Ask your parents what it was like when they went to college. When it comes to dining, we’ll bet they don't say they had a 24-hour Taco Bell on campus, multiple Starbucks, and the option to dine at a restaurant that was almost in the running for a Michelin rating. But for college students these days, it’s not only common but expected. ...
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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....
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Another fraternity suspension, another news cycle. That's how it usually goes, right? The story breaks, people get outraged, a statement gets issued, and then it fades. But when I saw that an NYU fraternity got suspended over allegations of sexual assault and hazing, I didn't just scroll past it - I actually stopped. Because I've been on both sides of the Greek life fence, and stories like this one are exactly why I almost didn't join in the first place.
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Every recruitment cycle, Panhellenic councils across the country put out some version of the same talking points - find your people, look for shared values, don't just pick the house with the best house tour. And every cycle, a significant chunk of PNMs ignore all of it and chase status. Then half of them end up miserable by spring semester. I've watched this happen enough times that I've stopped being surprised. But I've also watched values-based recruitment done right, and the difference is not subtle.
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Every spring, fraternity chapters across the country go through the same ritual: a room full of guys vote on who gets to run things for the next year. From the outside, it looks like a straightforward democratic process. From the inside, it is often a months-long political campaign that would make a local city council race look tame.
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Dartmouth's president went on record about Greek life, and honestly, I wasn't expecting to care this much. Dartmouth College President Sian Leah Beilock sat down with The Dartmouth recently and weighed in on a bunch of hot-button topics - Greek life included. And when a sitting college president decides Greek life is worth addressing directly instead of just shipping a policy memo nobody reads, that's worth paying attention to.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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