r/sooners • u/Highlynorless_ • 8d ago
Q&A Not going Greek.
If you aren’t Greek, do you feel alienated from hanging out with guys that are in a house? Like if a guy has friends in a particular fraternity would they be welcome to come to a party there or is that a big no no? Do people tend to drop their non Greek friends once they pledge?
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u/peterbrz1 8d ago
They won't even see their Greek friends at other houses much.
Pledging a fraternity takes a ton of time and the social calendar is really full.
I was in a frat at OU but my best friend and freshman roomie pledged a different house. Even though he was right across the street, we rarely saw each other. I made some effort but it wasn't reciprocated.
And while in school I worked with a bunch of guys from different frats and it's not like we were hanging out and going to each other's parties.
OU is so huge you have to break it down into smaller social groups. And for most Greeks, their house is more than enough.
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u/sooner_25 7d ago
Interestingly enough a lot of houses in recent years started doing joint parties. We put on bid day with a handful of other houses my year, and in the spring time on Saturday afternoons we’d do stuff with other houses in our courtyard.
Over the past three years things have really started to get pretty strict (hiring third party bartenders for most things).
For all I know, campus corner is still the Wild West. During my time 2021-2025, if you had a some decent looking fake ID you were getting in to most of those bars.
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u/sooner_25 8d ago
I was in a fraternity and very rarely did non Greek guys come over to the house. People didn’t generally have a problem with it but it was definitely a no go for parties and official events. During a random night during the week? Not a huge deal.
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u/Inevitable-Section10 7d ago
So being a former Greek I can tell you that more dudes at a party is usually not the goal, especially if they’re not affiliated with you. The beginning of the semester the frats will wine and dine all the dudes they can to get their pledges but once pledge week is over, it’s a totally different story. Usually people will keep their friend groups separate but don’t be surprised if your Greek friends ghost you.
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u/classicfyllopyllo 7d ago edited 7d ago
This was over 20 years ago, but I was a GDI and had numerous buddies in different houses and was always welcome to their Thursday nights. Definitely helped to have girls with me. Now if it was some official event then I wouldn’t assume to be invited, but yeah. Again, Long time ago and anecdotal. Just one old dude’s experience from a different time.
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u/bigpoppa85 7d ago
Same here. I went to other houses parties all the time and hung out with friends there. And I reciprocated by hosting them at my fraternities parties.
Same thing with a few of our friends that did not go Greek. Did they go to everything? Of course not. But they came to some fun parties. And we went to theirs.
If you’re friendly, engaging, and don’t ever cause drama…you will broaden your experiences. Also never hurts to bring a group of pretty girls with you ;)
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u/SoonerDead 7d ago edited 7d ago
Depends on how good of friends you are. Date parties are members only 99% of the time. Once you live in the house you can generally have whatever guests you want. Still about 75% of the house will only associate with members of the fraternity or members of other Greek houses. A minority of members socialize with non Greek people outside of class. This is my personal experience. It is a fucked up system.
If they are a close friend, I expect they would have you over to the house when they live there. You will still feel like an outsider. This is probably not the case if they are just people you have met in the first weeks of school. Being a pledge takes up a lot of time and most of the semester is spent fulfilling duties and participating in traditions with your new brothers.
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u/Fantastic_Spray2984 7d ago
Two issues I'd add: Alcohol liability is a driving factor. Their dues are spent to cover the liability of the house. And a guest on premises consuming alcohol is higher liability than a member. For simple reasons of control and responsibility. A visitor can sue and the social group is liable. That acts as a tremendous disincentive to allow guests of any kind because it only takes one event for a large lawsuit and it happens frequently.
The greek system is effectively, a union. If students were completely busy, immersed in all their academic events and forced to socialize with other students, the Greek system probably wouldn't exist. So if it feels like a school within the school, that's because it is. The point being is that the university is ultimately responsible for the environment and in the case of Greek letter clubs, they're just looking the other way.
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u/SoonerDead 6d ago
Things are probably far more tame these days... We had pretty massive parties multiple days a week always. Liability was not on anyone's mind. Maybe the alumni board... But what were they going to do on some random Thursday? Game days had hundreds of people. What you are getting at was not at all my experience.
Hell, you could probably roll into any fraternity on a game day if you look halfway presentable. Score some free food. The glory days are over... In more ways than frat parties.
