Summertime...and Greek Life
Well the semester is over and the semester turned out alright. It’s nice to relax a little bit and catch up with old friends. I do miss Widener and the community atmosphere that it has. One aspect of Widener that I really enjoy is its Greek Life. I am a brother of Phi Delta Theta. I joined my sophomore year of college.
When I first came to Widener I had no plans of joining a fraternity or any similar organization. However once I got involved on campus and found that many of the students who were highly active in the Widener community were also involved in Greek Life. It was from here that I met a couple of brothers of Phi Delta Theta. I still didn’t have any plans of joining their fraternity but as I got to know them better and hang out with them more I realized that it was a organization I wanted to be a part of. One fallacy about Greek Life that I would like to talk about is that you are paying for friends. This in fact is not true at least from my observations. While it does cost money to join a fraternity. It costs money to belong or participate in almost any organization. Dues are used for paying for insurance, brotherhood activities, and general headquarters dues. They certainly do not guarantee that everyone in the fraternity will be your best friend. Like almost anything in life you will get out of it what you put into it. If you do not make any effort to become friends with the members of your fraternity you will most defiantly not become close friends with many of your “brothers” or “sisters” if you’re in a sorority. I do not see this as buying friends. In addition to this YOU get to dictate where the money goes to, to a certain extent. For example most fraternities and sororities are required to pay dues to the headquarters. Obviously this you could not really control but in terms of brotherhood activities these are up to the discretion of each chapter. I find the idea that joining a fraternity is like paying for friend’s kind of offensive. It implies that those who join any Greek organization are unable to make friends on their own. In fact I believe that joining a Greek organization can make someone more able to communicate and interact with others as there may be members of their organization that they do not get along with as well. However one would have to learn how to interact with this person for the betterment of the organization. Overall I have found the Greek Life at Widener to be rewarding and valuable. I recommend to any incoming student to keep an open mind to Greek Life. It might be different that you expect or imagine.
