It's not all keg stands and beer pong

It's your first week at Hopkins and you've probably already seen the many fraternity houses around the neighborhood. Perhaps you've even gone inside some of them and met some of the brothers. If you browsed through any of the literature on the campus social scene, you may have also realized that one in five Hopkins students are involved in Greek life. At Hopkins, fraternities and sororities are dominant on the social scene, especially among freshmen. But if you are anything like I was when I first got here last year, there are many important questions you wished you had the answers to. What are fraternities all about, anyway? Am I a likely candidate to pledge a fraternity at Hopkins? Other than the obvious social scene, why do people pledge fraternities anyway? How does rushing and pledging work? Here's the low-down on some things you should know about fraternities at Hopkins.

Students decide to pledge fraternities for many different reasons. For some, the ties of brotherhood that are found within the organization make the Hopkins experience amazing and the ties as alumni invaluable. For others, reasons include the obvious draw of enhanced social life, helpful connections with other chapters nationwide or even simply being part of something that may very well improve them as people during their tenures at Hopkins.

People become brothers through two processes: rushing and pledging. Formal rush for freshmen takes place during spring semester, as every fraternity on campus holds a week-long rush program in order to get to know freshmen and so the freshmen can find what each fraternity is all about.

Towards the end of rush, each fraternity decides which rushes (the people who rushed) they want as potential brothers. If a fraternity decides that they want someone as a potential brother, they will give him a formal bid, which is an offer to pledge the fraternity. Many students get bids from more than one fraternity, and then must decide which one they would like to pledge.

If the rush accepts the bid, he begins a pledge program with all the other rushes who were given bids. Pledging usually takes one semester and is designed to build brotherhood and knowledge of the history of the fraternity. The difficulty of pledging varies from fraternity to fraternity. At the end of the pledge process, brothers decide on which pledges they would like to initiate as brothers of the fraternity.

Unfortunately, there has been and always will be a faction of Hopkins students who are anti-Greek life. Of course, here at JHU, there's a little bit of anti-everything. Most of the people who are so vehemently against Greek life have no idea what it has to offer and have probably never even attended a rush event. Many see the financial cost of being a member of a fraternity as too great and refer to joining a fraternity as "buying your friends." I challenge those who feel this way to experience the bonds made during the pledging and rush periods, and then they may fully judge the experience of being a part of a brotherhood.

If rushing does sound like something you may want try and you're a freshman, you're going to have to wait until second semester to do so. If you're a sophomore and didn't get a chance to participate in rush last year, I highly suggest that you do. As a freshman coming to Hopkins, I never pictured myself as the fraternity "type." I found out how wrong I was during the first night of rush week.

To me, not participating in any rush events, no matter what year you are, is the worst choice you could possibly make. But hey, if you love Terrace and Wolman food, don't like to meet new people and hate having fun, then by all means, stay in front of your computer, and posting messages all day on the Daily Jolt. If you find after participating in rush that fraternity life is not for you, no harm done.

I could add a funny segment about stereotypes of all the fraternities, but trust me, you'll know all of them before the first semester is over. The best way for you to know what each fraternity is about is to go out to some parties and meet brothers yourself. There are plenty of fraternities to choose from: Alpha Delta Phi (WaWa), Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi), Beta Theta Pi (Beta), Delta Phi (St. Elmo's), Lambda Phi Epsilon (Lambda), Phi Gamma Delta (Fiji), Phi Kappa Psi (PhiPsi), Pi Kappa Alpha (Pike), Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE), Sigma Alpha Mu (Sammy), and Sigma Phi Epsilon (SigEp).