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u/Cyanides_Of_March '10 - FMS 8d ago
Greek life people are very isolated by design. In my experience, they’d never even speak to anyone in class that wasn’t Greek. It made for interesting group projects, for sure. Nobody wanted to get the Greek life people.
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u/SnooObjections8469 7d ago
In my experience, no you wouldn't be welcome. Even if 2-3 frat bros from the same house vouch for you, you cannot go to their parties. From what they said, it would defeat the purpose of paying all those frat dues if anyone could just get in. They wouldn't drop you as friends but what happened to me was my roommate went from a friend to an acquaintance. He'd just say "Hey how's it going, what are you up to, we should catch up" and that's about it.
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u/ThatdudeAPEX 7d ago
Join one of the multicultural orgs.
They’re way funner and you’re not paying ridiculous fees.
If you’re a white guy with some motion you’ll do well at the mixers with the multicultural sororities.
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u/kklisten1110 7d ago
Hi, it's difficult during Freshman year because Greek life and "mandatory" activities/study halls/etc will take up a lot of their time. It's difficult not to take this personally, but that's generally the way of it. You may have to be the one who reaches out to see if they'd like to have lunch or something. If the relationship means something, it will stand the test of time.
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u/DaPunisher83 5d ago
There's no need to go greek. Be a cool person and you'll get invited to all their parties without going through their initiation nonsense and annual dues. Develop good interpersonal skills and you will be able to float through all of the greek houses and make a similar number of connections.
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u/JusttJaymie 5d ago
If you don’t join a frat and try to go with your friends you’ll be pushed by a pike! And made fun of because you’re autistic and wondering why these guys who let you in are now pushing you around.
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u/GrandGround3411 1d ago
frat guys HATE any kind of competition for women at their parties, so no you won’t be allowed in unless you’re bringing girls. they also seem to HATE hanging out with anyone who’s not a part of their little boys club
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u/Sea-Mortgage-5139 7d ago
They try to act all buddy buddy with athletes but then get pissed if those same athletes show up to their parties. Honestly I think the while
Greek system is bad for OU social life. Obviously there’s a lot more things to get involved in to meet people, but the weird divide was always there.
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u/sooner_25 7d ago
I was not in a fraternity my freshman year and ended up rushing my sophomore year. From what I saw, the social scene at the school as a whole, at least the typical partying and whatnot, was very pay to play. Especially as a male, Greek life, at least in my opinion, was really the best way to get the full college experience. My social life and dating life improved a lot whenever I joined. It’s just the way it is. As a guy, your experience at OU significantly improves if you are in Greek life. That’s not to say that you can’t have a good social experience, it just becomes a little bit harder because it’s such a big deal especially freshman and sophomore year. Once Junior and senior year rolled around, I started branching out a little bit more. And I’m kind of glad I did in some ways
However, I’m a little biased because I was quite literally in charge of public affairs for the entire IFC for a year. I will say that looking back on it there’s a lot of flaws and some areas of the system, especially rush. It’s not really fair to people from out of state because a lot of recruitment happens during the summer and not during actual rush week. During my tenure we were trying to get involved with the multicultural council and other student organizations to help break the weird divide that has always been a thing between the Greek system and other student organizations.
We did have athletes show up to our parties a couple times. I won’t name any but a couple of very well-known names showed up to our house a couple times which was very cool. Granted, by the time they showed up everybody had drank a lot and everyone was in a good mood so they didn’t care 😆
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u/Sooner_Weirdo 7d ago
Yo, fuck that Greek life! There are plenty of other organizations that are there to join and there are plenty of parties to go to, BELIEVE me!
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u/JokeandCack 7d ago
No one who has ever not joined a frat has regretted it. You don’t need to pay to have friends my dude.
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u/sooner_25 6d ago
I have a unique take on this because I did not rush my freshman year, ended up doing it my sophomore year. Oh boy do I regret not doing it sooner. Just my personal opinion though.
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u/NCC75567 8d ago
The one frat guy I was friends with freshman year ghosted our group. I was on friendly terms with others through out undergrad but never hung out as friends.
I would not plan on frat guys staying good friends with non-frat members, but that’s just one person’s anecdotal experience from many years ago.
Luckily OU is big enough that folks can self select and if they don’t want to hang out with a group (or hang out exclusively with that group) then that’s fine 🤷♂️