What is the deal with Greeks?

[IronMan4]

Ever since I became a student at North Texas, I have wondered about the Greeks and thier support of athletics.

First of all, I have only seen the greeks at two basketball games the last two years. One was "greek nite" and they all left at halftime. The other was the FSSW game against La-La, and they all mugged for the camera doing "Hook Em" and "Guns Up" signs. When asked about this, they said they can do whatever sign they want.

Now I won't accuse them of staying in the parking lot and drinking during football games, because I have never been in a parking lot during a game to see this myself. But Saturday night was just pathetic. There were two frat boys sitting in front of me. I know they were frat boys because they were wearing a tshirt with their letters on it. The t-shirts were red and blue respectively, and one had an OU hat and the other an SMU (?!). So to recap, neither wore any green, and both had on a hat of another university. So I moved up to the top of section S at halftime to get some air and a better view of the field. There about 7 sorrority girls arrived to the game with ten minutes remaining. I know they had just arrived because they said it took them a long time to get there. Some frat boy then comes and stands in front of them with his back to the game (right in front of me), and talks to them until about four minutes left, never once turning around to look at the field. Then he declares that he should probably watch the game. Good call.

Let me put a disclaimer down here.

I know greeks do lots and lots of wonderful things for the university. I can't imagine how hard it would be for a 19 year old to get drunk without them. I also know that at least they came to the game and that's a lot more than most students do. But they are supposed to be among the leading supporters of the university, and I have seen nothing that comes close to living up to that. And I'm sure several current greeks and greek alum will get red faced (this time from anger and not intoxication) and give angry defenive replies to this post, but please remember, I did not make any of these examples up. These things really happend. I have been keeping these complaints inside of me since my first semester here, but Saturday night was all I could take.

I am no longer a Talon, but compared to what SGA, RHA, and Talons, among other organizations, do for the university compared to the greeks is so lopsided it's laughable.

But hey, at least they paid the 11 bucks and showed up Saturday.

[Travis]

agreed

[TheColonyEagle]

ironman,

you are absolutely right, I have always wondered why the frats have been non-existant

Would most of these guys not have fun going to a football game, drinking before hand at tail gate parties, making a lot of noise, etc.?

it's puzzling

[3XNTGRAD]

Maybe -- at one of their myriad parties -- they could actually design a GREEN t-shirt that at least contained the school's name on it. Then, they could wear their greek letters AND support their school at the same time.

But -- at least they did show up. I hope the guys in the earlier post (I saw the same ones) are not representative of the whole, but my years at UNT give me doubts about that.

Since I'm sure this thread will result in loud protestations from the Greek system -- let's keep this in mind. WHEN the greek system turns out consistently (not just at homecoming and TV games), then I'll believe that they really do care about supporting UNT Athletics.

SEE YOU ON OCT. 5TH!

[JayDub]

I never understood why the Greeks claimed to be 'biggest supporter of NT Athletics" when I've NEVER seen a group of Greeks stay for an ENTIRE North Texas sporting event.

Just like IronMan said, last year when they showed up for the basketball game that was aired on FSSW, they almost (I will say almost, a few stayed) all got up for nachos at the half and must have got lost on the way back to their seats. I also remember a one of them asking a Talon to tell the Talons to sit down and shut up.

Those "Hook'ems" looked grrreat on TV too!

[ArlingtonMeanGreen]

PHI KAPPA SIGMA seems to be the only fraternity that is interested in attending the football games.

[JayDub]

Hmmm.....maybe if we started selling alcohol....

[OXatUNT]

Ok.... I'm not going to lash back because what you said is probably true.... But being a part of 2 Fraternal Organizations (Theta Chi (social) and Phi Chi Theta(business))I have to say my 2 cents... What you said " can't imagine how hard it would be for a 19 year old to get drunk without them. " was a total low blow.... I admit that there is drinking but when I was in highschool people uderage drank and before I was in a fraternity underage people in clubs were drinking all around me... I don't think that was a fair statement... I also know that underage people in Talons drink because some of my friends that were OX were also in Talons... I have seen this with my own eyes as well. There is a bad taste between UNT and the Greek system I saw it when I was there and I hear about it from greeks that are still there. One reason why Greeks don't wear UNT &/or Greek garb with UNT on it is because the school decided that it wanted to make money off of the Greek system and told us that if we had UNT on our shirts we needed to pay them a royalty for using the UNT name...

Just my take on it...

GMG....

