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Frats = paying to get friends agree or disagree?

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I was in a frat. Then I realized that they're a bunch of fake-ass drunken jerkoffs looking to get laid at any cost. Now I'm not in a frat.

Same situation here, and same feelings about it.
 


<< i think the ppl that badmouth frats and sororities are the ones who got rejected or never invited >>



i think the people that defend frats are just mad that they are paying for friends
 
Frat = Instant Friends. Not necessarily buying friends, but it is a one-way ticket to having a bunch of friends. Just about everyone I know who joined a frat was insecure in their own abiities to meet people and joined a frat to force them into situations where they could meet people and have a bunch of guys with whom they could do stuff with.

By far the most annoying trait about the people I've met in frats is how they brag about how drunk they got on any given day. When I go out to a club or a bar, or a party, even if I get wasted, I don't feel the need to tell everyone and their dog about it. But some of these guys think it raises their coolness factor by 5 points every time they mention that they don't remember a thing from friday night.

Now of course, there's always exceptions but this has been the trend I've noticed.
 
How come none of you anti-frat guys have mentioned hazing? Thats the most ridiculous (and disgusting) thing about frats, except for their lack of respect for drunk, passed ot 18 year old girls.
 


<< By far the most annoying trait about the people I've met in frats is how they brag about how drunk they got on any given day. When I go out to a club or a bar, or a party, even if I get wasted, I don't feel the need to tell everyone and their dog about it. But some of these guys think it raises their coolness factor by 5 points every time they mention that they don't remember a thing from friday night. >>



A little off topic, but I don't think that's just frats... I've been on the bus in my town, very much a college town, and I get to listen to these girls (always girls so far), sit and talk to each other, or on a cell phone, about stuff that I can't believe they're willing to have 30+ people on the bus hear. From one gal telling another about a guy's *ahem* abilities from the previous night and offering him to her (!), to a girl detailing how drunk she got, how she doesn't remember anything, how she's planning to do it again (cell phone), to a third gal (also on a cell) discussing her friend's pending abortion, how her mom and bf didn't want her to get it. I just can't believe that people feel so comfortable discussing these things in front of a bunch of people who really don't want to hear it.
 
I was in a fraternity... I loved it... good times, alot of fun. All my friends all joined the same fraternity with me... I didn't "buy" friends. If you don't like it, thats more beer for me.
 
Frats are clique-y people that like to party. That is undeniable. Why is it undeniable? Who do they try to recruit? Who do they hand out flyers to? I don't see them handing out to everyone....

Are they too good for certain type of people? They obviously think so.

Eh, I sound like I'm a bitter loser or something, as some frat boy is gong to mention...
 
I have never heard so much ignorant sh!t in my entire life as I have in this thread. I am in a fraternity, Alpha Tau Omega if anyone really cares. I don't see it as buying friends at all. I use my fraternity for many things: studying with a group of people that I know, a place to go and hang out when I have nothing to do, major activities that a normal group of people could NOT even think of doing (like taking big group trips to other chapters across the US and hanging out at other schools), parties (yes, it's not the most educational passtime but you need some release after a week of tests. Who do you think throws all the parties? One person in an apartment that can hold 50 people?
rolleye.gif
), and finally business and educational contacts.

Let me respond to a few comments here. I am NOT a rich, stuck up preppy guy. I'm paying my own way through college with no assistance from my parents. I am a computer geek on the side and enjoy hanging out with my non-greek friends as much as my ATO brothers.

For notfreds post about getting drunk and yelling at the dorm buildings at 3am, yes that happens sometimes. Our brotherhood is very good about that stuff. Most of the other frats are the same way. I have seen people yelling in the morning before. Sometimes they are greeks, sometimes they aren't. Stupid stuff happens when people get drunk.

The comments about fscking drunk women, that is absolute BS. I shouldn't even respond to that. I know of 1 instance in my history here at VT of any girl getting raped while drunk, and the instigator was a non-greek.

Frat life is not for everyone, but most people that choose to persue it end up getting so much out of it that they could not imagine passing up the chance if they could do it over again.

The fact that such a sweeping generalization could be made here on ATOT is extremely offensive. To every person that made a totally uninformed post... piss off. You have no idea what you are talking about.
 
Some are... depends on the frat...

