If your parents went to college then there’s a pretty good chance you already have a definition of what Greek life is.
If you’re an international student, however, or you’re parents were on the outside of Greek Life the entire system may seem mysterious and hard to understand.
The truth is, that unless you’re on the inside, it really is a mystery.
There are a few things that separate us (those in Greek Life) from people who are part of other social and on-campus clubs and groups, but let me clear some common misconceptions before I begin to shed light unto what type of people we are and the bond we share.
What we are not…
Big dumb hunks of meat
Movies like portray us as big, dumb, extremely good looking (mostly true), bro’s that party hard and hardly study, but the reality is far from that. Before we even think about what “the next move is” this weekend, we’re hitting the books Sunday – Thursday: doing homework, going to study groups, and helping each other understand this weeks material. The great part about being in a fraternity is that there’s always somebody that can teach you something you don’t know.
There’s no stigma for asking for academic help, and it’s even encouraged with brothers of the same major often put into contact by the academic chair. Oh and by the way did I mention that all fraternities, and sororities, elect one person to make sure that everyone succeeds academically? Yeah, that’s a big reason why fraternities and sororities have the highest GPA’s on campus. At my own campus, sororities would hold study hours where they bought food for all the sisters and everybody would just get together for a few hours and study. Free food and friends? What more could you ask more?
Extremely wealthy and spoiled trust-fund brats
This is perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions out there. Yes, on one hand we pay dues each semester in order to be in the fraternity but the reality of it is that a fraternity is like a business and a business needs money to function. With that in mind, the vast majority of us do not own 50 foot yachts that are waiting for us at our North East beach mansions. Actually, a lot of us are just regular middle-class students that have scholarships and federal work-study. Yes we all have a pair of boat shoes, and some of us even try a little too hard and buy a few pairs of chubbie shorts, but we also work hard to buy the things we have.
Even the brothers I know that come from wealthy families do not have everything handed to them, on the contrary, those guys tend to be the hardest working and the most successful leaders within the fraternity and in the campus community. On the other hand, I know a lot of other brothers who work and devote a lot of their paychecks to paying off dues. Fraternities know that dues can be a big financial burden and a lot of them offer scholarships and payment plans to spread out the cost. Some even allow you to “pre-pay” dues over the summer so you don’t have to worry about it during the year.
Egotistical we-are-better-than-you a**holes (different word maybe?)
What I have come to realize is that this misconception may come from a variety of factors. Perhaps the most important being that we know what we are good at and passionate about and we pursue it to the fullest of our ability. We do not claim to know everything about everything, but we know what we’re good and we’re proud of it.
