Clearing up the gray areas of Greek life

Members of Tufts' Greek community spent a night last Thursday to explain to students the positives and negatives of becoming involved with the campus' fraternities and sororities.

Students gathered to listen to a variety of student panelists speak about their experiences with and without Greek life in the Lewis lounge.

The Greek system suffered serious blows to its reputation last year when several fraternities and one sorority were shut down due a variety of violations. The Zeta Psi fraternity is still closed until next fall.

The panelists included two seniors not in the Greek system, and four students with a large involvement in their respective sororities or fraternities.

"I felt like a panel could be a very useful resource to people who are questioning whether the Greek system at Tufts or an individual organization [in particular] is for them," said Randy Newsom, the organizer of the event and a Delta Upsilon brother. Newsom said that the panel was meant to be a non-biased informational session. The panelists said that they wished to fight the reputation of Greek life fostered by popular culture in movies such as Animal House and Old School.

The Greek panelists tried to impress on their audience that the Greek experience is what you choose to make of it.

"I hope people get a better understanding of what happens within the Greek system. I want people to not let stereotypes affect their opinion," senior Danielle Holmes said. Holmes is Vice President of Recruitment for the Tufts Panhellenic Council, the student group which oversees the campus' sororities.

"It's not like Sorority Life or Fraternity Life on MTV," junior and Theta Chi brother Ray Carre said. "For one thing, Tufts has a philanthropic aspect that those other chapters [on television] don't have." He added that this sort of charity work is just one of the many ways that Tufts fraternities and sororities are attempting to eliminate what Tufts' Greeks consider unfair stereotypes.

Noticeably absent from the event was Todd Sullivan, the Director of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs. But According to Newsom, Sullivan was not invited intentionally. "I wanted students to be able to ask pretty much anything and get an honest answer," he said.

Sullivan agreed with the decision. "My job is to act as a liaison between Greek student leaders and the administration," he said. "I educate people about policies. Having an administrative presence at the panel might limit the questions that students ask."

Senior and non-Greek senior panelist Angelica Lundquist explained how she found other ways to get involved with campus life with joining the Greek community.

In fact, only approximately ten percent of Tufts undergraduates are involved in fraternities and sororities, according to Sullivan, a number which was closer to 15 percent several years ago. He expects those numbers to rise soon because Rush Week starts Feb.1 for fraternities and Feb. 8 for sororities.

Discussion panelists argued back and forth on the merits of the Greek system, citing as advantages association-only events and the family-like atmosphere in the house. Drawbacks mentioned by panelists included the pressure to both provide and control the social scene at Tufts as well as the automatic reputation one acquires when joining a Greek organization.

None of the Greek panelists used the discussion to recruit pledges. At the beginning of the meeting, Newsom told those in attendance that the panel "isn't a recruiting meeting; it's a general information session so that students can talk to each other."

Most of the approximately 15 students that attended were unsure about whether or not they wanted to participate in Rush.

That reaction was exactly what Newsom had hoped for. "I want students to have as much information as possible available to them before they make what can often be a very big decision," he said.