<< 3. as a group of ppl, like a team. >>


Yup... same here... it's the makeup of that group that determines it's character or lack thereof. Sheesh, there were some frat on my old campus that were HUGE geeks. Others were gigantic snobs, some were rednecks, some were stoners, some were treehugger/hippies, some just normal joes. And yeah, they did want specific people... I dress nice, they wanted me... dressed like I was rolling with the computer geeks, different frats... dressed like crap, nobody. It's like high school all over again.
 
Frat guys love to wear abercrombie and fitch (spelling?) stuff. That should be your warning beacon to keep away.

While some frats may be worthwhile, most aren't. One of the frats at my school tried to keep a student newspaper off the stands (by stealing all of them in the morning) because of the paper printing their hazing rituals from a person that went through them. They justified it by saying the greek rituals are private and should not be read by anyone. Give me a break. Ever hear of the first amendment?
 


<< Frat guys love to wear abercrombie and fitch (spelling?) stuff. That should be your warning beacon to keep away. >>


OK then, since you're so much the authority on which people you should hang out with based on clothes, inform me. Instead of the Abercrombie or American Eagle clothes I have, what should I wear so I won't be a horrible person? Should I be dressing at Hot topic? Do I need to go goth? Should I dress raver-like? How bout I wear hippy clothing.

You = moron.

If you judge people based on which clothes they wear I don't even want to talk to you in the first place. I happen to enjoy clothes from American Eagle, Abercrombie, and Banana Republic. Those are not the only stores I shop from, but those type of clothes make up a large part of my wardrobe. Has it ever occured to you that they are comfortable and actually look pretty good?
rolleye.gif
Jeez, the ignorance in this thread just keeps building. I'm actually feeling sick to my stomache.
 
TheGrandCow,
First off I have to agree with you for the most part, people are making alot of grad generalizations about frats, most of which are hardly true at all. You do have to remember that we as people remember the bad. as an example look at IBM 60GXP's (I am not a fan of IBM hdd's, but I am using them as an example) there have been alot of people complaining, especially lately, about them. In all reality, very few of them fail. I personally know 11 people who use them, 2 of which have two of the 40gigs in a RAID-0 array and NONE of them have had problems, yet still people complain about the drives because a number of them have failed. That is why people critisize frats, there have been alot of isolated examples of frats doing not so nice things and that is why you get these stereo-types (sp?)

Also, the clothes thing links directly to the rich snobby generalization. Ambercrombie (whom I do not support due to certain things the company stands for) may make some really comfortable clothes, but it is also pretty darn expensive, thats why people assume you are a rich-snob if you wear clothes from them. I buy from structure which is just as expensive but is not classified as a typical frat "snobby-wear"

You must understand that I am not saying that you are a snob for wearing ambercrombie, I am just trying to exaplain where people are coming from, though that is still not an excuse. C'mon guys, we can be above this. If you really want to then go ahead and name specific instances where frats "turned bad", but don't make these generalizations.
 


<< Also, the clothes thing links directly to the rich snobby generalization. Ambercrombie (whom I do not support due to certain things the company stands for) may make some really comfortable clothes, but it is also pretty darn expensive, thats why people assume you are a rich-snob if you wear clothes from them. I buy from structure which is just as expensive but is not classified as a typical frat "snobby-wear" >>



Yeah Spike, I totally understand about people only remembering the bad stuff. The IBM's are a good example. They make thousands of different products and based on the HD thing they will lose customers for a lot of things.
As for the clothing, I normally would not buy large ammounts of clothing there, but their clearance and sales racks have some really great deals. You don't have to be rich to shop at those kinds of stores, you just need to know when to look.
 


<< My fraternity's average GPA is well ABOVE the all mens average at my school. This means that on the average, the people in my fraternity are smarter than the average person at my school. >>



Uhhh... what's the file cabinet full of old papers and old tests?! Fess up. Some of the other brothers have already.
 
not saying they're all like this, but some of the ones around here just seem so damn stuck up and that whole rich snob thing.. like "daddy can buy me a benz and watch me rev it up to the stop sign 100 ft away."

