Before I joined a fraternity, I spent about a year and a half watching Greek life from the outside. And what I saw mostly came through a screen - polished recruitment videos, perfectly staged bid day photos, Formal content that looked like it was shot by a professional. I had a genuine opinion about Greek life based almost entirely on curated content. That's probably more common than anyone wants to admit. ... Read more

Xavier University is getting Greek life next fall, and the internet has opinions. The Xavier Newswire broke the news that multiple chapters are being considered for the school's inaugural Greek expansion - and honestly, as someone who went through recruitment, joined a chapter, and spent four years inside that world, I have a lot of thoughts about what Xavier students are walking into. ... Read more

Something shifted on campuses around 2020 and it never fully shifted back. The fraternities that figured that out early are in a completely different position right now than the ones still running the same playbook from 2015. I've watched this from close enough range - four years in a sorority, a lot of time around chapters of Sigma Chi, Kappa Sigma, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and others - and I have thoughts. Not all of them are flattering. ... Read more

So students at the University of Wyoming showed up to a Board of Trustees public comment session to talk about Greek life. Not just to talk about it - to advocate for it, push back on it, and air out grievances in front of the people who actually hold the budget strings. And honestly? Good. That's exactly how this is supposed to work. ... Read more

There's a moment on bid day - and I've watched it happen from the outside as an IFC guy - where something shifts. A girl opens that envelope, or rips that bid card, and for a split second the whole world is just her and that piece of paper. Then she screams. And then she runs. And then about forty other women are running toward her. I've seen that happen on campus and I genuinely don't know how anyone watches it and stays cynical about Greek life. ... Read more

When I was still a GDI - before I rushed Sigma Chi my sophomore year - I watched a few guys from my floor come back from semester abroad looking like they'd fully disconnected from their fraternities. One of them had missed so many chapter events that his brothers barely acknowledged him at parties. Another came back and basically had to re-introduce himself to the pledge class that had crossed while he was gone. I filed it away as: Greek life and study abroad don't mix well. Then I went abroad myself, junior spring, and realized it's more complicated than that. ... Read more

Somewhere between 2018 and now, Greek life stopped being something that mostly existed on campus and started existing everywhere. Your parents could see it. Your high school friends in different states could see it. Random people with no connection to your school could see it. And if you were in a chapter during that shift, you felt it in ways that were genuinely weird to process in real time. ... Read more

A piece ran in The Villanovan recently arguing that sorority recruitment isn't meant to be stressful. And I get the intent behind that. I really do. The author wants PNMs to breathe, to show up as themselves, to stop treating recruitment like a job interview where one wrong answer tanks your whole future. That's a reasonable message. But there's something a little too tidy about it that I can't stop thinking about. ... Read more

I graduated in May 2023 with a degree in communications and approximately zero idea what I was doing next. What I did have, without fully realizing it at the time, was a network of about forty fraternity guys spread across industries, cities, and career stages who were genuinely willing to help me. Not because I'd done anything strategic. Not because I'd attended a single "networking event." Just because we'd been in the same orbit for three years and something stuck. ... Read more

Nobody told me pledge semester would hit my transcript like a freight train. Between chapter meetings three nights a week, new member education, philanthropy events, and just trying to figure out who everyone was - I watched my GPA slip in a way I hadn't expected. And I wasn't some slacker. I'd gotten good grades in high school. Greek life just has a way of filling every hour you thought you had. ... 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

Before I joined a fraternity, I spent about a year and a half watching Greek life from the outside. And what I saw mostly came through a screen - polished recruitment videos, perfectly staged bid day photos, Formal content that looked like it was shot by a professional. I had a genuine opinion about Greek life based almost entirely on curated content. That's probably more common than anyone wants to admit. ... Read more

A student newspaper having to file a lawsuit just to get public records about Greek life at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo - that's not a transparency problem. That's an accountability crisis. And if you've ever sat in a Panhellenic council meeting watching people argue for forty minutes about whether to release chapter GPA data to the broader campus community, you already know exactly how we got here. ... Read more

Xavier University is getting Greek life next fall, and the internet has opinions. The Xavier Newswire broke the news that multiple chapters are being considered for the school's inaugural Greek expansion - and honestly, as someone who went through recruitment, joined a chapter, and spent four years inside that world, I have a lot of thoughts about what Xavier students are walking into. ... Read more

Every Panhellenic council has one. Maybe they call it something different - standings, rankings, chapter health scores - but it's the same machine. A way of sorting chapters into winners and losers based on criteria that, if you actually look closely, reward the chapters that were already winning. I spent two years on Panhellenic council watching this play out in real time, and I'm done pretending it's a neutral process. ... Read more