Somewhere between 2019 and now, Greek life stopped being a thing you experienced and started being a thing you performed. I don't mean that in a totally cynical way. But I graduated in 2024, and I watched it happen in real time - the slow shift where every philanthropy event, every formal, every bid day became content first and a moment second. And nobody really talked about it out loud. We just kind of adjusted and kept posting. ... Read more

There's an opinion piece circulating from Journal-News.com right now that asks a question most university administrators have been actively dodging for years: what do you actually want Greek life to be? Not what you want it to look like in a brochure. Not what you want to tell parents at orientation. What do you actually want it to be, and are you willing to say that out loud? ... Read more

Every chapter I've ever worked with during Panhellenic recruitment has the same problem. They spend three weeks before rush drilling members on talking points - hometown, major, favorite chapter event - and then they wonder why PNMs walk out of every house feeling like they just sat through the same interview twelve times. The script kills the conversation before it starts. ... Read more

Nobody warned me that formal season has logistics. I thought it was just, show up in a suit, take some pictures, have a good night. Then I joined Sigma Chi as a sophomore and watched our social chair spend three weeks coordinating a venue, a shuttle, a photographer, a DJ, catering deposits, and a guest list spreadsheet that went through like six versions. It's basically event planning with a dress code. And once I understood that, the whole experience made a lot more sense. ... Read more

There is no Greek tradition that splits the room harder than the serenade. Not formals, not bid day, not even the annual argument about whether your chapter's founding date is actually correct. Serenades are either this deeply meaningful, weirdly emotional brotherhood or sisterhood moment - or they are seven minutes of grown adults standing outside a building singing slightly off-key while a row of people judge them from a balcony like some kind of ancient ritual no one has fully explained. And depending on your school, you might be experiencing one or the other. ... Read more

There's a moment every chapter officer hits eventually. You're on the phone with your national headquarters, trying to get a simple answer about your recruitment budget or a new member education policy, and you realize - this person has no idea who you are, what your campus is like, or what you actually need. They're reading from a script. And your chapter is just one of two hundred dots on a spreadsheet they'll never look at twice. ... Read more

There's a piece from the Collegiate Times making the rounds right now with a pretty blunt premise: your For You page has been lying to you about what college actually looks like. And honestly, as someone who graduated in 2024 after four years deep in fraternity life, I read it and felt something. Not surprise. More like the specific exhaustion of watching a problem you lived through finally get a headline. ... Read more

If you're a freshman girl who just heard the word "recruitment" for the first time and your only reference point is TikTok montages of girls crying and jumping up and down in matching outfits - you are not alone, and you are also working with incomplete information. Panhellenic formal recruitment is one of the strangest, most structured, most genuinely meaningful processes on a college campus, and almost nobody explains it to you before you're already in it. ... Read more

I didn't go to my first real tailgate until I was a sophomore, and even then I showed up kind of skeptical. I'd spent my freshman year doing the GDI thing - watching football from dorms, maybe catching a game with friends who didn't care that much. When I finally got pulled into a full Greek row tailgate setup before a home game, I remember thinking: okay, this is actually something. Not because of the chaos or the crowd, but because there was clearly a tradition behind it. People knew what they were doing. They'd done this before, and their older brothers or sisters had done it before them, and it showed. ... Read more

There's a version of sorority recruitment that happens behind closed doors, in chapter rooms, with handshakes and rituals and real conversations. And then there's the version that went viral - the one with choreography, matching outfits, and production value that rivals a mid-budget music video. Jezebel ran a piece recently on the fast rise and murky future of viral sorority recruitment videos, and it got me thinking about something I don't think anyone in Greek life is being totally honest about. ... 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

Somewhere between 2019 and now, Greek life stopped being a thing you experienced and started being a thing you performed. I don't mean that in a totally cynical way. But I graduated in 2024, and I watched it happen in real time - the slow shift where every philanthropy event, every formal, every bid day became content first and a moment second. And nobody really talked about it out loud. We just kind of adjusted and kept posting. ... Read more

There's an opinion piece circulating from Journal-News.com right now that asks a question most university administrators have been actively dodging for years: what do you actually want Greek life to be? Not what you want it to look like in a brochure. Not what you want to tell parents at orientation. What do you actually want it to be, and are you willing to say that out loud? ... Read more

There's a piece in the Los Angeles Loyolan right now where a student reflects on doing sorority rush the wrong way the first time around. She went back. She figured it out. And honestly, reading that, I felt something - because the fraternity side of this story is basically identical, and nobody talks about it enough. ... Read more

Every chapter I've ever worked with during Panhellenic recruitment has the same problem. They spend three weeks before rush drilling members on talking points - hometown, major, favorite chapter event - and then they wonder why PNMs walk out of every house feeling like they just sat through the same interview twelve times. The script kills the conversation before it starts. ... Read more