The Wiley Handbook of Gender Equity in Higher Education

9This Is Not Your Parents' Greek Life: Trends in the Ongoing Evolution of Fraternities and Sororities

Alan D. DeSantis

Critiques of such traditional American institutions as the “Greek system” have underscored their conservative patterns of behavior, begrudgingly evolving at a glacier's pace. In the last decade, however, Greek life on most American campuses has experienced unprecedented forced change. Its once stable foundation, which many believed rested on the bedrock of old money, White privilege, and zealot alumni, has experienced seismic shifts. Writing about the state of Greek life in 2020, therefore, is more akin to chasing a moving target under attack than writing about a one‐time conservative institution that anchored generations of men and women to their alma maters.

It is not just change itself that Greek life has had to survive. Fraternities and sororities have been bombarded by recent media attacks, highlighting what seems like an endless litany of missteps, mistakes, miscalculations, and downright acts of stupidity. Along with this “bad press,” the current Greek system has faced harsh punitive actions from university officials trying to right the Greek ship before it fatally crashes itself into the rocks.

Prompted by the deaths of 33 fraternity members that have taken place on American college campuses during the last decade (2007–2017), Greek life has also been facing attacks from outside of the university's administrative confines, a new development for this ...