[GreenBat]

Last time I checked. There wasn't a royalty charge on the color GREEN

[IronMan4]

If there was, I would be in debt.

[Legal Eagle]

I have to agree with just about everything said here. I was a theta chi at UNT as well (94 rush) and only a few of us ever went to the games (and we had 2 cheerleaders and between 2 and 4 players on the team at all times).

When we do get games that are within driving distance, at least they travel decently.

[CaraBear]

I have alot to say about Frat boys, but Im not gonna say it all here.

I do want to comment on what they wear to the games though, if they even show up at the game. Ive noticed that they wear everything EXCEPT green, whether its a shirt with their frat letters on it or some abercrombie or eddie bauer shirt. A previous post said the university wouldnt let them put UNT on a shirt? well then, whats so hard about going to the school bookstore or someplace like that and actually buying a green North Texas shirt in support of your school? Do you HAVE to be wearing your letters? OH WAIT i forgot that a frat boy needs to always wear his letters in order to get some freshman girl to follow him around all night.

I bet if a frat boy showed up in a green UNT shirt he would also be wearing an A&M hat or something like that.

Im not trying to be judgemental or anything......its just something I have noticed. Dont even get me started on what the sorority girls were wearing at the UNT-TCU game.

[UNTSIG]

As the President of one of the fraternities on campus, I am sorry but I do take offense to what you say. We do support our athletics program! It pisses me off when people like yourself start posting stuff against STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS! Do you not understand that you are part of the problem? Instead of sitting on a message board and griping about it...DO SOMETHING! Do you know any members of fraternities and sororites? If the Greeks didn't support this university, let me tell you of a few things you wouldn't see...homecoming parade- who do you think builds the majority of floats for that? 400-500 lest students at the game...do you honestly think that we come to the game and sit in the parking lot? We have fraternity houses a mile away....we could sit over there! NT40 (top 40 students at NORTH TEXAS) is almost all Greek! We make a majority of the STUDENT GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION! I could keep going but it is obvious that people like yourself have no clue, so there is really no sense in it. Please remember that we are students too and yes a lot of us come to this site, PLEASE SHUT UP ABOUT US! We are one of the VERY FEW STUDENT GROUPS WHO SUPPORT OUR UNIVERSITY and for you to sit there and talk badly about us is ridiculous! Get a life or talk about our offense because I think we have a lot more problems to talk about than our "Greek support"!

[UNT96]

This is gonna be long, because I am offended by your post.. So if you are not inerested in this subject go ahead and hit the BACK button right now on your computer.

Rag on the student Greeks all you want, I was a student Greek and could really care less about NT athletics. Our priorities were on tons of other things except winning the homecoming float parade competition, of which without the Greeks would be a three float parade with some little old ladies attempting to throw gum at the kids being the gist of it. The alumni are a different story. They are the Greeks that fill up the stadium alumni side every game (as best they can).. You don't notice them because they are grown men and women and don't where t-shirts anymore, but none the less they are the biggest supporters of the school before and AFTER graduation. Something no other group can claim with a straight face.

On the shirt thing.. individual fraternities and sororities have national colors. My fraternities colors were blue and white. If you see lots of fraternity shrts in diiferent colors, 9 times out of 10 it will be the groups national color. I don't see anyone on here jumping on the Clarkies for having their color as Red??!!! And the University has a RIDICULOUS licensing system. There was only one screen printer in all of town that can print the logo or even put the initial UNT on a shirt. The school charges an outragious licensing fee and that screen printer had to charge about 25% more than anyone else because of it. Due to this, they were rarely used... although my group used them to get the logo and the name. Other shirt printers have been harrassed and threatened by the school. We even had a shirt company out of Norman doing our shirts for us because we figured they would never mess with them and they slapped cease and assist BS type of thing onthem for printing the words University of North Texas without having the license to do it. You want to know why it is so damn hard to find NT gear anywhere??? This is why.

It is always easy to throw blame on student groups but the fact is the Greeks are social clubs, not athletic clubs and are not created to support the athletic events. I believe that they have and continue to be the biggest supporters. Consider this, the Greek population at our school is fairly small percentage wise. There are about 1500 greeks out of 30,000 students. Those 1500 people are very visible at every game and so much that you have to comment on them. Theie alumni are what really are the important aspects of how they relate to the University. There is a large group of donors that I know that are former Greeks. Consequesntly it was a brother that finally did get me interested in the football team. I think if you look at it across the board they do much more good than harm, they are just held to a higher standard for some reason.

