Fall Rush at UGA

[EE-BO]

Originally Posted by srmom

EE-BO, a little off topic, but, I've been wondering how the top 10% rule (especially this year, which was brutal) will affect this, and the greek system as a whole.

As it becomes more and more difficult to get in UT, less and less of your typical "fraternity type" guys are getting accepted. I know that at our high school this year, pretty much NOBODY who would normally go "top tier" got in. They are mostly all heading to A&M, which was their second choice, but they got accepted there. These boys include some strong, big dollar, legacy types to "top tier" houses at Texas.

Will an opening up to non-feeder type schools have to occur to keep up the quality of the pledges?

I know when I mentioned some of the guys who are going to Texas from our high school to my son, his comment was, "Well, they'll make great ...'s", meaning, he wouldn't tell his rush chairmen about them - so guys are going to have to come from somewhere

Hi srmom,

The impact has been felt at all levels, and it goes hand in hand with the housing issues facing fraternities at Texas.

Overall IFC membership is down from pre-Hopwood days (Hopwood was the name of the court case that eventually led to the 10% rule for anyone not familiar with the story.)

That, combined with much higher housing costs, has cut down greatly on the number of viable fraternities at Texas who own homes- and even more on the overall number of IFC groups (though the emergence of new Greek councils covering other GLO systems keeps the overall number fairly consistent.)

When I was in school, the top 5 or 6 fraternities consistently kept their numbers in the 150-180 range with the largest house being over 200. And top mid tier houses like mine typically ran from 80-100 guys.

As of this spring, only 5 chapters at Texas have over 100 guys- with the top head count being 168 (I have 10 years of IFC data sitting in front of me, hence my ability to be so specific- though I prefer to not name chapters.)

In Fall 2002, IFC totals were nearly 2,000 with 84 being the average chapter size. Today the figure is just under 1,500 with 68 the average chapter size.

Smaller chapters find it harder to cover housing costs in an environment where property taxes have risen as much as 400% since 2004 when the rezoning went into effect and land values skyrocketed. That is easing up some now, but some chapters now face property taxes over $100,000 a year- over $200,000 in one case.

Right now I think 4-5 smaller chapters are in serious financial trouble (my personal estimate based on their size and housing costs), but there are also some serious recolonization efforts going on since Texas is a campus where most fraternities want a strong presence. So it is hard to know if the overall number will go down as I expect, but it is certainly incredibly expensive now for anyone to own property and a surprising number of chapters here are renting at the moment.

In the big picture, the top tier houses will be fine. Their GPAs are incredible- over the all UT men's average and in the low 3.0 range. UT has always had special arrangements with top private schools to admit students based on class rank and SAT score without regard to a 10% threshold and it is my understanding those agreements are still in place though more stringent. So students from top private schools- a key source of rushees for top houses- have a harder time getting into UT than before, but it is not quite the crapshoot it is for most students.

Overall the change at UT has been good for Greek life. While I disagree strongly with the 10% rule and think it should go back to being an applicant-based consideration with high school quality mattering a great deal, the fact is that UT is overall a far more serious institution academically in terms of the student body.

At fraternities this has meant higher GPAs, a desire to keep as many pledges as possible and not chase them off with excess "activities" and also a great reduction in the amount of time that goes into party builds and other stuff that could interfere with academics.

Most of the serious hazing and RM incidents you see today are from the smaller and newer GLOs, some of them "fringe" groups with no real organized national leadership. The more established GLOs are far more responsible and civilized places since that party crowd with bad grades cannot get into UT anymore. This also, I think, explains the apparent rise in serious incidents at nearby public universities which are easier to get into and where a lot of those guys now have to go since UT is not an option.

Long story short- Greek Life at UT is going to be fine. 5 years from now I expect there will be fewer chapters and those chapters will be larger in size. And at the top levels, there will be little- if any- change assuming there are not any major incidents.