The WORST thing that i've read so far is the latest death of a pledge. He apparently was showing off and drinking a lot.. yeah, he's just stupid for doing this (was kicked out of housing for weed). I mean, i have sympathy for the parents and family... but sometimes ppl do the stupidest things. And what did the frat have to say about this? "when we handed him over to the police, he was alive, so it wasn't our fault." I don't have the article anymore, but it sound so damn horrible the way that was in there.

my rant for the day.
 
The fundamental problem in this debate (which has been raging since the dawn of greek organizations) is that neither side can see where the other side is coming from.

A lot of people who condemn fraternities and sororities have probably never been in one or had any friends who were in one (or have had friends that joined one and then lost touch...this does happen sometimes). Thus, all they have to go on is what they read in the school newspaper, what they hear "others" say, and what they observe with their eyes and ears. Therefore, it is understandable that people would make such generalizations as we've seen in this thread. Nothing mentioned here is a new observation--I've heard it all before. If I had a dime for every time I heard the phrase "paying for friends" I'd be a rich man. The raping girls one is another common misconception. Don't make sorority/college girls out to be more innocent than they really are. The ones that are having sex are the ones that want to have sex 99% of the time. Alcohol has a lot to do with it. Does date rape occur in fraternities? Yes it does... but the crux is with what frequency does it occur. And the answer is that it occurs very rarely. Parties are another thing. Yeah, there are a lot of parties at fraternities, but they are definitely not exclusive to greek houses. Plus, there are a lot of non-greeks who come as well. And finally, yeah there dumbasses in fraternities too, but that doesn't mean that everyone who joins one is automatically stupid. Contrary to what you may observe, there is a lot of variety in houses. People have different interests, different friends, different opinions. It's just easy to lump them all together because they live together and \have the same letters on their t-shirts--but try to resist that temptation. I think a lot of non-greeks are intimidated by greeks and therefore never get the chance to know any. If you did you'd realize that most are perfectly nice, normal people.

Onto the other side of the coin... I think members of the greek community have difficulty seeing how they (as a whole) come across to non-greeks. Some may have an idea (in the case of people who pledged during their upper class years)... but most people join when they are freshmen, so they never really get a chance to see how fraternities appear to the rest of the world. The generalizations brought up in this thread, though severely generalized, have to come from some degree of truth (no matter how slight). But try to put yourself in the place of a person who isn't in a house and see it from their eyes. What they see and hear is the bad stuff, because that's what tends to get publicized and talked about. No one's talking about how your house raised money for the United Way, or spent their Saturday working with retarded children. No, they'll be talking about how so-and-so raped some girl (which could very well be a rumor started by the girl) or how some house made all its pledges do an elephant walk (a lot of hazing stories are highly exaggerated as well). So it then becomes a matter of changing the public perception of greek life. That's already starting to happen with alcohol-free houses and more charitable work. But it also involves the responsibility of greek members to be mindful of how they appear to and treat students who areoutside of the greek community. Don't limit your friends to ones in your house (or the greek community as a whole), don't be one of the drunken "frat guy" stereotypes, don't let your house define who you are. These are the things that can be done to help change people's minds.

There are a lot of good things about being in a greek organization, most of which get lost underneath all of the hype, rumor, and scandal. Don't let a few bad apples spoil your view of the greek system as a whole. Fraternities/Sororities aren't everyone's cup of tea, but there's also no need to hate them... in actuality you'd probably find a lot to like about them if you're willing to look underneath the surface.

l2c
 
rh71,

Well at least they manage to get better scores with test banks available. I know some frats that were lucky enough to have those test banks and still score below campus avg gpa wise.
 


<<

<< My fraternity's average GPA is well ABOVE the all mens average at my school. This means that on the average, the people in my fraternity are smarter than the average person at my school. >>



Uhhh... what's the file cabinet full of old papers and old tests?! Fess up. Some of the other brothers have already. >>



Our "file cabinet" has the same materials availible that are availible from the Learning Resource Center on campus. (the LRC is a place you can go specifically to get tutoring and old test materials)
 


<< it always amazes me when such usually intelligent people can be so ignorant at times. >>



love the hyperbole 🙂
 


<<

<< i think the ppl that badmouth frats and sororities are the ones who got rejected or never invited >>



i think the people that defend frats are just mad that they are paying for friends >>



i'm not in a frat. i just hate ppl who stereotype or ppl who make an bold assumption from a generalized statement as you just did.
 
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