Talk:Fraternities and sororities

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	Fraternities and sororities is part of the Fraternities and Sororities WikiProject, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Greek Life on the Wikipedia. This includes but is not limited to International social societies, local organizations, honor societies, and their members. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, visit the project page, where you can join the project, and/or contribute to the discussion.
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Archives

/Archive1

Contents 1 College vs. other fraternities 2 Requested move 2.1 Fraternities and Sororities (Category or main article) 2.1.1 * Professional Fraternities and Sororities (Article or section) 2.1.1.1 **Listo of Professional fraternity 2.1.2 * Social Fraternities and Sororities (Article or section) 2.1.2.1 ** College 2.1.2.2 ** High school 2.1.2.3 ** Non-school 2.1.2.4 ** List of social fraternities and sororities 2.1.3 * Charitable Fraternities and Sororities (Article or section) 2.1.3.1 **List of Service fraternities and sororities 3 Dead Fraternities/Sororities? 4 Non NIC-Fraternities 5 The Big Three 6 People outside USA 7 Which is bigger, SAE or Sig Ep? 8 Lambda Theta Phi of Phi Iota Alpha??

[edit] College vs. other fraternities

There is a lot of information in this article about college fraternities (in fact almost all of it), but very little about fraternities as a whole, i.e. how organizations like the Freemasons or the Elks are related. These need substantial additions; if you are knowledgeable, please assist. —ScouterSig 21:43, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

It might be most appropriate to re-title this entry as "College Fraternities and Sororities." There is too much information on the topic of the non-college fraternity to add it to the current entry. IMHO, it would be better to link two separate entries through inner-document links. Wolfraem 07:15, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Replying on myself, but I didn't read the archive below first. The issue with producing adequately researched and information-rich content for every type of fraternity or sorority is that it would be too much to responsibly put in one article. The college aspect is a very large one, and as most of this article already is biased toward the college facet of fraternal society I think it would be best to rename this article and start a new general-coverage article that avoids the detail this entry possesses. Wolfraem 07:21, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 20:46, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

So...did this ever happen? I've had difficulty figuring out where this whole thing was ever left off. It seems to me that "fraternity" and its plurals as well as "sorority" and its plurals ought to be disambiguation pages. Same for "Greek Life." I feel like our "main" article ought to be "North American Fraternity & Sorority Life." I think that term pretty definitely refers to student organizations. We're not all secret societies, and not all collegiate (and I'm not just talking those high school organizations but NPHC often has "area" chapters and there are also alumni chapters which are worthy of mentioning). Yes? No? It might help eliminate this "ya'll aren't presenting a world view" opinion. We'd just incorporate the US, Canada, Puerto Rico (who ever put Puerto Rico in the section "outside the United States"?), and the few Mexican chapters that are out there. The banner for this project says "Greek Life" but then extends to student corporations and things that, yes, they're loosely similar but they should maybe be in a different project. Corsulian (talk) 14:41, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm playing with this idea here: Corsulian's Sandbox Corsulian (talk) 18:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dead Fraternities/Sororities?

I was just curious, what do you all think of the idea of including at least some mention of dead fraternities and sororities in this article, like the original Kappa Phi Lambda at Jefferson College, and defunct organizations that had merged together into one, like Theta Kappa Nu and Lambda Chi prior to becoming Lambda Chi Alpha? I have to admit that I don't know much on the subect (i.e. - really anything other than the three examples I just gave), but I figure that it would actually be a fairly interesting aspect on the subject matter that hasn't really been addressed. RPH 05:45, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I think thats a good idea other examples are Phi Lambda Alpha and Sigma Iota. Eljohnson15 18:13, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I have created Category:Defunct fraternities and sororities to mark these groups. —ScouterSig 19:12, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Non NIC-Fraternities

There are a few Fraternities who don't fall into any of the categories listed (NIC / NPA / etc) -- can we make a section for them?

Can you expand on your request? What fraternities/sororities are you referring to, and what what could they be categorized? Wolfraem 00:22, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Big Three

I have read that at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton the Greek system doesn't function as at other universities: Princeton has its own fraternities that never affiliate with other universities; Harvard has some chapters of national fraternities mixed with a number of unaffiliated societies; and Yale has, in addition to the Greek chapters (which each year entrust their affairs to the members of the junior class, and are known as "junior societies"), four clubs restricted to Yale which draw their members from the junior societies, and which each year entrust their affairs to the members of the senior class and are known as "senior societies"; the most famous of these is Skull and Bones. Does anyone care to take this on? J S Ayer 23:48, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I think this page should stay away from inclusion of or discussion of what seem commonly called "Secret Societies." One reason is that an article on these groups exists here and here, although the first article could use some serious TLC. The focus here is on the specific institution of the Fraternity(Sorority), and while these societies are structured in a similar fashion, they deviate WRT history, notoriety and affiliation. A link to the Secret society article at the bottom of the page would be fine, but outside of that their discussion would be better suited to their respective pages. Wolfraem 00:18, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] People outside USA

I posted a few months ago on this talk page. I was basically arguing that, for anyone who has not learnt by osmosis what fraternities and sororities are, the main article was incomprehensible. My post has disappeared and I can't find any new page where it might be, so please forgive me if I repeat it a little here. Firstly, there are no fraternities or sororities or Greek letter societies or whatever in the UK that I'm aware of. The only time a British person like myself may have come across one is on an American horror film like Scream or something. Simply put, every version of the article on fraternities and sororities has assumed far too much prior understanding on the part of the reader. We don't know what they are. We have absolutely no idea. The article acknowledges that they are rare outside North America but just gives vaguely interesting trivia about them. They seem sinister and cliquey from the outside but obviously Americans don't feel this way about them, so here are are few questions that spring to my mind, sorry if they sound silly and basic and inane to Americans:

What is the cultural significance of fraternities and sororities to America?
Why use Greek letters?
Are these organisations to do with freemasonry, illuminati or any other secret societies or religious cults, real or imaginary?
Is every frat religious?
Do you have to join one of them when you go to uni in America, i.e. like halls of residence or Oxbridge colleges in Britain?
If not, why join one at all? Why not just go to uni?
Why divide campuses and students into secretive cliques?
How are "frats" regarded by people who aren't in a "frat"?
Do the majority of students join one?

