A few frat guys took it seriously and were kind/helpful to their 'lil sises' but mostly, it was a system of putative slavery...usually involving sex.

Wow. I wouldn't have thought doing it across gender lines was a great idea.

No offense to any happily Greek participants. At my school it was just sanctioned cruelty and debasement...to both sexes.

I'm quite firmly anti-Greek, based on being non-Greek at a school where about 60% of the student body was Greek, and where all the student organizations (except the newspaper) were run by Greeks. (Is it any shock I was on the staff of the paper?)

(Which is to say, I didn't mean fraternity/sorority "big sisters/brothers" -- I just meant the sort who are meant to help you acclimate to college, give advice, and perhaps buy you a beer but not date-rape you.)

Wow. I wouldn't have thought doing it across gender lines was a great idea.

I honestly don't recall same-sex support relationships being mentioned. I suppose there must have been, but I only recall the official/paid housemother taking that role.

I'm quite firmly anti-Greek, based on being non-Greek at a school where about 60% of the student body was Greek, and where all the student organizations (except the newspaper) were run by Greeks. (Is it any shock I was on the staff of the paper?)

Jeez, Steph. I think you might actually BE me. t checks mirror Nope, you are definitely cuter, so phew...no body sharing going on here...but the like minds? Eerie

(Which is to say, I didn't mean fraternity/sorority "big sisters/brothers" -- I just meant the sort who are meant to help you acclimate to college, give advice, and perhaps buy you a beer but not date-rape you.)

Ah. I was actually this at my school. HS seniors would come for campus visits and stay with me. My emphasis on the 'touch one of my girls and I'll cut you' portion of the job became legend.

Having been quite happy as a member of a sorority during college, my experience was a good one in having a big sister and being one to a new member. Mentor relationships were assigned within the organization, so all mentors/mentees were female.

Some fraternities had official "little sister" components, but if we looked down our nose at them it was because those women weren't full members of the organization, not because they were selling themselves into slavery, sexual or otherwise.

YGreekExperienceMV, but mine put me in touch with a group of fantastically smart women I might have missed out on getting to know on an otherwise huge campus.

I had only ever heard of the big brother/little sister thing as a Greek tradition, and it always squicked me. Although once I did read a novel about a girls' private school where New Girls were taken under the wing of Old Girls.

It's snowing quite ferociously here. Oh yay.

YGreekExperienceMV, but mine put me in touch with a group of fantastically smart women I might have missed out on getting to know on an otherwise huge campus.

My friends who went to other schools, where the Greek population was a much smaller percentage, had good experiences. It was just that my college was so overwhelmingly Greek that the prevailing opinion was that if you didn't go Greek, you might as well rot in your dorm room for 4 years.

Although once I did read a novel about a girls' private school where New Girls were taken under the wing of Old Girls.

We had a Big Sisters/Little Sisters thing at my highschool. I remember mine gave me a blank journal. Really nice!

Dude, I just finished the last piece of the KILLER spinach lasagna I made on Sunday and I am so sad that it is gone. Like my innocence...lasagna gone.

SO GOOD. Nom nom nom.

DH happily elected not to go Greek - at our school which had a large such population, including service fraternities and sororities, houses that were tantamount to drinking clubs, and a number that had been there since the beginning of time (the Frats, anyway). I love him for it.

Instead, he drove a university transit bus. Turns out, they had their own group/mixers, big/little sisters/brothers, and a bus rodeo at the end of each year. They did manage to mow down one of the serpentine walls during my tenure as a writer on the weekly university journal. So when he found out that I was behind the 'top 10 ways not to get a UTS Safety award' column, that was an interesting discussion. He threatened to sic the bus-brotherhood on me.

Also, fwiw, he did a lot with his friends' greek (semi-greek, really) houses ... including hanging out with the guy who married Sparky and her DH.