re: The thread where we discuss the wisdom of allowing Jr to join a Frat

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Is it a wise decision by a parent to allow and encourage your son to join a fraternity

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I had this very discussion with my son this week. He said that if he went to LSU next fall, he wanted to join my fraternity (same as yours I think). I told him I didn't know if that was a good idea as it seems either LSU or our national shuts them down every few years.

It was an incredible experience in my day, '79-82, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea today. As you noted in another post, Bud Ritchey (dean of students or whatever) would hang around the house and TGIF with us. Can you imagine something like that happening today?

I guess we have to chalk up those as the 'good ole days' gone forever. Whatever the situation is today, I believe it will be worse in a few years.

So my conclusion is if you're son is wants to join a fraternity, find one that is boring.

Frats are not what people think they are. They pledge for only 2 weeks now before being initiated. All frat deaths happen with pledges.

Rogue chapters can break rules and lose their charter. This fraternity will be gone from LSU for decades and probably never return.

There are plenty of Greeks in my engineering classes.

Just had to quote my grammar fail.

They actually have a pretty good school to social ratio for the most part. They wouldn't be in 4000 level classes if they didn't.

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Fraternities are co-op social clubs. Groups of people with common interests pool their money to pay for room, board and social gatherings.

Anything beyond that is over-thinking.

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Generally agree.

True: Fraternities are good at encouraging 18 year old guys how to dress the part and deal appropriately with established, professional people. It varies by person, but there is certainly wisdom to be gained through participation in an 80/100/150 person somewhat-democratic institution. We lobbied for and against certain things, had to awkwardly reach out to businesses and alums for funding and other help, had to account to a board of pretty successful guys for things that went awry, etc. Plus, if you're an officer, you may be a 20 year old legitimately managing/overseeing a budget that easily eclipses six figures. If you're managing pledges or other members, it's a fair amount of responsibility (in this environment) to make sure 20-30 18 year olds don't get your charter pulled, or worse.

False/overblown: You'll never be a senator without being in a fraternity, it makes you into a man, it's akin to the military, you'll make super-strong lifelong bonds and always have your fraternity brothers' backs, etc.

FWIW, I know a bunch of guys in the military who praise greek life. So while it's no substitute for military service, I think you can make at least some worthwhile comparisons.

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Really stupid question, but do these frats have Engineering students in them or Pre-med? I would think it would be extremely difficult to keep up with both.

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FWIW, the Greek students have a substantially higher GPA than non Greeks every year. I know being Greek doesn't cause your grades to be higher, but most fraternities are over 3.0 as a whole. As to your specific question out of the 30-35 guys I pledged with 3 are in med school, 5-10 are engineers, 2 working on CPA, and 4 or 5 did the internal audit program. Only a couple where really shitheads that didn't care about school, and we were one of the more "party" fraternities.

Ok, I'm old and still keep up with my Frat Brothers from back in the day. Most have dome well in life. Of course this was well before the pussification of America

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Yes, several; and they were typically the hardest partiers out of the entire chapter (from my experience)

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I can definitely believe this. Stress level felt like over 9000 for 4 years.

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Really stupid question, but do these frats have Engineering students in them or Pre-med? I would think it would be extremely difficult to keep up with both.

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Like others have said, greeks aren't necessarily smarter, but they are more likely to come from a family that has higher expectations. I'd say 50% of my pledge class was pre-law or pre-med. I graduated in engineering and work with several engineers who were younger than me in my fraternity (total coincidence as I never knew them). My study group and ultimately my senior design group was either members of my fraternity or others I met in the greek system.

Now, by no means did all of the people make it to law school or med school. They just made the attempt. A decent amount did make it though. As distracting as frat life was, the network of people (in your house and others) made it easy to study.

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As distracting as frat life was, the network of people (in your house and others) made it easy to study.

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This. I focused too much on the "social" aspect of college and left school on the back burner. I probably would've flunked out if it wasn't for several fraternity/sorority members. I owe them my degree