i went to a really dorky school where only 1/3 of campus was greek, but it was well known that you don't go to certain frats (SAE, called Sexual Assault Expected or ZBT, home of the Zeebhos) unless you wanted to get assaulted. it's pretty disgusting, at the time i didn't realize how fucked up that is. and that no one seemed to do anything about it.
@boobalore: But what about other frats (PhiPsi, Sigma Nu, Phi Tau)? A bad reputation for 2 frats out of 18 is not a strike against frats in general, plus though i can't speak to SAE, there are good Zeebs.
I went to a small liberal ARTS college and frats and sororities were NOT allowed on campus due to competition and other issues and I have to say I am incredibly thankful for that. We had our share of issues, mainly drugs, but rapes were never a problem.
At my school it seems like frats have more trouble with alcohol issues than anything else, i.e. one frat was put on probation one year because a pledge got alcohol poisoning during a time when the frat was supposed to be dry.
However, there is stupid shit like when another frat made a shirt with some cartoon panels on the back; the final panel said something to the effect of Girls Love Sig Ep Dick. Really classy, I know.
This same frat - the Sig Eps - is also the frat whose members abducted and KILLED a dog that belonged to a rival frat. As far as I know, the police were never able to prove that they killed the dog but everyone familiar with the story knew the truth.
I think the emphasis on weeding out weakness is fraternities is prime breeding ground for assault against women but also against each other. So many guys are sexually or physically abused in frats and just accept it as part of their due; the test they need to pass to belong to the frat. I come from a country where almost all high school is boarding school so even though we don't have fraternities we have all boy dorms with dorm pride and dorm colors and dorm signs and coolness hierarchies which you have to petition to get into and so the mechanisms that drive a frat (and a sorority for that matter) are really really familiar to me. What I find saddest about them is that it corrupts male friendships and male camaderie into this hyper-competitive pecking ordered relationship and it leaves scars on guys that take years to heal.
Now one thing though that I find interesting about American frats is how classed and homogenous they are. Because you have to pay to get in and it's not cheap they end up being this exclusively upper-middle class/well-connected highly-educated middle-class millieu.
@rumpelshowsskin: I went to a non-greek school, so maybe I'm wrong, but I really wouldn't consider frats an upper middle class/well connected thing. Greek life is big at huge state schools, but much less common or non-existent at Ivies and small liberal arts schools.
I don't know why it's okay to generalize men in groups, but not women. The prevailing notion that frat guys = rapists is about as offensive as the stereotype of sorority girls being whores, idiots, or bitches.
There is some truth to stereotypes, and granted, it depends on the environment school to school, but in my experience at a major state university with a mid-size Greek system, assholes stick together -- meaning that slimy dudes may be the majority in a certain frat, but not in all of them, and that you're just as likely to find groups of predators in the Hawaii Club, the investment group, or the campus bars.
@Pennyfeather: Stereotyping is bad, but I think posts like this make a lot more sense in response to specific posts. I've read the first two pages and off the top of the head, don't remember one that said all frat boys are evil.
A friend of mine once told me about a frat at her school in which a frat guy would bring a girl home and leave a sock or something else on the door so the whole frat house would know he was getting laid. Then he would leave another signal out if he was able to coerce her into anal sex. If this was the case then everyone would crowd the hallway to see who she was as she made her way out later that night or the next morning. Just before she reached the door a designated, preassigned guy would punch her in the lower abdomen. This usually resulted in the girl shitting her pants. Then they would all point and laugh while she burst into tears and then had to make her way back home with shit-soiled clothes.
@rumpelshowsskin: I really wish I could unhear that story, but it really sounds like an urban legend more than anything that would really happen, kind of like those really screwed up sex terms found on urban dictionary which scream misogyny.
@rumpelshowsskin: See that's what I thought too! She's got to be exaggerating...there's no way....she's doing the "tell a naive African international student a tall tale thing that i've heard about" etc etc....
But I did some asking around and she was right. It had happened at least twice or three times.
What I find most interesting about frats is the performance of it. It reminds me of atrocities in the army that way....where you have a group of guys and maybe one or two of them are really depraved but the others are just people who acquiesce because they don't want to be seen as weak or as outside the group.
The people I feel sorriest for in life are what I term the frat boy lackeys; the ones who are let in to be part of the cheer chorus or the peanut gallery and whose real personalities are entirely subsumed in the culture of the frat.
@rumpelshowsskin: GODDAMN. What frat and which school? Please feel free not to say, I just, you know, if I know any women there I'd love to be able to warn them. Holy FUCK.
I'm in a sorority in a very small Greek system at a very large university in a large city, and while I've heard of extremely skeezy, even rapist, guys in some of the frats, it's a) not the pervading norm and b) if I didn't go to a frat party and went downtown to a club, it would be full of the same kind of skeezy, trying-to-score guys. (Which is basically why I don't have a boyfriend - reaaaaally hard to meet guys when those are generally the options for meeting people!)
