Why People Join And Withdraw From Sororities And Fraternities With Only Psychological Approach

Fraternity and sorority leaders prefer to use the term general fraternity when describing what are commonly called "social" fraternities. General fraternities and sororities can best described by the umbrella group or coordinating association to which they belong(Nuwer, pp. 29-31). These organizations are the National Interfraternity Conference (NIC), which represents sixty-six men's groups, and the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), which represents twenty-six women's groups. There still remain many local fraternities and sororities on college campuses that boast of long traditions and have never affiliated nationally. Professional, recognition, and honor societies that use Greek names are organized separately and can include general fraternity members.

It is estimated that more than 10 percent of all college students are members of a Greek-letter society. After hitting a record of more than 400,000 undergraduates in 1990, fraternity membership in the year 2000 in sixty-six national fraternities was estimated at 370,000 and is slowly increasing. In the early twenty-first century, there are more than 5,500 chapters on 800 campuses throughout the United States and Canada. National data suggests that women's sororities are healthy, with membership in the twenty-six national sororities exceeding 300,000 and the size of the average chapter on the increase(McAdams, 1982). There are 2,913 chapters on more than 630 college and university campuses. Membership in local fraternities and sororities adds significantly to this total, and there are more than 10 million alumni members of Greek-letter societies.

Men's general college fraternities are mutually exclusive, self-perpetuating groups, which provide organized social life for their members in colleges and universities as a contributing aspect of their educational experience. They draw their members from the undergraduate student body. Women's general college sororities are primary groups of women at colleges and universities, which, in addition to their individual purposes, are committed to cooperation with college administrators to maintain high social and academic standards and do not limit their membership to any one academic field. Both fraternities and sororities provide unusually rich out-of-class learning and personal development opportunities for undergraduates.

Fraternities and sororities offer an organized and varied schedule of activities, including intramural sports, community service projects, dances, formals, and parties. The NIC and NPC make convincing arguments that Greek organizations benefit the sponsoring campus, stipulating that students who affiliate with a fraternity are more likely to remain in school and that alumni affiliated with a fraternity make significantly higher donations to the school. There is strong research to back up these claims. Affiliating with a fraternity or sorority enhances the development of mature interpersonal relationships, facilitates the development of leadership skills, teaches teamwork, fosters interchange of ideas, promotes values clarification, and can facilitate the development of sense of autonomy and personal identity. On isolated campuses, Greek organizations may provide the only social life.

We are all member of at least one group. The tendency to join a group is depended on individual's characters, social motivation and sex. An attitude, according to Jung, is a person's predisposition to behave in a particular ...