Not everyone is a Talon, in fact.. up until this year I have never seen more than 10 Talons at any game of any type and they are the "official" supporters of the program and it's traditions. I don't know if this is because there were never more than 10 members or if they were just spread out, but it would seem that they could certainly do a better job of recuitment and visibility. I know that I still sit in the student section at every football game and I am surrounded by Greeks. You can't tell me that they don't come, if you really think that you are just blind or not looking. People in glass houses should not throw stones.

There are 220 members of this board. Of that 220, I would be willing to bet that Greeks or ex-Greeks account for 30% of the members. You might not think this is a big thing, but consider that the Greeks only account for 1/25th of the student population (less than 4%) on a good year..

I also hope you have a sense of pride driving down Greek row. Having alumni building million dollar houses on campus property for no profit other than to give back to their school and fraternity. They do not own the land, and at any time can get screwed over by the school just like KA. Yet they continue to build and give back. 8 houses built or building.. 3 more to come in the next 2 years. You tell me what student group gives back more to a school than this? Greeks are not atheltic supporting orgamizations. They are social clubs for networking and getting laid. That is all, nothing more, nothing less. You should worry about yourself instead of others.

Saying something as stupid as "What is the deal with those Greeks" and then talking about an inident with two or three of them at the game is the same EXACT thing as saying, what is the deal with those Black people, or what is the deal with the Chinese? In all visible groups, there are people that make the whole look bad. But that is probably because you are not looking for the good. What is the deal with the Greeks? The best damn thing on campus and you should think about finding a house for yourself to join. You would be a better rounded person as a result of it and a little more tolerant of others. Think about it.

[IronMan4]

Those 1500 people are very visible at every game and so much that you have to comment on them.

I comment because they never wear school colors and they wear other schools merchandise to our games.

You can't tell me that they don't come, if you really think that you are just blind or not looking.

After complaining about the title of my post, you didn't read the subtitle. I said more than once "Hey at least they came", and that was the only positive I could get out of it.

Not everyone is a Talon, in fact.. up until this year I have never seen more than 10 Talons at any game of any type and they are the "official" supporters of the program and it's traditions. I don't know if this is because there were never more than 10 members or if they were just spread out, but it would seem that they could certainly do a better job of recuitment and visibility.

Well before I took an indefinite break from Talons this semester (because of my classes mainly), I was recruitment chair and I believe they are over 30 pledges going through training right now.

Also, this was not meant to be "Why Talons is better than greek". This post is wondering what the deal with the greeks is.

Greeks are not atheltic supporting orgamizations.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

Saying something as stupid as "What is the deal with those Greeks" and then talking about an inident with two or three of them at the game is the same EXACT thing as saying, what is the deal with those Black people, or what is the deal with the Chinese?

It is not the exact same thing. I am not racist or close to it. And if you would have read my post closely, you wouldve seen that I said I have seen this kind of thing all the time since I started going here, but decided to keep my mouth shut. I didn't this time, and that's just the latest occurence.

What is the deal with the Greeks? The est damn thing on campus anyou shouls think about finding a house for yourself to join. You would be a better rounded person as a result of it and a little more tolerant of others.

I have noticed that greeks are very tolerant of others. They may even let it slide if you forget to wear an abercrombie shirt with the standard khaki shorts, sandals, and another schools hat.

[IronMan4]

For UNT SIG

Do you not understand that you are part of the problem? Instead of sitting on a message board and griping about it...DO SOMETHING!

Ok I have missed one men's bball game. Zero women's bball games. Zero football games, and have traveled to NMSU, UT, TCU, and NO to see them play. Wearing green everytime. What do I need to do?

Do you know any members of fraternities and sororites?

Yes a close friend of mine is a greek. They are underage and yet constantly get drunk with the other members of his/her organization's blessings. Also he/she has not been to a game yet, and owns no UNT apparel.

We are one of the VERY FEW STUDENT GROUPS WHO SUPPORT OUR UNIVERSITY and for you to sit there and talk badly about us is ridiculous! Get a life or talk about our offense because I think we have a lot more problems to talk about than our "Greek support"!

Ok then I CHALLENGE you UNTSIG, as president of your frat, to get ALL your membership at the game in GREEN! Then nobody could say anything bad about you all! If I and others saw that, there would be praise and not ridicule! I think our offense would look a lot better if our special teams gave us some field position, and I don't know why our offensive line has been playing below thier potential lately.

