Nobody ever explained to me why my fraternity was called what it was. Like, I knew the letters, I wore the letters, I had the letters embroidered on approximately seven hoodies. But the actual reason those specific Greek characters got slapped onto our house? Total mystery. Turns out there's a whole history behind this stuff, and it's way more interesting than the two-minute spiel you get during rush week.
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The weather is still pretty chilly across most of the US. Good thing sorority girls across the country have their “homes away from homes” to offer them shelter from the cold. Some of these homes are classics and some are brand new. In the fall we ranked the 10 Best Sorority Houses in America of Fall 2016. Now it’s time for our Spring 2017 rankings of the best sorority houses in America....
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Sororities at large state schools grab a lot of the attention. They’ve got thousands of PNMs to choose from and sisterhoods so big it’s difficult for members to really get close to each and every one of their sisters. I have a lot of respect for the tight sisterhoods found on the campuses with only 2,000 total students. It’s time someone put the spotlight on some of the best sororities at small colleges....
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Do you know if your current chapter house is the original house the past brothers or sisters of your fraternity or sorority have always called home? Is the original house still standing? Some chapters are lucky enough to live in a house steeped in tradition while others get to live in brand new homes with state-of-the-art amenities. Let us take a look at some throwback pictures of fraternity and sorority houses of the past and compare them to their modern day versions....
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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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Most chapter events don't fall apart because of bad ideas. They fall apart because nobody figured out who was actually in charge. I learned this the hard way during my first semester as an active, when what should have been a straightforward mixer with a sorority turned into two weeks of group chat chaos, three people who thought they were in charge, and a venue that got double-booked. The event still happened. It was fine. But fine isn't what anyone was going for.
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Every few years, a wave of high-profile assault cases hits the news cycle and suddenly everyone's got an opinion about whether fraternities should exist at all. The ABC News story making rounds right now is the latest version of that conversation - calls to shut down frat houses entirely as public anger over rape cases grows louder. I've heard this argument before. I've sat in Panhellenic council meetings where the exact same pressure was bleeding over into how we handled our own policies, our own relationships with IFC chapters, our own event approval processes. And I'll say what I said then: closing houses doesn't close the problem.
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There's a specific kind of chaos that hits Greek row the week before homecoming. Float builds happening at midnight. Someone's little sister from three towns over showing up unannounced. A chapter president stress-eating dining hall waffles at 2am because the banner isn't drying fast enough. I lived that chaos for four years, and I'm not even a little bit sorry about it. Homecoming week is the thing I describe to people who ask me if Greek life was worth it - and it shuts them up every time.
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Every few years, something happens at Cornell and the whole country acts like Greek life just invented itself. The New York Times is back on the beat, the op-eds are flying, and university administrators everywhere are dusting off their "embrace or ban" talking points like it's a policy debate and not a conversation about actual students. I've seen this cycle. I lived through a version of it. And honestly, the framing is what frustrates me most.
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Every Panhellenic president I've ever met has had the same reaction to Greek rank sites: eye roll, dismissal, maybe a comment about how "those sites don't reflect our values." I used to say the same thing. Then I spent two years on council watching chapters with glowing reputations internally get absolutely torched in public forums - and I started paying closer attention to what was actually being said.
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