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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Ohio State just revoked a fraternity's recognition for ten years after a student was hospitalized in March. Ten years. Not a suspension. Not a warning. Not a semester of probation and a mandatory educational workshop nobody takes seriously. A decade-long ban. And from where I'm sitting - having spent two years on a Panhellenic council watching universities fumble accountability over and over - that number deserves a real conversation.
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Nobody hands you a manual when you join a fraternity. You show up, you shake hands, you maybe embarrass yourself at a social event, and then slowly - over the course of months - you figure out that there's a whole second layer of rules running underneath everything. Unwritten ones. The kind that older members just kind of expect you to already know, and the kind that freshmen violate constantly without realizing it until someone pulls them aside.
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The University of Iowa is investigating multiple Greek chapters for potentially violating student organization policies. That's the headline. And if you've spent any real time inside Greek life, your first reaction probably wasn't shock - it was something closer to a tired, knowing exhale.
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Every August, Panhellenic councils across the country run the same choreographed production: structured rounds, timed conversations, strict silence periods, bid day theatrics. It works. It's also exhausting, politically messy, and frankly kind of broken in ways most councils won't admit out loud. I've sat in recruitment chair meetings where grown women cried over quota numbers. I've watched chapters get penalized for a single violation that another chapter committed twice without consequence. So when people ask me whether formal or informal recruitment is better, I never give them a clean answer - because there isn't one.
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The University of Alabama runs one of the biggest, most watched sorority recruitment processes in the entire country. Thousands of potential new members. Dozens of chapters. A week that can feel like a job interview, a beauty pageant, and a marathon all compressed into a few brutal days. A recent piece in The Tuscaloosa News leaned into just how intense that process is - and brought in an expert to offer advice to women going through it. I read it, and I had thoughts. A lot of them.
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There's a lawsuit making its way through the courts right now involving Central State University, an HBCU in Ohio, and the death of a student connected to underground hazing. The claim isn't just that hazing happened - it's that the university knew, or should have known, and didn't do enough to stop it. That distinction matters a lot. Because if you've spent any real time in Greek life, you understand the difference between official chapter activity and the stuff that happens completely off the books.
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