Joining a fraternity and being a college runner?

You will not be able to dedicate yourself fully to running while pledging. If you want to make that sacrifice, you should be fine the next three years. Live your life though. You only do college once.

Talk to the guy posting about a dog licking his furniture , you two make a nice couple.

If this is a troll...I accept:

Depends. Do you want to reach your potential or not? Do you expect to compete at a high DI level or recreational DIII level...or is somewhere in between "good enough" for you? What kind of program are you a part of and what are their competitive goals - and do you plan on contributing to them or not? In all likelihood, your coach counts that as a HUGE strike against you...and if he/she doesn't, I'd assume they have recreational DIII expectations of you and likely their program. If college track, your team, your coach, competitive goals and any possible scholarship isn't much of a priority for you, I say go for it. But if your track team doesn't serve as a brotherhood already, I'd ask why you chose that program in the first place...or assume you went strictly for academics.

I wasn't a college runner, but I was in a fraternity. Here's some advice from an honest alumni.

Whether you should join one depends, first of all, on what campus life is like at your university. At mine, 40% of the school was Asian and 30% commuted, so the life of the school was concentrated in the remaining 30% who were White and lived on or near campus. Any of those 30% who were at least semi-cool ended up going Greek. You would feel left out of school life if you weren't Greek. This might not be the case at your school because maybe it's not as divided into enclaves as mine was.

Second of all, whether you should go Greek depends on what your expectations are for joining a house. Will you settle for nothing less than a top-tier house because you want to be associated with the most popular guys in the Greek system? Are you just looking for a group of drinking buddies? What are you looking to get out of a house?

On the same note, I would say that you need to ask yourself whether a fraternity is adding to your life anything you couldn't get without a fraternity.

Leadership opportunities: There are certainly some to be found in a fraternity, but you can alternatively take up a leadership position in a campus club. Which looks better on your resume: President of Delta Kappa Epsilon or Student President of Chemical Engineering Department?

Parties: Even if the fraternities are the only places having cool parties at your school, you can get into the parties just by knowing someone in the house and paying $5. Whereas, if you're in the house, you'll be paying a social bill of hundreds of dollars every semester to finance these parties.

Brotherhood: Certainly you're capable of making close friends yourself. If you feel like a fraternity is the only way you're going to get a close-knit group of friends, then you are a social retard who shouldn't be joining a fraternity.

Test files: Fraternities like to highlight test files as being one of the unique scholastic advantages of joining a fraternity, but these days you can find old exams online through your university.

I like your style. You could go for runs after a night of drinking. I went on a 10 mile run after a party once (1 mile for every drink I consumed). I started out the run tipsy and finished sober and with a runner's high. It was the oddest and most amazing feeling in the world.

Like some other people have been saying, you only go to College once. Try it for a while and see how it goes lol. Keep us updated.

3/10

Who is this...Wes Baby? LoVe lYfe BaBy!

As someone said, it depends on the culture of your particular campus.

Certainly at my college, fraternities were an excuse for getting drunk a lot--and this was BITD, before five-night-a-week "partying" became standard on a lot of campuses.

At that time, about half the male undergrads were in one fraternity or another--in fact, the university's calculations of how much dorm space was required were based on it. I lived in a non-party rooming house off-campus, and we had a constant flow of "refugees" from the frats: guys who had academic and/or athletic goals that were more important to them than getting drunk with their brothers.

I do know that at another D1 college, the t&f coach forbade frat membership for guys on the team: he had seen too many athletes messed up by the alcohol, and told his guys to make a decision upfront, track or frat. Most chose track, where they had a brotherhood anyway.

The coach at my school didn't *require* that same decision, but almost everyone made it on his own--but, sadly, often after having lost a year of what could have been athletic and academic progress.

Pope T-Bag II wrote:

...

if your track team doesn't serve as a brotherhood already, I'd ask why you chose that program in the first place...

This.

jamin wrote:

At mine, 40% of the school was Asian and 30% commuted, so the life of the school was concentrated in the remaining 30% who were White and lived on or near campus. Any of those 30% who were at least semi-cool ended up going Greek.

Please tell me you are trolling.

not greek wrote:

jamin wrote:

At mine, 40% of the school was Asian and 30% commuted, so the life of the school was concentrated in the remaining 30% who were White and lived on or near campus. Any of those 30% who were at least semi-cool ended up going Greek.

Please tell me you are trolling.

it would appear that not a single asian student also commuted.

Well, people do like to joke about their driving skills.

If you don't mind living amongst a group of filthy d-bags, you'll flourish in the frat house.

I ran on a decent D3 team as a #3 guy in the high 25-low 26 range my senior year, plus 4:02 1500 and 9:41 steeple during track, and most of the other guys were Greek (everyone thought I was, but I didn't get a bid as a freshman and didn't bother with rush again).

The key is making it known that track or xc (whichever is in season depending on rush) is a much bigger priority than a fraternity.

It should be noted my school was 80% Greek when I pledged and is at about 65% now. Despite those numbers, the system was low-key. Pledgeship wasn't hard if you were in a "middle-tier" house like my friends were, you just had to pull a few pranks and drink a few things you didn't want to.

Most of them seem pretty glad they did it, and it gave them (and myself by proxy) a chance to make friends outside of the team. It was a positive experience for most of them, so if it's not at a huge flagship state school, you'll probably be fine.

That said, I wouldn't do it if you were on an SEC team, but you probably aren't.

from his posts I think you describe jamin perfectly, what a tool, probably a worse poster than bguyjmillennium.

The Greek system is good training for the real world, i.e., paying for access to social, business, and/or political networks. It is the American way.

This all depends whether you go to a school that still hazes or not. Wouldn't recommend it if it's a southern school. You will get worked and will get little sleep. If it's a school that only has XC, maybe pledge in the spring? Hard to do both and go to school.

How can you afford it? Those dues always seemed very steep to me. I couldn't for the life of me consider asking my father for money to pay dues to a social club.

Just thinking about that now makes me laugh. I can only imagine the look of "What kinda dumb@ss are you?" that would come across his face.

If I were a college coach I'd gladly let someone in any frat guy, but I wouldn't give them scholarship money. I'll take any frat walk ons, but scholarship dollars need to go to runners dedicated to the sport, not part timers.

Back when I was looking at colleges, one of my options was Villanova. To see what things were like, I wrote a letter to Vicki Huber (1988 Olympian who was a senior at the time). She actually wrote me back a four page hand written letter telling some great things to consider. The one thing that really stood out was how she said there were three facets of college life: running, academics, and social. She said that it was only possible to be successful in two of the three, so you needed to pick your priorities. She said she had seen several of her teammates try to enjoy the social atmosphere too much and they either ran poorly or did poorly in their classes (or both).

Personally, I think that a lot of people joins frats because they think it is their best way to make friends. You can form some great friendships with your teammates, classmates, and people you meet around campus. You shouldn't have to buy your friends by joining a frat, paying their fees, and having to go through their stupid initiations.

NO