At my university, frats threw parties. That's all. But they were nowhere near as fun as the engineering/nursing ones. I'm not sure I knew anyone in a fraternity or sorority until long after I graduated.

Thanks, folks.

I knew a couple of girls in a Sorority in college, but never got invited to any parties, frat or otherwise. Of course, we were supposed to be a dry campus. (Which any walk through the dorms on a Friday or Saturday night could tell you wasn't working so well.)

I know during pledge week a friend of mine nearly got run over by a horde of guys wearing nothing but swim fins and gas masks as they streaked across campus. But that's the only fraternity-related activity I even heard about.

Of course, I was only there for the one year.

Caltech doesn't have a Greek system. We have co-ed houses instead, that everybody joins and lives in. It's like Harry Potter!

I miss college.

Evergreen is also Greek Free.

The individual apartments weren't co-ed (unless you signed a waiver and did a group lease thing instead of individual assignments), but the buildings were.

We didn't have fraternities, sororities or anything similar at my school in England. although many of the American students who came over for one semester belonged to them back home. They always came over and tried to talk to us like we were supposed to be impressed or something. It always took them a few weeks to register that anywhere outside of their home school, it was completely irrelevant.

we had frats and sororities, but they didn't have houses. they lived amongst everyone else in the dorms or in off campus apartments.

I went to a small, private, Southern Baptist undergrad. We had no sororities or fraternities.

I have a hard time believing that any school could have a larger or more influential Greek system than the U of Alabama

Went to UofA for grad school. Being in grad school, I was not really part of the greek stuff, but I was certainly aware of it. Particularly during Rush week and bid night since I was a Residence Hall Director for the freshmen women's dorm. Boy, that was a rough night.

U. of Illinois' Greek system is larger in that there are more people in sor/frat than UofA, but I don't think I could call it more influential than UofA's.

you can no longer send group emails to your students because of legal issues

WTF? What kind of legal issues? How odd. Are you allowed to send individual emails?

We had no frats/sororities at my university, but my best friend from high school was in a sorority at UMich, and I stayed with her one spring break, and went to a frat party with her. One was enough.

I started grad school at UW-Madison and took part in Take Back the Night rallys that marched down Fraternity Row.

But, one of our best, nicest, most versatile undergrad theatre students had swithched his major from Agriculture to Theatre and still lived in the AgFrat house. And one of our best volenteers was a sorority house mother.

WTF? What kind of legal issues? How odd. Are you allowed to send individual emails?

Exactly. It's getting ridiculous. As far as I know (I've been away this semester and have to check on the exact details of the policy) we can still send individual emails and, in most cases, group emails. We just have to check to make sure none of our students is on a special list. The idea is that if, for whatever reason, a student does not want his or her address known, it should not be on any documents other students might see (such as the list I normally distribute to my students at the beginning of the semester so they can, say, contact each other outside class!). What is really ridiculous is that my school is so small and follows a standard formula for addresses based on your name, so, unless it is a really common name, you can pretty much guess everyone's address.

Most of these policies (that have developed in the last 4-5 years I'd say) aren't based on legal requirements so much as the fact that schools are trying to cover their asses in case the extreme happens. So, we have to turn in absence policies for all our classes to the Dean at the start of the semester, document all failures and provide explanations for the failing grade, etc. That's why scenes such as the Criminology professor announcing students' grades are so laughable to me. They stopped posting (anonymous) lists of grades 10 years ago at NYU (hi AmyLiz, go Violets)!