Literature Review Blog #1

Citation: David De Camp The Journal, Gazette. "CHARTING A NEW COURSE FRATERNITIES START RECRUITING AGGRESSIVELY AS DEMOGRAPHICS CHANGE, MEMBERSHIPS SLIP." Journal Gazette, The (Fort Wayne, IN) 23 Mar. 1997: NewsBank - Archives. Web. 24 Feb. 2015.

Summary: De Camp talks about the difference demographic changes and how it is effecting the student market for Greek Life to pull from. The traditional "18-22 party goers" are becoming less prevalent on campus and Greek Life is readjusting.

Author: David De Camp

Key Terms: 
Diversity --> The state of being diverse; a range of different things.
Philanthropy--> etymologically means "love of humanity" in the sense of caring, nourishing, developing and enhancing "what it is to be human" on both the benefactors' (by identifying and exercising their values in giving and volunteering) and beneficiaries' (by benefiting) parts.

Quotes:
"Mere interest in joining chapters also is less than in past generations. National studies by UCLA show that in 1967, 30.8 percent of entering freshmen were interested in joining a chapter. By fall 1996, it was 16.3 percent".
"Experts say the reason for the lukewarm interest is traditional fraternity and sorority members - white, 22 or younger, and interested in partying - are harder to find. Various studies show college students are older and more ethnically diverse than they were 20 years ago".
"In 1976, 15.7 percent of American college students were minorities, according to the center. By 1993, 23.4 percent were minorities".

Value: This article shows the demographic changes occurring within colleges and Greek Life focusing more on philanthropy and community service to attract the increasing minorities on campus rather that traditional "Animal House" party goers. This clearly shows a difference in how Greek Life has changed in the past few decades and I can use this to show how old stereotypes of fraternities are now misplaced.

How Might Privatization Connect to Your Topic

Privatization is the process of educational institutions weening away from public funding. Privatization is seeing significant growth; a notable effect being increased tuition for students. My topic concerns the history of fraternity life, and the change in perception since the mid-19th century, when most fraternities were founded. Since privatization is an emerging trend, certain demographics of people are beginning to be excluded from fraternity life, solely because they cannot take on the financial burden of both school and a fraternity. A decreasing diversity of persons can alter the perception of fraternity life as a whole. If only those who are financially stable are able to partake fraternities, they are subject to indulging themselves to many more opportunities (that their wealth permits), and may end up misrepresenting fraternities as a whole. It may be a generalization that wealthy college kids make bad decisions, but it is true that poorer students are forced to make decisions based on their finances, because they aren't able to partake in every opportunity presented to them.

Scouting the Territory

After reviewing my topic I definitely want to stay with my general theme of the changes in perception of fraternities in a historical context. Additionally, it may prove worthwhile to look into the change in drinking age, which occurred relatively recently when compared to the original founding of most fraternities. After reading an article The Dark Power of Fraternities by Caitlin Flanagan, I have a clearer idea of how I want to structure my paper and certain areas that I wish to discuss or expand on. This includes highlighting the positives and original intent of founding and the differences between fraternities at different schools. After typing in fraternities on Google, most immediate results are those with negative opinions and defamation, as one would expect. But after some moderate searching on the Rutgers libraries website I found UNCHALLENGED, PROFESSED CORE VALUES: Do Undergraduate Fraternity/Sorority Members Actually Benefit in the Areas of Scholarship, Leadership, Service, and Friendship. This shows the different areas that create a positive and lasting impact that Greek Life creates and is seldom the types of attributes associated with them. There is clearly a controversy to my topic, because there are two clashing perceptions of Greek Life: 1. That Greek Life only has negative impacts and has no place in college life and 2. That Greek Life has a positive and lasting impact on individuals as well as society through active membership development, volunteering and philanthropy.

Final Project

A possible topic that I wish to pursue for my final project has to do with the culture of Greek Life with regards to Fraternities. Specifically how Frat life has changed over the years and I want to explore why the perception of Greek Life has become so negative over time. For example how Rolling Stone published their article but later retracted it due to unsubstantiated evidence or facts. People are so quick to assume and judge, even though the original missions of fraternity life, such as gentleman development, community outreach and philanthropy persist to this day.