Yes I’m in a Fraternity. No, I’m not Greek

I went to your standard-fare Midwestern land-grant university; the kind that prides itself in having one of the “oldest/largest/top/pick your superlative” Greek systems in the country. For 4 years I was part of an undergraduate chapter of Sigma Lambda Beta at this university, yet for all 4 of those years I never considered myself to be Greek. For two years after our founding, we operated within the guidelines of the Greek system but outside of any council. Not seeing the benefit of attending meetings where items like parties, houses and generally all policies didn’t apply to us or attending meetings where we weren’t allowed to vote, we chose to simply not deal with either of the councils on campus.

Interestingly enough the university was perfectly ok with this arrangement. Even after we were forced to join a council, we rarely attended meetings and were never penalized for operating outside of the council’s policies because we didn’t fit within their policies to begin with. Though there were other non-traditional fraternities on campus, we didn’t fit the university’s, or any other fraternity’s, paradigm of what a fraternity was.

Of course, this was the one of the main motivators to having a chapter of Sigma Lambda Beta. All of the men originally involved in the chapter had the desire to be part of a close-knit group that would work to positively influence the community, the type of group that fit that need best was a fraternity, and the fraternity that fit that ideal best was Sigma Lambda Beta. We were a fraternity in the sense of a brotherhood of men organized to bring about change in our community not in the sense of living in a big house, having keggers and chasing sorority girls (yes those last two happened but that was ancillary, not a focus).

We never participated in homecoming, or had mixers with sororities. We never participated in a step show or had probates. And whether the Greeks on campus really even knew who we were was not a concern that ever crossed our minds because we were realizing the goals we had set out to achieve.

Sigma Lambda Beta worked for us because it was never restrained to be just a fraternity and never tied-down with the weight of meeting expected “fraternal/Greek obligations”. In reflection, Sigma Lambda Beta worked because it was not just another entity, it was an idea. We refused to operate in any single box or be defined by what others thought we should be and to this day I’m proud to be a Beta but still could care less about being Greek.

Related posts:

1. You’re Greek? Ugh!
2. Phi Alpha Chapter – NALFO Undergraduate Chapter of the Year
3. 25th Anniversary Letter from the International President
4. Bridging the Gap between Principle and Action
5. A Social History of LGLF’s in the U.S.