Many guys, especially college-age or slightly older, are often grossly insecure in their manhood and try to prove themselves and get laid in all the wrong ways. Living in a city and being in the Greek system has shown me this overwhelmingly, but I haven't seen that a higher percentage of Greeks are like this. In fact, the president of one of the most prominent fraternities is a gay black guy. I know this is definitely not the norm in most other places...but I kind of hesitate to paint all fraternity guys under this stereotypical brush, though. Stereotypes are never a good thing.
@SisterRay73: There is a difference between stereotyping, and sociological analysis. There are definitely stereotypes in the comments here. But I don't think the post itself is stereotyping. A lot of fraternities have actually become much safer places because of data showing increased rapes in fraternities. That data, and understanding why, is important.
I was at a party with some old high school friends/acquaintances the other night. A guy I know recently joined a frat and was wearing a t-shirt from it. It said "When the collars pop, the panties drop!" I'm sorry but NO. Fucking no.
Has anyone seen the episode of Buffy in Season 2 where she and Cordelia go to a frat party, get roofied, and then are fed to a giant penis demon? It's classic.
I had to google "snow job." I was always such an assertive and straightforward slut, that whole slimy smooth talk thing wouldn't ever work on me.
But it's good to know that my self-earned "loose" reputation would have made frat boys avoid me. Had I gone to a normal college when I was typical college age.
@Uncommon Whore: getting a "nice girl" to have sex with you, possibly by any means necessary, is better than having sex with a slut.
This explains a lot... whenever I've acted slutty with guys and slept with them right off the bat, they always seem to have more respect for me than when I have sex with them after a period of making them wait. Interesting.
I've always considered joining the frat at school. It's for academics! I like academics!
They just pick up litter around campus, set up campus study groups, and throw Grillouts to celebrate the start of the year. That's about all they do. But I dunno about the organization in general.
06/09/09
06/14/09
06/09/09
06/09/09
Maybe I'm a little too black and white on this issue, but I don't think it's ever about sex. It is about power and nothing else.
06/10/09
06/09/09
However, there is stupid shit like when another frat made a shirt with some cartoon panels on the back; the final panel said something to the effect of Girls Love Sig Ep Dick. Really classy, I know.
This same frat - the Sig Eps - is also the frat whose members abducted and KILLED a dog that belonged to a rival frat. As far as I know, the police were never able to prove that they killed the dog but everyone familiar with the story knew the truth.
06/09/09
Now one thing though that I find interesting about American frats is how classed and homogenous they are. Because you have to pay to get in and it's not cheap they end up being this exclusively upper-middle class/well-connected highly-educated middle-class millieu.
06/09/09
06/09/09
There is some truth to stereotypes, and granted, it depends on the environment school to school, but in my experience at a major state university with a mid-size Greek system, assholes stick together -- meaning that slimy dudes may be the majority in a certain frat, but not in all of them, and that you're just as likely to find groups of predators in the Hawaii Club, the investment group, or the campus bars.
06/09/09
06/09/09
06/09/09
06/09/09
06/09/09
But I did some asking around and she was right. It had happened at least twice or three times.
What I find most interesting about frats is the performance of it. It reminds me of atrocities in the army that way....where you have a group of guys and maybe one or two of them are really depraved but the others are just people who acquiesce because they don't want to be seen as weak or as outside the group.
The people I feel sorriest for in life are what I term the frat boy lackeys; the ones who are let in to be part of the cheer chorus or the peanut gallery and whose real personalities are entirely subsumed in the culture of the frat.
06/09/09
06/09/09
09/23/09
06/09/09
06/09/09
Many guys, especially college-age or slightly older, are often grossly insecure in their manhood and try to prove themselves and get laid in all the wrong ways. Living in a city and being in the Greek system has shown me this overwhelmingly, but I haven't seen that a higher percentage of Greeks are like this. In fact, the president of one of the most prominent fraternities is a gay black guy. I know this is definitely not the norm in most other places...but I kind of hesitate to paint all fraternity guys under this stereotypical brush, though. Stereotypes are never a good thing.
06/09/09
06/09/09
Why do girls still go to frat parties? It was one and done for me when I was in school.
06/09/09
06/09/09
06/09/09
06/09/09
But it's good to know that my self-earned "loose" reputation would have made frat boys avoid me. Had I gone to a normal college when I was typical college age.
06/09/09
06/09/09
06/09/09
06/09/09
This explains a lot... whenever I've acted slutty with guys and slept with them right off the bat, they always seem to have more respect for me than when I have sex with them after a period of making them wait. Interesting.
06/09/09
They just pick up litter around campus, set up campus study groups, and throw Grillouts to celebrate the start of the year. That's about all they do. But I dunno about the organization in general.
06/09/09