A Fresh Start (up)

As a part of my investigation on the differences between the real American culture and the one we see in teenage dramas, I thought that had to post a note about a tradition closely linked with college life: Greek Life. This post is inspired by an article of the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s newspaper.

According to this article, all the clichés we have about fraternities and sororities, such as hazing and alcohol abuse, are mainly exaggerated, at least at UCLA. About hazing, a member of a fraternity affirms that all Greek organizations at UCLA abide by the university’s policy against hazing, their organization’s national hazing policies, and the California State Law. He also adds that “not only do not we haze because it’s not allowed, but also we don’t find it conducive to the morals we stand for.” Concerning the fact that members are supposed to party all the time, this having a bad impact on their grades, he recalls that all the sororities and fraternities have a higher GPA average than the university’s all male and all female GPA average. He thinks that this is due - among other things - to the possibility to be tutored by other members.

More objectively, concerning the recruiting process, it differs for each organization. The 11 sororities have a common recruiting process starting on “Zero Week”: after having registered online, all the candidates attend a mandatory orientation session, then visit the 11 houses on the first two days of recruitment, and, as each day progresses, narrow down their choices. Each day, they are called back to a fewer number of houses. By the end of the process (called “bid night”), they end up having up to two choices. Concerning fraternities, the recruiting differ widely from one another but they all say that they are looking for “diversity and maturity”, whatever these words might mean.

At UCLA, 13% of the student body is currently involved in the Greek System, which is comprised of over 62 organizations.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 4:39 am and is filed under American way of life, Education, UCLA.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.