UC Irvine: Students rush to be Greek, up 84%

[hoosier]

December 28, 2005
Students rush to be Greek

Rising popularity of Greek life at UCI



IRVINE – It's apparently chic to be Greek these days at UC Irvine, where fraternity and sorority membership has soared more than 84 percent since 1998.

The campus houses 12 fraternities and sororities within its Arroyo Vista residence halls.

But so many new groups are clamoring for space that officials are considering building a "Greek Village" to house them.

The number of registered fraternities and sororities on campus has climbed to 40 from 28 in 1998, according to a UCI survey.
...

The biggest upsurge at UCI has been among ethnic and cultural organizations, with new chapters of African-American, Armenian and Jewish interest groups recently forming.

Membership in cultural and ethnic Greek organizations increased 177 percent from 1998 to 2003, according to a UCI study.

Today, Dye estimated that the university has about 1,700 fraternity and sorority members – about 9 percent of the university's 19,400 undergraduates.

[Glitter650]

I think this is a trend throughout California. I believe quite a few schools are experiencing growth like this.

[BetteDavisEyes]

My brother-in-law is a senior at UCI & my little sister (biological) is an alum from UCI. They both have told me that Greek Life really began to spark interest amongst the student body. This is definitely a good thing to hear. I can only hope that this proves true with my alma mater Cal State Long Beach.




EDIT: Totally wanted to add that Aubrey O'Day from MTV's Making The Band 3 is an Alphi Chi Omega from the UCI Chapter. Kudos to them!

[BobbyTheDon]

I don't know if this is a good thing. The geeks to normal people ratio is 10:1 at UCI.

[gphiangel624]

I think it's great that membership numbers are rising at UCI. Other than UCLA, Berkeley, San Diego and Davis, there is generally low student interest in GLO involvement (i.e. lower than 15% of the student population). From the information I have collected through various UC student life offices, more students seem interested in student organizations that will help them advance in their post-undergraduate life. As we all know, involvement in GLOs can be helpful after graduating, but not all students see it that way. To each his/her own.

For UC Riverside, a campus that is slightly smaller and younger than Irvine, we thought we had seen a jump in recent years of students involved in GLOs. In the early 2000s, we had a report 3-4% of students in GLOs, and now there is approximately 7.8% of students involved. If you look at the data (which I do as part of my job), there was not necessarily an increase in Greek students, but a change in the reporting of chapter member's scholarship information. Before the year 2003, only IFC and NPC orgs (with the exception of 1 or 2 non-IFC or NPC orgs) were on the University's scholarship report system. All GLOs are required to report and update member scholarship information quarterly; up until 2003, 20+ organizations were not reporting this information, making the "All-Greek" campus percentage false. Now that all GLOs are on the system, the numbers are much more accurate. However, UCR's percentage is still down from where it was in the late 1980s-early 1990s; at that time, over 15% of UCR students were affiliated with a GLO. Lots of reasons for this slump, the big one being that as the student population at UCR rapidly grew, membership in GLOs didn't keep up.

Wow, that was long...

[Tom Earp]

A positive Note in any case is a good note.

While only speaking for LXA, We are showing a very positive plus!

Then, if We are, then I would suspect that others are!

Not all Campi are like the pencil necked Eastern Clolleges!

Greeks have been here for a while and I expect Us to be here much longer and grow!

Just from a Proud Greek!