I can't think of any more at the moment, but I think anyone writing an article on fraternities and sororities must assume utter ignorance by the reader and must sit down and think what it would be like to know absolutely nothing about them. Cameronlad 17:04, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Your second point is already covered in the history section. And as for the others, I think they are good (mostly cultural) questions that could easily be addressed in the article. I perviously tried to get this page moved to a page solely on US college fraternities and sororities because that is what it is about--having a parent page on all fraternities could answer those questions even better. However, I'll see what I can do about adding some of that info in. Thanks Cam. —ScouterSig 17:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

It might be impossible to know objectively and sorry if people are working on it but another question that struck me as interesting to know is whether sons and daughters of members are more likely to join their parents' fraternities. In the UK for instance it's common(ish) to send your kids to the same public (US = private) school you went to etc. Also, the bonds of the brothers and sisters seem to be intented, ideally, to last far beyond university. I wondered whether there is a phenomenon like our infamous "old boy network", perhaps whereby members of the same fraternity or sorority positively discriminate against each other in companies, etc. The old boy network is quite well known in British popular culture but I wouldn't know American culture or media well enough to know of any references to anything similar with fraternities, or if this goes on at all. Cameronlad 19:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I think Cameronlad's questions are excellent, and the point he makes is a valid and important one. I have a target reader in mind when I edit: a bright, curious teenager, who has picked up a decent amount of English but who comes from an entirely non-Anglo culture, say Albania or Cambodia. What can I write that can help to demystify the world for that mind?

For future reference, a) your previous posts may have been moved to the Archive, see box at top right of talkpage, and b) there is a tag that addresses the issue of USA-centricness, which I will add to the article. Many other articles could benefit from this nudge to their regular editors! BrainyBabe 20:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I have to say, coming from a similar background to Cameronlad, I am of the same mind about the article as him. Theres's the perrenial problem of, if you know about a subject, you forget to include important details because they seem obvious, but if you don't you can't write the article! Interestingly, like he says, British views on Frats are mainly garnered from films, and quite frankly I've never seen anything that would make me want to join, possibly this is due to my personality or the view portrayed on screen. This is partly what made me read the article, the lack of understanding of why you would want to join, when obviously thousands do every year fascinates me. I think some more info on what they do would be good, rather than just names of colleges and frats. Talltim (talk) 16:48, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I have created a new page, History of North American fraternities and sororities‎, in an attempt to start to give this page a world view. Eventually I will shorten the history on this page. If there is anyone out there who knows much about fraternities in the Phillipines or corporations in Europe, let me know. —ScouterSig 19:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I modified the introduction to reinforce the fact that most of the information on this page is only relevant to a minority of countries. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.138.14.109 (talk) 22:04, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi there, sorry if this is messy or I haven't signed it properly but I was looking at wikipedia for information on the Business frat Alpha Kappa Psi, who are recruiting in Manchester University in the UK. On the list of previous alumni (on the AKΨ page) it gives another couple of greek letters e.g. "U.S. President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) (Alpha Zeta)" What does this mean? Is it to do with fraternity structure? The main article here doesn't seem to explain and for someone not from the US it's all rather confusing. I also think the comparison between Frats and UK school houses is very misleading. Students in houses in all State Schools and day Private Schools do not live together or have a particularly strong social connection. Houses in Boarding schools are a little more like Frats in that students live together and tend to form social bonds, but I still don't think they're comparable to a University society in which people have chosen to become members. Do people mind if I remove that part? 130.88.167.5 (talk) 14:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

130: That second letter is the Chapter they were part of. —ScouterSig 17:11, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, in which case this page needs some basic explanation of how the structure of fraternities work, in terms of chapters and how they relate to the central fraternity. None of that is covered on this page, probably because as is said above it seems obvious to someone who already knows about fraternities. 130.88.167.5 (talk) 15:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Which is bigger, SAE or Sig Ep?

The article seems to indicate that both SAE and Sig Ep are the largest fraternities. I think SAE is bigger, but does anyone know? Newguy34 (talk) 23:27, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes SigEp has the most current undergrad members. TKE has the most number of chapters. SAE has the most total alumni living or dead but not as many active members as SigEp. It all depends on the metrics. So all three get to make the legitimate claim that they are the largest but all three claims should be qualified on the page with which metric you are usingTrey (talk) 05:05, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lambda Theta Phi of Phi Iota Alpha??

Phi Iota Alpha was founded in 1934, while Lambda Theta Phi was founded in 1975, yet this article states that Lambda Theta Phi is the oldest Latino based fraternity. --Socrates SLB KA (talk) 23:48, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Correction, Phi Iota Alpha was founded in 1931. That line gets vandalized constantly by Lambda Theta Phi members that disagree. I restored the citation, supporting that fact. It's the same thing that happens to the Alpha Phi Alpha page, from other groups that challenge that assertion.2much (talk) 02:17, 1 April 2008 (UTC)