Tuesday, February 17, 2015
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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
If you take a historical angle, you would do better than if you see yourself as "defending fraternities from defamation." At the very least you will be able to look at why there has been such a negative perception. You might also look at the history of media portraits of frats, from Animal House to Neighbors, as the history of frat films probably shows some of the issues that had come to the fore at the time the film was made. For instance, the recent film Neighbors reflects how at some schools frats have been moved far off campus so that there are increasing numbers of town / gown disputes involving partying. The goal of your paper should be to look at how the image of fraternities was affected by different historical developments. In a different Atlantic article, Ashley Fetters looks at how pop culture might have had a lasting influence on the way fraternity members act, and it may be that film portrayals of fraternities do not so much reflect reality but shape it:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/02/pop-cultures-war-on-fraternities/284126/