last 100 semesters) and similarly doing the same for the overall IM title over the last 20, that most KU fraternities don't spend a whole lot of effort worrying about how well they're going to do in those areas.

On the other hand, there's been a long standing competition for grades on my campus, and it's definitely used as a selling point to rushees. The competition has pushed the all-fraternity GPA to nearly 3.2 (compared to below 3.0 for the all-men's average), and usually the winning chapter has a GPA of greater than 3.4...not something the sororities care about, but rushees do.

[gee_ess]

Thank you Firehouse and BigRedBeta for two well written posts.

[baci]

ITA!^^

[LaneSig]

Originally Posted by Firehouse

Athletics: Tiger Woods is a Sigma Chi.

Sorry, Firehouse, Tiger is not a Sigma Chi. His teammate at Stanford and fellow pro golfer, Casey Martin, is a Sigma Chi.

Our current most famous pro athletes: Drew Briese (sp?), QB of New Orleans Saints and Sean Payton, head coach of New Orleans Saints.

[banditone]

Firehouse, that was the best post on the subject I have read.

[33girl]

oh, and I also want to throw out that I think the things that can vary the most by campus are the sports and housing issues. I think we had intramurals, but I have no idea who the stronger teams were - I don't recall ever seeing a guys' rush poster that said "we were intramural champs last year."

Same with housing. If you're at a campus where a group of athletes (i.e. the wrestlers) or a group of GDIs can obtain a house that is just as nice as any of the fraternity houses, housing isn't going to matter that much.

And this hasn't come up, but the "Greek Cups" and such don't always tell the story - unless the students voted on who receives it. You can have all the admin support in the world, all the alumni support in the world and do everything right on paper, but if you don't have that "certain something" it doesn't matter - you won't pull in great members and be truly strong.