A fraternity is a formally organized group of people that share some sort of common interest. The structure of a fraternity could be compared to any manufacturing business, except the product is intangible and the consumers are also the people running the company. In a sense a fraternity acts like a business that is owned by the workers. This sense of self-ownership helps push workers of employee-owned businesses to improve the business in order to hold on to and attract new customers, which will lead to more money for the workers. Similarly, the members of a fraternity want to improve their house in order to attract new members to increase their profit, which in this case could be more friends or more fun times.
How do fraternities go about adding to their membership? Well, a parallel can again be drawn between a business and a fraternity. Businesses attract new customers by providing better service, cheaper prices, unique products or a number of other possibilities that makes their store more attractive to potential customers. A fraternity's product is fun, but fun is something that is difficult to advertise. Fun is a feeling and in order to sell a feeling to potential members, you must create it. This is done through a process called rush, where fraternities open their houses to potential new members to sell them on the fun they could have if they join that fraternity.
Sport tournaments, BBQ's and parties are the ways fraternities show new potential members of the fun they could have if they joined. These all have concrete costs associated with them, along with risks. If a fraternity throws events for potential new members, but none of those potential members decides to join the fraternity then it loses, not only the cost of the food or drink, but also the time the members put into trying to convince the potential new members to join.
Time is a very valuable resource to fraternities due to the limited time they have to convince potential members to join. Time is the largest transaction cost that a fraternity experiences. The lack of time demands a fraternity to be well-structured. Without a solid plan of how to attract new members, a fraternity can dwindle down to the point where they cannot afford their house and must close the chapter. In order to prevent this, fraternities have a formal structure that assigns members different tasks that are required for successfully gaining new membership. To ensure the most qualified and enthusiastic members of the fraternity are assigned to the correct tasks, fraternities hold elections.
Elections provide an opportunity for the membership to vote for who they believe would best complete the different tasks necessary for the survival of a fraternity. Each candidate is allowed to deliver a short speech that should convey the reasons that they would be the best person for the task at hand. However, more often than not, it turns into a popularity contest, and the person best suited for a particular job may not end up being elected. The election system also runs into issues when people do not show up to vote. The structure of a fraternity is set up in such a way that there is one person that has the final say in all arguments or plans: the president.
The president relies on the other positions to plan events or teach new members the rules of the fraternity, but has the ability to overrule any of decisions made by the position holders. Outside of the president and the other position are the general members in the fraternity. They may live in the actual fraternity house or in apartments. This is where having a large membership becomes an advantage. All members have to pay a certain amount of money to the fraternity each semester, called "dues".
The dues help fund the cost of different events, the maintenance of the house and lunch/dinner on certain days. This is why attracting new members is such an important part of a successful fraternity. The more members that belong to the fraternity, the more money the fraternity will receive that will eventually help fund events to provide the members of the fraternity with the product they want: fun.
You've written this piece at arm's length and kept it in the third person the entire time. This piece could have been written by somebody in campus administration wanting to explain fraternities to potential students and their families.
ReplyDeleteI assume that you've been a member of some fraternity and for some time. Why else would you have chosen this topic? But you never actually say that in the piece, nor do you talk about any of your own experiences in the fraternity. I can guess at why you didn't do that. It is awkward to write about yourself, especially if you are not used to do so. But, I think it is necessary. Only in that way can we get at the richness of real experience that will test whether what we are studying makes sense or not.
Now let me take a different approach at how you might have written this piece. You could have spent some time on a comparative. Not all students join Greek houses. Some live in the dorms all four years. Others move into an apartment. Do those students have fun too? What would differentiate somebody who opts for a fraternity over an apartment? and vice versa?
Then you might do a different comparative. I'm aware of Rush, though I don't quite know what happens then. But I gather that fraternities differ from one another in meaningful ways. Assuming that's true, what makes for a good match between a member and a fraternity? Does somebody ever join one fraternity and then switch to another? I so, why? if not, why not?
You also didn't get at whether members want to be president or if that is something to be avoided. If the job is coveted, which is that? Politics at the national level has gotten kind of ugly over the last several years. What about politics inside the fraternity?
All of this is to encourage you in the future to try to right richer pieces (richer in the flavor they provide in what is going on) and have those pieces based on your own experience. You will learn more as a result of doing that.
After re-reading what I had blogged about, I agree with you that I wrote my blog the same as someone not connected to a fraternity could have done. I will try to correct this as I continue to write blogposts.
ReplyDeleteI'll address the first question you point you raised about comparing greek housing to apartments or dorms. Greek life is certainly not the only way to have fun on this campus. It is one of many different paths you can take to make the most out of your college career. For me, I believe joining a house allowed me to maximize the amount of fun I have had so far at U of I. Living in a fraternity means that there are dozens of your friends living with you, providing countless opportunities for experiences. It's similar to living in a dorm in my opinion. The only difference is that you know everyone living in the dorm and the rules are far less strict. Apartments are different from fraternities or dorms. You will know you're roommates but I believe you're less likely to know a lot of people also living in your apartment building. That can certainly not be the case if you get to know the other people in the building, but in general I think your more isolated with your roommates than you would be in a dorm or fraternity house.
The reasons behind choosing a fraternity/dorm/apartment are somewhat unique to everyone. My reasons behind joining a fraternity were about meeting people. I thought by joining a fraternity it would make making friends an easier proposition. Now after being in a fraternity for the last couple years, I decided to move to an apartment. I made this choice for a few reasons. A big part of this decision was a cost factor. Living in fraternity housing is very expensive when compared to an apartment. In addition, apartments tend to be much quieter so falling asleep for early classes doesn't become much of an issue. With that said, I do miss being able to leave my room and go downstairs to find a number of my buddies and something always to do.
As for matching a potential member to a fraternity, that mostly comes down to personality and interests. In my fraternity, almost everyone has interests in common with everyone else. This makes it much easier to get along with people. I remember meeting someone who was an economics major at one of the first parties I went to at my fraternity. We started talking, and I received tips on how to do well and what classes I should try and take. From there the conversation can move to an endless number of topics, but at the heart of what makes a fraternity a good match for someone is some common ground between that person and the members of the fraternity.
I have not heard of anyone switching from one fraternity to another one, but I have known people to leave their fraternity. This most often happens during the first semester that someone joins a fraternity. Maybe they realize they don't have as much in common with the existing membership than they thought. Maybe it was a financial issue or not having enough time to balance the fraternity with schoolwork. Those are a few reasons that I've been given for why someone decided to drop. It mostly comes down to issues that aren't unique to a single fraternity, like finances, so people tend to either stay in their fraternity or leave the greek life all together.
I exceeded the character limit for comments so I'll conclude with politics here...
DeleteAs for the presidency of the fraternity, it depends on the person whether or not they would want to become president. The president has to make a huge time commitment, as well as take on a great deal of responsibility. In exchange for the time commitment and the responsibility, the president has power and a great bullet point for the resume. I never wanted to make a large time commitment or have liability in the event of some ill occurrence, so the presidency was never for me. However, each year when we vote for the president there are usually at least three kids that run for it so it's a job that some people covet.
Politics within the fraternity are pretty tame. There are never really any disagreements or struggles for power. When disagreements do appear, they get solved very quickly. I think this is a result of having a very power president that gets final say on every issue. Occasionally, we will get into trouble with the national organization of the fraternity or the school administration, but the president deals directly with these type of issues. Internal political problems in our fraternity are at most little squabbles that the president quickly ends.