[SteaminWillieBeamin]

I was irritated by the guy wearing a unt greek shirt and a bright blue cap with a red pony on the front. Every time I looked toward the field -- all I could see was the acronymn SMU in front of me. I don't understand this.

He goes to UNT, but wears other schools' clothes? This isn't rocket science.

I am not saying ALL greeks do it, nor am I saying they are the ONLY ones to do it... I do only tend to see the A&M, TT, UT and SMU hats on them.

I live in Dallas and went to the TCU game. Afterwards I drove up to UNT to go hit the bars and talk to people about the game. The bartender at Cool Beans asked the score, but then said he really didn't care because he is a TT fan. He went on to say that he graduated from UNT, but likes TT better.

It confuses me.

[EagleChick03]

Ok....I have a lot of friends in fraternities and I would have to say that of all the people I know at UNT, they are the most supportive and enthusiastic about North Texas athletics and our school in general. And most of them do wear green to the games. They have green shirts printed with UNT GREEKS and then their respective letters underneath that. They make it out to the games, support our school and maybe get there a little late or leave a little earlier occasionally but alteast they are in attendance!!!! What can we say about the rest of our freakin apathetic student body?!?!?! Where were the other 28,000 kids we go to school with?!?!?!

I just think we shouldn't piss off the groups who actually do give their support even if its not exactly the way you'd like to see it given.

[Guest ipEAGLE]

Hmmm i dont really know what make of this post since i dont go to school at UNT yet, but all i know is that next yr I will be at every game with my face painted green

[IronMan4]

Steamin, my thoughts exactly...SMU???

Also EagleChick, for the gazillionth time, I said more than once "At least they went".

ipEagle, I look forward to seeing you there!

[EagleChick03]

Yes....I think we all agree its good they were there and yes I think we all agree its REALLY stupid that a lot of them wear the wrong schools hats/shirts/whatever....yes this is annoying and it makes me really mad too...but I don't know how that can ever change until the whole attitude problem we have at our school changes. Its sad and I don't see an immdiate solution to it so I don't know.........

[IronMan4]

but I don't know how that can ever change until the whole attitude problem we have at our school changes. Its sad and I don't see an immdiate solution to it so I don't know.........

That is the best outlook on this subject so far. In a way, the greeks are represenative of the student body as a whole.

I was just under the impression that they were bigger supporters of the university than the joe schmo student, as they say they are and I guess my expectations for them are too high.

[SilverEagle]

"Greeks are not atheltic supporting orgamizations. They are social clubs for networking and getting laid. That is all, nothing more, nothing less."

Am I the only one that noticed this quote? You know, if you're going to admit to shallow motivations of the greek system, you could have at least included "getting drunk" between "networking" and "getting laid". Or you could have put it before "networking". Just a suggestion.

And later in the same post...

"Our priorities were on tons of other things except winning the homecoming float parade competition..."

In light of the first quote, were those priorities "doing tons of networking" and "getting laid tons of times?" Thanks to you, altruism has a new meaning.

[UNT96]

Does the truth bother you or saying it out loud? I am not one for PC crap.. I like to tell it like it is. It's funny that you picked out the two negative things that I admitetd to dealing with the subject of Greeks. Greeks are VERY used to that. They consistently raise tens of thousands of dollars for local charities, support the University before and after graduation, and give back more than the common student; yet the only time you see anything about a Greek is something negative.

By the way, the Greeks do not get any "funding" budgeted from the University to put on the Homecoming Parade. I wonder if Bonfire would be as wonderful or even more wonderful if it was privately funded. I know that the members of the Greek system could really use a big fat check from the University to put on the parade but it would never happen because they have a couple of letters across their shirts. I am meaning to make this a Talons against Greek thing but it was initiated by a Talon and this is usually what happens when a group has a good "rush".. they get big heads and think they are bigger and better than they really are. I think all of the groups should be tolerent of one another and accept their differences.

Being Greek is about networking.. both socially and financially. If you aren't Greek.. than you just cannot understand. There is way too much insecurity when dealing with attitudes towards Greeks. But anytime the school realing needs them they always come through. Especially when it comes to supporting the athletic programs.

As for the getting laid comment.. that is not just Greeks, that is about being in college. Being Greek just greatly increases your odds!

[JayDub]

Umm, IronMan isn't even a Talon anymore. Just thought I'd throw that out there.