There's a version of Greek life philanthropy that's basically performance art. You set up a table at the student union, you hand out fliers, maybe you collect some canned goods, and then you post about it on Instagram and call it service. It checks the box. It doesn't do much else. What happened at the University of Memphis with Greeks Got Talent is something different, and I think it's worth paying attention to why.
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On every campus across the country there are a couple sororities that win their bid day. Of course, this is a matter of opinion, but we have pretty strong photo evidence that these 10 sororities set the bar for bid day excellence. There’s no one way to win a bid day, but you know winning when you see it. Allow us to explain just how these 10 sororities won their bid days....
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The 96th Miss America pageant, will be held at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on Sunday, September 11, 2016. In total, there are 52 young women competing for the title of Miss America 2017. 17 of the 52 are currently or were recently active in a sorority. Let’s highlight the sisters who are representing their chapters on the grand stage....
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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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I've spent more time in sorority houses than most IFC guys would admit. Between philanthropy events, study sessions that spilled over into someone's chapter room, and the times my little dragged me to something at her girlfriend's house in Delta Delta Delta, I've seen enough to have a real opinion. And what I've seen is genuinely interesting - not what you'd expect from the outside.
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There's a headline making the rounds from Student Life at Washington University in St. Louis, and it's framing fraternity expansion as some kind of red flag - a sign that the Abolish Greek Life movement is losing ground and that's somehow alarming. I've read it a few times now. And I get what the writers are going for. But I think they're reading the situation backwards.
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I lived off-campus my freshman year in a standard two-bedroom apartment with a roommate I barely knew by May. It was fine. Quiet, actually. I could control my own schedule, cook when I wanted, and nobody was in my business. When I joined a fraternity sophomore year, moving into the chapter house felt like the biggest lifestyle shift of my life - and honestly, it was. But not always in the ways I expected.
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Georgia Southern just swept a bunch of Greek life recognition awards, and honestly, most people outside the Southeast are probably sleeping on how significant that is. We're not talking about a participation trophy situation here. When a university's Greek community dominates at that level, it usually reflects something structural - something the chapters have been building quietly for years while other schools were busy fighting about whether Greek life should exist at all.
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Every fall, some university PR office puts out a press release saying Greeks have a higher collective GPA than the rest of campus. And every fall, somebody on Reddit calls it propaganda. I get the skepticism. I really do. When you've seen a pledge week that looks more like a sleep deprivation experiment than a welcome event, "academic excellence" feels like something printed on a recruitment brochure and nowhere else. But after four years in a fraternity - I was in Sigma Chi at a mid-size state school - I actually think the GPA data is mostly real. The reasons behind it are just more complicated than anyone wants to admit.
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Every recruitment cycle, Panhellenic councils across the country send out the same reminders. No contact with PNMs outside of official events. No social media DMs. No invitations to chapter houses during formal recruitment. No gifts. The rules exist in writing, they get reviewed at officer training, and chapters sign off on them every single year. And then recruitment starts, and some of those same chapters immediately start breaking them.
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