January 27, 2000
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About Greeks
Opinion
oday is the day that Cornell's freshmen males debate one of the most important questions of their college careers: whether or not to pledge one of the nation's largest fraternity systems.
The freshmen women have already made up their minds, some with joy, some with tears, and some with retrospective regret. It seems to me that for such an important decision, there should be an equivalent amount of honest information.
And yet instead, our younger brethren are being paraded around, bombarded with mindless drivel about when each house was founded or big words about what it stands for. There's too much noise and not enough signal, and that's why it's time to present some facts from those that have survived and thrived on both sides.
One of the hardest things about the decision to pledge is the fear of being stereotyped, pigeonholed into a identity of someone else's making. There's a body of students too large to ignore that equates "sorority girl" with "shallow", and "fraternity boy" with, well, "fraternity boy". Similarly, there's another huge group that likens "non-Greek" to "can't hold their liquor," "bad at foosball," or "general misfit". Either way, you'll be labeled - that's what the brain does - it categorizes things as much as possible.
Every house on campus has some sort of stigma that everyone else silently understands and agrees upon. I don't know how it happens, it just does. You can waste your time arguing about whether Sorority X really are all just puff jacket-wearing snobs looking for the nearest bed, or whether Fraternity Y are a bunch of self-absorbed beastialites who give roofies for party favors, but it doesn't matter - the truth about a given house or its individuals is often rendered irrelevant due to the convenience of stereotypes.
So the day you sign or don't sign your bid card is the day your identity in the eye of others changes in a very real way, but it's unavoidable - just think about whose eyes you're concerned about, and that should be a powerful indicator for where you belong.
The biggest problem I have with the System is its homogeneity, a salient feature that simply cannot be denied by anyone (except perhaps the presidents of the two Greek councils whose elected position is to write letters denying it, full of wise words like, "I strongly urge Mr. Wilson to come explore for himself the diversity and spirit that pervade the Greek system.")
Any anthropologist that were to contrast Greek culture with the Cornell culture at large would find less diversity in clothing, religion, political ideology, social practices, or any other measure. Sadly, this is doubly so for the members of a given house, with whom you purportedly are going to spend a lot of time. So if college is really about branching out to new ideas, the Greek System may in this case serve to stunt the developmental process.
At the same time, it makes branching out to others faster and easier. Simply put, the Greek System makes social life the part of Cornell you don't have to worry about. Will it help you meet guys and girls? Hell yes - because the system is bereft with some of the most socially effective machinery known to man - the mixers, the date nights, the formals and the crush parties - all carefully evolved over eons to provide optimal social interaction with the most people.
Pour in a whole lot of people that are more gregarious per capita anyway, and you have streamlined social interaction with minimal effort and planning by the individual. While at the start of sophomore year Non-Greeks cling to a scattering of friends that they didn't even like who were flung out from their dorm to the far reaches of campus, Greeks stride comfortably into a well-organized network of connections already forged by their upperclassmen brothers and sisters.
Of course, there's always the question of quantity vs. quality. Somehow a whole lot of girls seem more than happy to pledge their undying love to a house that only knows them by their name, figure, hairstyle, and any irregularities that may have existed in the black dress that chose to appear in for 15 minutes. The male Rush process has a similar falseness in which houses use the lure of well-planned events, from potfests to strip clubs, to play male reflexes and get their bid, while rushees are generally too uncomfortably to even remember their natural dispositions. And from that point, quite literally, springs the majority of all future social encounters at Cornell.
So whether Greek life provides a better social life is a good question. How about what it will do for your self-esteem? Well let's be honest - having someone to say hi to in every class and every bar, or suddenly having a hundred supportive sisters or brothers that will go to bat to save your ass has got to do something to strengthen your subconscious psyche. At the same time, the emphasis on patterned interactions and smalltalk over more genuine, close contact, which despite the hype is very real in the System, leaves many desperate for something to cling to.
Also, Greek girls are more apt to fall prey to bulimia, drug abuse, and Players, all negative societal forces whose net result is to sap their self esteem. The fact that not everyone will fall prey to bulimia, and that not everyone needs a hundred hellos a day to be happy merely illustrates that the Greek System is not as simple as good or bad.
The main point should be that all the people that write letters to the editor, debating whether the Greek System is awesome or stupid, are all a bunch of fanatics. The System just is - it works wonders for some people, and drives others into the gorge - there simply is no universal best way of life. You can't say for sure that Cornell would improve if we abolished it or if we institutionalized it further, because it works for those who voluntarily participate.
The only real evil of the System is when people get tricked one way or the other, and end up on the side that is wrong for them. Hopefully, in the final hour, each individual can break free from the influence of both sets of stereotypes, and make this decision which, as emphasized above, is by no means trivial.
Nathan Wilson is a graduate student in the College of Engineering. The North Façade appears every Monday.
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