Research Blog 9: Argument & Counter-Argument

My argument for this research assignment is Greek Organizations have positive sides to them and not just negative ones. Any time you hear of a fraternity or sorority on the news or the media you hear the words "hazing", "violence", "rape", etc. These are all negative words that make it seem like Greek Life is awful and a bad thing for college students. I want to stress that Greek Organizations contribute a lot to campuses and allows students to be more social and meet new people. Many news articles talk about how greek organizations are not worth joining because of the financial costs and it makes the young college students border line alcoholics. In the article, "The Dark Power Of Fraternities", it talks about how Fraternities are creating bad young men on campus. It states that it makes college students into violent alcoholics. This article brings up all the rape cases and drunk driving cases that happened involving fraternities. This only happens to a certain percentage of college fraternities, not every single one of them. My side of the argument is that there are many frats and sororities with positive things such as involvement on campus and great community service.

Research Blog 8: Interview

For my research assignment I am researching the positive affects of Greek Life on young college students. The media is always bringing up the negatives so I decided to focus on the positives because Greek Life is not a bad thing like most media sources portray it as. I decided to interview somebody from the Greek community at Rutgers. I decided to interview, Mike Irving, one of my Brothers who has been on the Executive Board the past two years. He was the former President last year and is currently the Vice President of my fraternity. I chose to interview this person for my research assignment because he is one of the most involved Brothers in our fraternity based on his positions. He has done so much for our fraternity and he loves the Greek Community. I learned from this interview how much Greek Life can change a person. Mike told me that before joining a greek organization that he was not as outgoing and didn't know that many people. Once he joined a fraternity both of those aspects changed. He became a lot more sociable and met so many different people from all over campus. "Greek Life makes big universities feel a lot smaller" (Irving). This statement is very true in a sense that greek life makes the giant student body into a smaller community. I can use this information from the interview in my research paper to back up how Greek Organizations have positive sides.

michael.irving2@gmail.com

Research Blog 7: Your Case

My chief example in my argument is that Greek Life is always being portrayed negatively but there are many positives to being in a fraternity or sorority. Greek members go on to make more money than non greeks, greeks are more involved on campus, and greeks raise the most money for philanthropies on campus. These are all positives that the media never decides to bring up because they only focus on the violence and drinking of fraternities. I have found some research pertaining to the positive effects of being in Greek Life. One stat shows that more greek life members graduate college than non-greek members. Some details that might be useful to know is that greek life helps young college students learn great social skills and how to interact with others. Being social is a huge advantage in the real world and it all stems from greek life. Greek life allows you to meet so many different kinds of people all over campus and even off campus. It opens many doors for you later on in life because of the networking skills you pick up.

Research Blog Post 6

This visual helps me with my research proposal assignment because of the many positive statistics on this image. All of the facts on this picture pertain to the beneficial sides of being in greek life. Executives of major companies are all part of greek life. Many people feel that the greek life members are degenerates and alcoholics. These stats prove the opposite because they are running major companies across the world. I can use these statistics to help write my research proposal and back up my argument of how greek life has positive sides to it.