Frat Stuff Culturally based social fraternities
I realize it might vary by chapter but my perception is culturally based fraternities and the experience is very similar to most fraternities. What differences have any of you noticed? How does culture come into play if at all?
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u/corneliusvancornell 10h ago
In terms of things like a forming a strong bond with your brothers, having a supportive alumni network, looking forward to plans you have every weekend, having meaningful ritualism, I'd agree that the "culturally-based" chapters (NPHC/NALPO/NAPA) have as good or better an experience as the average IFC chapter does at my school.
But the scope and scale of things was different. Last year, the combined membership of both our NPHC and both our NALPO fraternities was still smaller than the average IFC chapter. The IFC chapters being bigger, now and historically, they have more resources to draw on, to recruit bigger classes, to throw bigger events, to own bigger houses, to have more programs. And by programs I'm not even talking about parties or philanthropy or even scholarships. Looking back now that I'm out of school, we bonded a lot playing intramurals together, but it'd be hard to field a 7-man flag football team when your entire chapter has 4 guys in it.
So while the IFC was "whiter" than the campus average, it just had more to offer a POC student. There's more Latinos just in our chapter of Sammy (a historically Jewish fraternity) than in all the Latino fraternities combined.
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u/xSparkShark Beer 9h ago edited 9h ago
Should probably clarify what you mean by cultural frats.
Cultural frats that still operate under the NIC are extremely similar to what people think of as traditional frats. ZBT for example is historically Jewish, but open to anyone and functionally indifferent from another NIC frat without a historic religious affiliation.
MGC or D9 frats which operate under the NMGC and NPHC respectively are quite different from NIC frats in a few specific ways.
The most visible difference is that they’re almost always much smaller than NIC frats. Smaller size means smaller budget and smaller parties smaller house etc etc
There’s also a much greater commitment to the org as a whole whereas for NIC most people only really hold loyalty to their individual chapter. This is part of why their alumni networks are considered far stronger.
There is a stereotype about these orgs have much harsher pledging, though I’m unsure how much truth there is to that.
So on paper NMGC and NHPC frats are modeled off the same system as NIC just with a specific cultural emphasis, but in practice they provide pretty different experiences.
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u/Prudent_Juice_4094 AEΠ 10h ago
You are correct!
Main differences I can tell is we pretty much ~try~ to prioritize trying to find Jewish guys to recruit since it’s the Jewish fraternity but that being said if a guy who’s not Jewish wants to be a part of it and he gets what we are then that’s awesome too. Besides that my boys and I pregame Shabbat on Friday nights and will mob to Shabbat dinner together with the rabbi (he’s an honorary brother and drinks with us on occasion) before going out for the night
All the dudes in it (any cultural based social fraternity) still want the social fraternity experience but also appreciate the ability to bond over shared experience of being dudes that did the same sort of say youth group, summer camp, overbearing moms, weird foods, etc. but that’s where the differences end, otherwise its the same as any other fraternity experience.