Greek Decline

[Rain Man]

Originally posted by stardusttwin
Let me preface by saying I'm not a member & when I was in undergrad many years ago everything was above ground...

Why is up to fellow students to encourage others to get their act together?? Your tuition bill and looming student loan repayment schedule should be all the motivation you need to get your act together! "How to succeed/How to study" are things that one should attend either in orientation or PRIOR to getting to school. Its truly not up to fellow students to encourage each other to stay in school - if the quality of students is truly an issue then the problem is with admissions NOT with BGLO's being too strict.

Stardusttwin, your argument is inherently flawed in the sense that if it wasn't up to the fellow students to encourage each other to stay in school, then there would be no need for collegiate fraternities and sororities, especially NPHC ones. That's the whole point of the collegiate Greek system: for a group of fellow students with a similar purpose to support one another in an fraternal type of network. One of those areas is in the academic/college retention arena.

Students today are overly concerned (IMO) with GPA's and the focus has contributed to over inflated grades as oppossed to genuinely well rounded students who are involved with a couple of orgs and maintaing a B+/A- avg.

I'm not sure what you mean by this...

If the chapters at your school were really doing nothing then the chapter would die out wouldn't it? Like I said it was different at my school - interest was earned by all through the programs they held throughout the year. Those that knew what they wanted to pursue would be sure to attend everything but it was not unheard of for all students regardless of desire to go to another org's event just to see what they were doing (even those with no interest in greek life at all). Yeah some shallow freshmen would always make a premature declaration based on the most recent step show winners but they would soon learn that ALL of the chapters were deeper than that & if you didn't get to know them you would never get anywhere.

A couple of things on this:

1. First impressions are lasting impressions.
2. An organization's (or any person, for that matter) reputation means nothing. An organization's character, however, means EVERYTHING. It takes wisdom to learn someone's character. It also takes time. A reputation can be learned in a hour, a character can take up to and including a year or more to learn.
3. Having said #2, one should not assume that the reputation of their org should be all it takes to make a prospective approach them, which is what I see a lot of members ride on as far as whether or not someone approaches them. That is a lazy and irresponsible attitude to have. One must actively build their organization's character in such a way that they make their org approachABLE to others.

It seems that today's youth want EVERYTHING handed to them...

That is more attributed to the "get it fast, get it now" times that we live in more than anything else. As Prince would sing, "Sign o' the times.