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Fijis and Greeks doing well in GA
From the front page of Sunday's Atlanta newspaper:
8/25/02 ]
GREEK REVIVAL
Fraternities and sororities enjoy a rebound,
overcoming perception they 'are not meeting a need'
W.A. BRIDGES JR. / AJC
Members and new pledges of Phi Gamma Delta raise a flag at their fraternity house on the Georgia Tech campus before a recent dinner to get better acquainted.
GREEK LIFE
Students in Greek organizations at selected Georgia colleges (2001):
• Emory: 1,742
• Georgia State: 530
• Georgia Tech: 2,347
• Morehouse: 173
• UGA: 4,032
It starts with the clapping of hands and a low hum. Without words, dozens of men emerge from all corners of the house and head for the front door. The hum grows louder, the clapping like thunder.
Outside they turn and look toward the front of the house. In a moment, 18-year-old Franz Russler runs down the stairs from the second floor and out the door and leaps into the waiting arms of his new family. Their voices echo across the Georgia Tech campus as they chant, hoisting Russler above their heads.
"We're Phi Gamm,
Best in the land,
Hot damn, Hot damn,
Give it up Phi Gamm,
Hey!"
With that and a little white star pinned to his chest, Russler, just one day into his freshman year, becomes the newest pledge at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity at Tech.
After years of decline, fraternity and sorority enrollment on Georgia college campuses has made a modest rebound in recent years. The number of students who pledged a Greek organization at Tech, the University of Georgia and Emory University in 2000 and 2001 was the highest it has been in a decade. Administrators say they believe enrollment this year will be even higher when new pledges are sworn in later in the semester.
At Morehouse College, students are seeing a Greek renaissance as two fraternities -- banned from the campus for a decade because of hazing violations -- return, doubling the number of Greek organizations on the all-male campus. Only 60 students belonged to Morehouse fraternities in 2000. That number could easily top 200 this year, officials there say.
Driving the increase is the record enrollment in Georgia colleges and universities.
But school officials also say more students appear to be seeking the support system a Greek organization can provide. Some campuses have even added new chapters to attract students who have been underrepresented in the past.
In their pitch for new members, fraternities and sororities offer students, usually freshmen, a home away from home through which they can build lifelong bonds. Brothers and sisters take oaths of loyalty to each other, eat meals together and often live together in the chapter house.
It was an offer Russler said he couldn't refuse.
"One of the things I want to get out of it is another home to go to," said Russler, who is from Chamblee. "The dorm is a one-year kind of thing. This is a whole college experience."
A victim of own abuses
Greek enrollment peaked nationwide in the late 1980s. In 1990, more than 27 percent of the undergraduate students enrolled at Georgia Tech were pledged to a fraternity or sorority. UGA hit its stride between 1985 and 1990, when more than 26 percent of its undergraduate population joined a Greek organization. Almost half of Emory University's students were members in the mid- to late 1980s, historians there recall.
By the late 1990s, membership at UGA and Tech had fallen to 18 percent to 20 percent of undergraduates. Membership at Emory fell to about 30 percent.
The national decline began in the mid-1990s, after high-profile reports of hazing, alcohol abuse, sexual misdeeds and racism involving Greek organizations. While national fraternity and sorority oversight boards do not release official numbers, they estimate enrollment fell 30 percent between 1989 and 1999.
"There's a perception that they're not meeting a need," said Kevin Kruger, associate executive director of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. "They have a reputation that is not exactly in line with where many students want to be academically."
Kruger also said colleges are doing a better job of providing support services through residence halls, perhaps lessening some students' need to join a Greek organization.
Most Georgia schools now provide orientation for freshmen and group those with similar interests for the first semester.
Students also have dozens of other interests competing for their time on campus, including marching band, ROTC, student government, honor societies and clubs.
Special interest groups, some targeted to specific populations, also have begun to emerge, including sororities and fraternities geared to Hispanic and Asian students.
In its sixth year at UGA, the Alpha Sigma Rho Asian-interest sorority now has about 30 members. It was formed by six Asian women who felt UGA needed something more to offer the minority group, which makes up less than 3 percent of the undergraduate student body.
"I was very much not into the Greek thing" upon arriving at UGA, said sorority President Lisa Schultheiss, a junior born and reared in Tennessee. "I wanted to explore my Japanese culture."
Students also know you don't have to be in a Greek organization to take part in some of its activities.
"Half the people who go to the parties aren't in a fraternity," said Georgia Tech senior Mandy Reynolds, 21, an industrial systems and engineering major from Macon, who didn't participate in rush.
The party reputation of fraternities, immortalized in the 1978 movie "Animal House," is one that national Greek organizations have tried to dispel. Both fraternities and sororities have taken steps in recent years to address any negative perceptions of Greek life. In 2000, the National Panhellenic Conference instituted a policy that prohibits sororities from participating in social events at a fraternity house where alcohol will be served. Alcohol already was prohibited in sorority houses.
Frats banned alcohol
Sally Grant, National Panhellenic Conference chairman, said the new policy was approved as a way for sororities to support fraternities that were going alcohol-free. In recent years, several fraternities have elected not to allow alcohol in their houses.
Fraternities that went alcohol-free "were worried their social life would decline," said Grant, who was an Alpha Phi at DePauw University in Indiana.
About a half-dozen of the fraternities at UGA have banned alcohol in their houses, the most recent being Tau Kappa Epsilon, which announced in the spring it would refocus on maintaining high academic standards.
UGA also has made an effort to participate more in Greek life, maintaining contact with the chapters on campus and the national organizations.
"In the last 10 years, we have been able to refocus and put more emphasis on that relationship," said Rodney Bennett, dean of students at UGA. "All of us recognize we can't go about business as usual."
There has also been more effort in recent years to crack down on chapters that break the rules or create a problem on campus. In April, Georgia Tech suspended the Chi Phi fraternity for two years for violating the school's policy against hazing.
In February, Emory passed a new party policy for fraternities after a November bash turned into a drunken street brawl. The policy, adopted by the school's interfraternity council, requires that at least seven members of a fraternity remain alcohol-free during parties and that only three times as many people as there are members may attend.
A UGA task force is exploring possible policy changes for Greek organizations after a white sorority sister accused the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority of discriminating against a black student two years ago. The sorority also agreed to provide diversity training to new members.
Perhaps surprising to some who think of fraternities as the party leaders on campus, Greeks tend to have a higher grade-point average and retention rate than other students.
The average GPA of Greek undergraduates at UGA last spring was 3.2, slightly higher than the 3.09 average for all undergraduates. Student retention at Tech is higher for Greeks than non-Greeks, as well. More than 92 percent of the freshmen enrolled in Greek organizations from 1999 to 2001 returned to school for their sophomore year, compared with 88 percent of non-Greek freshmen.
That's one of the selling points for Phi Gamma Delta, which has one of the highest GPAs at Tech. Upperclassmen in the fraternity provide a tutoring service for younger students struggling with classes, said Matt BeVier, 22, who graduates in December with a degree in mechanical engineering.
"It's one of the reasons my dad wanted me to join a fraternity," said BeVier, whose father played football for Tech in the early '70s.
In addition, each chapter has a commitment to philanthropy and participates in community service projects throughout the year.
Every Thanksgiving before the annual Georgia Tech-UGA football game, the Phi Gamma Delta chapters from Tech and UGA join up for the Run for the River.
Members form a relay team to make the 70-mile run between Atlanta and Athens carrying a football. Money raised from the event last year went to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.
"They're a great bunch of guys," said senior Glen Iannucci, president of the Georgia Tech chapter, "even though they go to UGA."
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