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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Nobody told me that pledging a fraternity would also mean pledging my calendar. Fall semester of freshman year, I thought I had it figured out - class in the morning, chapter stuff in the evenings, weekends to myself. Then philanthropy weekend hit, homecoming planning started, formal prep began, and I looked up one day in October wondering how I was already behind in three classes. Picking a major inside Greek life isn't just about what you're passionate about. It's about what you can actually sustain when your chapter has a full social calendar and expects you to show up for all of it.
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I didn't join my fraternity until sophomore year, which meant I spent a full year watching Greek life from the outside. I went to a couple of open events, heard the mixed reviews from my floor, and mostly stayed skeptical. When I finally did join, one of the first things I noticed wasn't the brotherhood stuff people always talk about - it was how much one person's job affected the entire chapter's experience. The social chair. And I mean that in both directions.
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MSU just canceled fraternity recruitment activities following the death of a chapter member. That's the headline. And if you've ever sat on a Panhellenic or IFC council and watched a recruitment freeze play out in real time, you know that sentence contains about a hundred smaller disasters that nobody in the press release bothers to explain.
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Penn State just quietly walked back one of its own Greek life reforms - the one that delayed freshman recruitment until second semester. According to the Centre Daily Times, the university is allowing freshman recruitment to return to the fall, essentially reversing a policy that was supposed to give new students time to adjust to college before rushing. And I have thoughts.
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Every school has that one tradition that sounds incredible on paper and lands completely differently in real life. For a lot of campuses, that tradition is the serenade. On paper? Romantic, meaningful, a little theatrical. In practice? It depends almost entirely on whether your Greek community actually cares about it - and trust me, you can tell within about thirty seconds of watching one whether they do.
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A piece over at The Runner caught my attention this week - a first-person account of what it actually feels like to go through sorority recruitment. The writer called it surviving. That word choice alone tells you something about the experience that Panhellenic brochures never will.
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