Although I completely agree with Scott Green’s assertion that sorority recruitment needs to change, I couldn’t help but feel as I read his column that he was giving far too much credit to the men involved in fraternity rush. He stated the official rules of each system without mentioning the key difference between the two – women in sororities actually follow the rules of PHC, whereas men in many fraternities on campus completely disregard the rules presumably set out by IFC for them.

He made it sound like all fraternity rushees have to do is get to know the guys in a particular house. This is laughably false. Fraternity rush involves going to parties with free beer, getting to know the guys in the house, and being hazed to almost ridiculous extremes. The last time I checked, getting wasted was not a more valuable use of a student’s time than chanting and dancing. The fact that young men in fraternities imbibe ambulance-worthy levels of alcohol during rush and get hazed to the point that they have to shower “for hours” (as one of my male friends told me) is proof of just how far young men in our society have to go in developing mature ideas of what masculinity is.

Interestingly, Mr. Green also failed to mention that sororities generally have a far higher number of members in their houses than fraternities do. Why? Our awful, annoying, oh-so-formal recruitment process ensures that every house on campus will get about the same number of new pledges. There’s a lot of work involved, but this work basically guarantees each house around 50 or 60 new members each fall. Maybe if the fraternities tried it our way, their membership levels wouldn’t be so low, and social exchanges between fraternities and sororities wouldn’t be so ridiculously unbalanced. Just a thought, boys.