Greek life isn’t really alien to any of us, but in all my years of college and all I’ve heard on the subject, I’ve rarely — if ever — heard a simple public affirmation of Greek life from a present member of Greek life.
When I came to Penn, I immediately felt how active and focused the culture was; everyone was doing something and doing it 100 percent. Greek life offered a nice chance to escape this; to make free time more enjoyable rather than to add more structure. If I join 87 clubs, I’ll definitely make a lot of friends, but that’s ultimately a side-effect of our role in some serious group. The relationship among fraternity brothers isn’t predicated on resume-building or doing homework together. The underlying idea is that having a consistent, low-pressure group of friends who don’t need to make fake lunch plans on Locust every other week to have a vested interest in each other’s lives is a good thing. I agree.
The sheer number of articles I’ve read against aspects of Greek life is surprising in itself, but even more surprising is how few of those writers actually experienced what they claimed to understand. There’s a running joke that there is always an anti-frat columnist at the DP, but I’ve never heard anyone jokingly labeled a pro-Greek columnist. The fact that such a significant viewpoint is often absent from the conversation should merit consideration.
In any other context, the idea of some outside group telling another what they experience, what the emotional impact of their lifestyle is, why they do what they do, and how to improve their subjective experience (or that improvement is impossible), would be treated as dubious at the absolute best.
We likely wouldn’t find it acceptable – or at the very least find it objectionable – for a random man to comment on the sexism faced by women in a particular workplace, for a visitor to a foreign country to explain cultural influences to natives, or for an aged Senator to claim to fully understand “what it’s like to be a kid these days.”
The feeling of being limited to merely an observed group is not an alien one to members of Greek life. Any time a Greek student — particularly a fraternity member — ventures into the public eye, they must prepare for every facet of their mindset to be questioned.
“Philanthropy is just a cover for illegal activities — they don’t actually care;” “they’re only saying they don’t hate pledging because they can’t understand how bad it was due to social pressure;” etc. etc. This reservation actually leads many Greek organizations to stick to policies against any public social media posting or speaking to news outlets on behalf of the chapter even for subjects as benign as fundraising events.
Looking at the public perception of Greek organizations, it’s not surprising that it’s so hard to get comments from Greeks, who are commenting on their own experience, rather than non-Greeks, who are commenting on their outside perception alone, in related articles. We should be wary of an environment that fosters that sort of reservation.
The responsibility to speak out will always fall on the speaker, but if we want more successful connection between Greek life members and outside observers, there ought to be clear trust in those speakers. Maybe, just maybe, these students aren’t ignorant of their own lives and are content with much of their experience.
We often see responses to Greek life incidents implemented as blanket approaches by outside groups looking not to adapt and develop the system in relevant and compelling ways, but rather the familiar crusade of “less Greek life means we’re improving.”
That isn’t to say Greek life has no problems. I’m not about to defend any incidents leading up to deaths of pledges or other serious harm. What I am going to do is encourage onlookers not to treat students in Greek life as some brainwashed community that is unable to spearhead its own improvement.
Shutting down a chapter doesn’t actually fix anything. Making sure the frats are far enough off campus that you can pretend they don’t exist doesn’t make it so. Assuming every member is equally at fault for every issue you might have with Greek life isn’t really a compelling reason to treat them as unreliable narrators in their own stories.
DYLAN REIM is a College senior from Princeton, N.J. studying philosophy and political science. His email address is dreim@sas.upenn.edu.
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