[quote]Big Aristotle wrote:
I had five years of greek life and loved it. Indeed a wild ride…
I lived in the house during my last few years of college. Don’t know how I made it out alive. Our house had 35 bedrooms and was walking distance to downtown Athens (~40 bars).
Every frat experience you could think of, I lived. It was awesome.
BTW, joining a fraternity or sorority is not the equivalent to paying for friends. The older guys that have been around the fraternity for years don’t get cash in their pockets or personal checks from the new guys.
Dues money goes towards a variety of things. My chapter spent most of our money on social events (open bars or renting out floors of hotels). The money also goes towards house maintenance, national dues, community meals and contributions to a chapter savings account.
Dues are just a way to pool together every member’s resources to plan parties. We had over a hundred active brother’s in my chapter, so our calender every semester was very very good.
We would rent a couple coach buses and each take a date with us to a braves game or thrashers game, drinking on the bus the entire time. One year we rented buses and took dates to South Carolina for the Carolina Cup (horse race) and tailgated all day.
We had at least 2 band parties in our basement every semester and anywhere from 300 to 500 people would show up, depending on which band we got. In the spring, we would order three dumptrucks full of sand to come to our parking lot and turned the parking lot into a beach volleyball court and had kiddie pools and trashcans full of beer everywhere.
We would have 2-3 date nights every semester. We’d go out to dinner with a group of 8-10 couples and then go downtown to a bar we rented out and didn’t have to pay for drinks all night.
Our formal would be in New Orleans every January. We would take dates down there for 3 days and stayed in a hotel on bourbon street. Ridiculous.
If you get the chance to join a good frat, don’t pass it up.
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My experience was similar to this. It was amazing. I was president of my chapter for a year, and that has done wonders for my resume. It varies on what school you go to but I highly recommend it.