Getting Home

When you walked through the door to your greek house or suite, did you pause and think about how grateful you are to be home? For many, coming back feels like a family reunion with every member of the chapter playing an important role in shaping the community.

Whether it's cold outside, and you've just walked into warmth, or you're reuniting with close friends - there's always something to appreciate about living Greek.

This week, as we return to a new semester, greet everyone with a smile and offer to listen about their break or upcoming semester. Afterwards, feel free to share about your own aspirations. Be present with each conversation you have and if you haven't visited with your chapter in a while; the house and the people in it will always be there for you when you need it most.

   Book Cornor   

The Benefits of Friends

At a moment when the call to abolish sororities and fraternities grows louder and more persistent by the day, The Benefits of Friends foregrounds the questions that undergird their continued existence - namely, what do these organizations do and what are they good for? I am not talking about the mechanics of how fraternities and sororities operate but, rather, the social, economic, and cultural benefits conferred by membership in them. As higher educations most enduring and pervasive single-sex organizations, fraternities and sororities collectively emerge in this book as a powerful social influencer that extends and challenges the definition of heteronormativity to include platonic relationships between same-sex friends. Taking seriously the popular fraternity and sorority life mantra that "friends are the family you choose"; this book takes up questions that nag at higher education and society. How does the concept of family change when all its members are the same age, sex, or even race? And what is at stake socially, politically, and culturally when one romanticizes the figure of the friend?