Here's a fresh idea for the next time your chapter wants to gain some publicity for a philantrophy event...pick a world record and try to break it. The Brothers of Zeta Phi Rho the University of Southern California attempted to break the word record for the most number of sandwiches made in one hour. Though it may seem like this is all fun and games, the fraternity made sure it was for a good cause: to fight homelessness.... Read more

You have made one of the biggest decisions of your life to go to college. Congratulations! However, that’s not the only decision that you’ll have to make when it comes to college life. Another important decision that you’ll probably make is the decision to go Greek in college. Greek life has lots of benefits to offer to its members – opportunities to build a network, social/community activities to participate in, a strong brotherhood bond to maintain, and many more!  However, one of the biggest challenges college guys face at the beginning of their Greek life is choosing the right fraternity for themselves.... Read more

Lafayette College just handed a national free speech organization enough material to ask some serious questions, and honestly, I don't think Greek life is ready for the conversation that follows. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression raised concerns about Lafayette's decision to suspend Greek life activities across the board - and from where I've sat on a Panhellenic council, I can tell you that broad suspensions like this one don't just raise free speech flags. They expose every flaw in how universities think they can govern Greek organizations. ... Read more

Most people outside Greek life think mixers are just scheduled socializing - two chapters, a theme, maybe a playlist someone spent way too long on. And yeah, on the surface, that's exactly what they are. But I've been in enough of them, on both sides of the equation, to know that what actually happens at a mixer has almost nothing to do with the event itself. It's about what the tradition builds over time. ... Read more

Every semester, some university puts out a press release about Greek students getting recognized for excellence, service, and leadership, and every semester, most people scroll right past it. VSU just did it again - Valdosta State University handed out recognition to Greek students for exactly those three things. And I get why it's easy to dismiss. Award ceremonies feel performative. Press releases feel like PR. But I've been thinking about why that reaction is wrong, and I want to push back on the cynicism a little. ... Read more

Somewhere around week four of my first semester in a fraternity, I realized I had said yes to basically everything. Brotherhood event on Tuesday. Philanthropy planning meeting Wednesday. Some mixer that got added to the calendar forty-eight hours before it happened. And somehow I was supposed to have read three chapters of organizational behavior and turned in a rough draft that Friday. I hadn't done either. I want to be clear - I did this to myself. But the structure of Greek life makes it really easy to overcommit before you even realize what's happening. ... Read more

I went to a large state school. Think 40,000 undergrads, a football stadium that holds more people than most small cities, and a Greek row that stretches so long it has its own traffic problems on bid day. My cousin went to a small private liberal arts school with maybe 2,800 students total. She was in Pi Beta Phi. I was in Sigma Alpha Epsilon. We compared notes once over Thanksgiving and realized we were basically describing two completely different institutions that happened to share Greek letters. ... Read more

Alix Earle built her whole brand on being relatable, and that's exactly why her "sorority nightmare" content hits the way it does. When someone with millions of followers talks about Greek life going wrong, people listen. They share it. They screenshot it. And somewhere in that cycle, the actual conversation about what Greek life is - and what it should be - gets completely buried under the performance of it all. ... Read more

You accepted the bid. You cried, hugged strangers, maybe posted a Reel of yourself running home. And then the next morning you woke up and had absolutely no idea what was actually supposed to happen next. Nobody told you at the info sessions. Nobody mentioned it during preference night. You were handed a folder or a tote bag or a branded tumbler and sent on your way with a move-in date for new member orientation and basically nothing else. ... Read more

There's a People magazine article making the rounds right now, and I can't stop thinking about it. It's about parents - actual parents who lost their teenage sons to fraternity hazing - and how they've turned that grief into advocacy. I'm not going to pretend I read it and moved on. I didn't. Because I'm in a fraternity now, and before I joined I would have read something like that and said, see, this is exactly why I want nothing to do with Greek life. ... Read more

Daniella Uvaldo is leading a sorority at Columbia while being a first-generation college student in the engineering school. That sentence alone probably would have sounded like a weird combination to a lot of people ten years ago. It doesn't sound weird to me at all - and I think that says something real about where Greek life is actually headed. ... Read more

There's a specific kind of uncomfortable that happens when you're at a chapter event and you look across the room and see someone who graduated four years ago standing there like they never left. Not a quick pop-in. Not a homecoming thing. Just... there. Again. Like they have nowhere else to be. ... Read more

Junior year, I got a job offer before half my classmates had even updated their LinkedIn profiles. The guy who referred me was a Sigma Chi alum I'd met exactly twice - once at a chapter event and once at a regional conference. He didn't know my GPA. He barely knew my major. He knew my letters, my handshake, and that I'd served as treasurer. That was enough. And honestly, sitting here now, I'm not sure how I feel about that. ... Read more

While most Panhellenic councils spend September arguing about recruitment compliance violations and whether a chapter's Instagram post technically counts as informal recruitment, the Divine Nine organizations are out here running food drives, hosting voter registration tables, and putting members through scholarship reviews. Every semester. Without pause. I've sat through enough IFC and Panhellenic governance meetings to know that for a lot of chapters, community service is a box you check before formal. For Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, Zeta Phi Beta, and the rest of the National Pan-Hellenic Council organizations, it's apparently just... Tuesday. ... Read more

Every chapter has one. The social chair. Sometimes they're the reason your semester feels alive, and sometimes they're the reason it feels like you're just... going through motions. I didn't really think about this role before I joined Greek life - I honestly didn't know it existed. But about three months into my sophomore year, after I'd pledged and was starting to figure out how things actually worked, it became pretty obvious that this one position quietly shapes the experience more than almost anything else. ... Read more