Greek life at the University of Tulsa is a big part of the campus culture. According to the university, around 22 percent of the TU population is in Greek life. Coming into TU my freshman year, I wanted to become a part of this 22 percent. I was the only person from my high school graduating class attending TU, so I knew that a good way to make friends was to join a fraternity.
I decided to go through the rush process during the first week of school after orientation. I toured each house and got to converse with a good amount of members in each house. After the rush process ended, I came to my decision and chose a house (I will let the certain house stay unnamed for private reasons). When I first rushed the house, I had not met anyone else who was in my pledge class, so it was a little daunting. That would soon change though after we started meeting each other and had pledge activities together. I also soon began to meet all of the other brothers already in the house.
The first feeling when rushing the house is a fun experience. You can feel a lot of energy in the air. Everyone is excited and has a positive outlook on the future of the fraternity. During my time as a pledge, I had so many interesting experiences. A plethora of potential new experiences were unlocked because I did not know anyone in my house prior to joining. A lot of people were from different places, so I was able to learn a lot of things about cities that I had never been to. I had a lot of fun times with this group, but the experiences weren’t always great.
During my freshman year, our house was hit with a social probation punishment to the house. This means that we were not allowed to host events at our house. This was a big surprise to us. Although this wasn’t the end of the world, it killed a lot of motivation in our house. As a fraternity, you want to be competitive with the other houses on row. This was really hard to do when you can’t throw any events to try to meet new people. However, looking at it from a positive point of view, I think that the sanctions helped us bond in a way. Since nonmembers were not allowed to attend the house, the only people that were ever in the house were the pledges and the brothers. This brought everyone inside the house closer. The sanctions caused us to be creative and think outside the box in order to meet new people. Overall, I think that our group had a good time first semester considering the circumstances that we were in.
During the next spring semester, the euphoric feeling of the first semester had come to a halt for me. I felt like we were standing stagnant as a house, and we were not working anywhere to getting better as a fraternity. This caused me to slowly grow farther away from the fraternity. I don’t want it to seem like a had a terrible time during the spring semester. I still had a good time. But I feel that it is only fair to give my honest view of the experience. At the end of the spring semester, I decided to leave the fraternity.
Sometimes people like me do not enjoy Greek life from an overall standpoint, and that’s okay. There are many other organizations to get involved with on campus. However, if I was to do it all over again, I would still join a fraternity. Although I am not currently a member anymore, I am still good friends with a lot of my former brothers. Even though I am not in the fraternity anymore, I think that all of the things I experienced in Greek life and all of the new friends that I made shaped me into a more rounded and cultured individual.