Every fraternity recruitment pitch includes some version of the same line: join us, and you'll have brothers for life who will open doors for you. It sounds good. It's also, depending on who you ask and which house you're talking about, either completely true or total mythology. I've spent the last couple years watching my male counterparts from various chapters either cash in on those connections or realize the network was mostly vibes and a LinkedIn request from a guy who never learned their name. ... Read more

So a university decided it was finally going to get serious about Greek life. Crackdowns, new rules, oversight committees - the whole package. And now CNN is checking in to see how it's going. Spoiler: it's complicated. It's always complicated. Anyone who's spent five minutes inside a fraternity or sorority house could've told them that before the ink dried on whatever policy memo kicked this thing off. ... Read more

Every summer, incoming freshmen and transfer students start Googling things like "how to prepare for rush" and come back with the same recycled advice: research chapters, practice talking about yourself, dress well. And honestly, some of that is fine. But a lot of what gets passed around as recruitment prep is either useless filler or actively counterproductive. I went through recruitment as a sophomore - which meant I had a full year of watching people do this wrong before I did it myself - and even then I made some dumb calls about where to put my energy. ... Read more

Nobody hands you a manual when you go Greek. You get a bid card, maybe a handshake, and then you're just kind of expected to figure out the rest by watching and occasionally embarrassing yourself. I did plenty of both. And looking back from the other side of graduation, there's a pretty long list of things I wish someone had just said out loud during my first semester instead of letting me learn them the hard way. ... Read more

Every few years, a wave of high-profile assault cases hits the news cycle and suddenly everyone's got an opinion about whether fraternities should exist at all. The ABC News story making rounds right now is the latest version of that conversation - calls to shut down frat houses entirely as public anger over rape cases grows louder. I've heard this argument before. I've sat in Panhellenic council meetings where the exact same pressure was bleeding over into how we handled our own policies, our own relationships with IFC chapters, our own event approval processes. And I'll say what I said then: closing houses doesn't close the problem. ... Read more

Indiana University is now investigating three more fraternities for hazing. Three more. That's not a blip - that's a pattern, and the school is gonna have a hard time framing this as isolated incidents when they keep stacking up like this. ... Read more

The Wall Street Journal ran a piece this week that a lot of people in Greek life governance have been quietly dreading. A rape case at Cornell. A university that had recently softened its stance toward fraternities. And a story that asks, out loud, whether colleges made a mistake by pulling back from the harder line on Greek organizations. If you've sat on a Panhellenic council or watched an IFC try to self-govern, you already know where this is headed. ... Read more

Nobody told me that the GPA you earn in your first semester follows you around like a shadow for the next four years. I mean, people say stuff like "work hard" and "don't fall behind" during orientation week, but that's not the same thing as actually understanding what a 2.6 in your first semester costs you two years later. I found out the hard way, and then I found out again when I joined a chapter as a sophomore and watched the same thing play out for a bunch of new members who had no idea what they were walking into. ... Read more

Recruitment chairs are great at a lot of things. Giving you a realistic budget breakdown before you sign your bid card is not one of them. I found out what my fraternity actually cost me around three weeks into pledging, when I opened my member portal for the first time and sat with my jaw on the floor staring at a number I had not mentally prepared for. Nobody lied to me exactly. They just... didn't volunteer the full picture. ... Read more

A former fraternity leader at Northern Arizona University just got sentenced to jail time after a pledge died from alcohol poisoning during a hazing incident. The case got national coverage - Fox News, Yahoo, AZ Family, the Arizona Republic, the Independent. When a story hits that many outlets, it means people outside Greek life are watching, forming opinions, and making up their minds about what fraternities are. I used to be one of those people. Now I'm not. And I think that actually matters for how I read this story. ... 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

Thirty pledges. A filthy basement. Injuries. Condiments. That's what law enforcement found when they responded to a Wisconsin fraternity this past week, and it's the kind of story that makes even the most committed Greek life defender go quiet for a second. I'm not a committed Greek life defender - I joined a fraternity sophomore year after spending my first year firmly in the GDI camp - so I'm not going to sit here and spin this into something it isn't. What happened at that house was hazing. Full stop. And the fact that frat leaders were actually arrested over it means this one isn't going away quietly. ... Read more

Every fraternity recruitment pitch includes some version of the same line: join us, and you'll have brothers for life who will open doors for you. It sounds good. It's also, depending on who you ask and which house you're talking about, either completely true or total mythology. I've spent the last couple years watching my male counterparts from various chapters either cash in on those connections or realize the network was mostly vibes and a LinkedIn request from a guy who never learned their name. ... Read more

I've walked through a lot of houses. Fraternity houses, obviously - that's my world - but also plenty of sorority chapter houses over the years, usually for study halls, mixers, or just dropping someone off after a late-night campus event. And every single time, I walk away thinking the same thing: the way sorority housing works is genuinely fascinating, and almost nobody outside of Panhellenic actually understands how it functions day to day. ... Read more

So a university decided it was finally going to get serious about Greek life. Crackdowns, new rules, oversight committees - the whole package. And now CNN is checking in to see how it's going. Spoiler: it's complicated. It's always complicated. Anyone who's spent five minutes inside a fraternity or sorority house could've told them that before the ink dried on whatever policy memo kicked this thing off. ... Read more