Greeks and National Affiliation

First, I must begin by declaring my affiliation with the Delta Gamma Chapter of Sigma Nu Fraternity. Like any organization, it's had its ups and downs, but I can honestly say that I feel very lucky to be associated with so many wonderful brothers.

I, however, cannot say that I can honestly support the national affiliation of my fraternity and fraternities in general. The hierarchical and infrastructural system created in 1869 is beyond outdated and does not reflect the purposes and needs of the modern fraternity. Sigma Nu is founded on the tenets of love, honor, and truth:

To Believe in the Life of Love,
To Walk in the Way of Honor,
To Serve in the Light of Truth,
This is the Life, the Way, and the Light of Sigma Nu --
This is the Creed of our Fraternity.

Poor capitalization and punctuation aside, this creed is both decidedly vague and utterly unmentioned in the rushing process. Chapters do not emphasize it, nor should they. At the same time, I have heard it both used and misused, and it is no more than an equivocal statement with which one cannot honestly disagree. The endless paperwork and "support network" requested and provided by the national headquarters add little to nothing to the experience of being a brother, and this rhetoric merely represents the unthinking hierarchy that the old-school fraternities still aim to maintain. It's not difficult to come up with theodicies explaining away the national affilitaion, but that does not justify these ties.

Fraternities as they have become redefined are no longer centers of ideology. Most liberal college campuses have moved far beyond that, and other institutions have become leading centers for ideology. Additionally, with a diversification of such intellectual ideas and ideologies, it's impossible to capture one singular idea within the context of a far-reaching national fraternity. As numbers increase, the ideology necessarily becomes vague and diluted.

Another important problem is that the values often embodied take on a "slave" valuation of morality, as characterized by Nietzsche. The following quote comes from his first essay in the Geneology of Morals. Just like the values of the Christian institution cited here, these values of "love, honor, and truth" are no more than slave valuations of morality.

--And what do they call that which serves to console them for all the suffering of life--their phantasmagoria of anticipated future bliss?

--"What? Do I hear aright? They call that "the Last Judgment,' the coming of their kingdom, of the 'Kingdom of God'--meanwhile, however, they live 'in faith,' 'in love,' 'in hope.'"

--Enough! Enough!

What, then, can a national affiliation provide a fraternity? Fraternities have a positive associational aspect to them which is highly valuable, and provide a certain flexibility in action as well as a communal residential opportunity not available elsewhere. They are perhaps as close as one can find of a Marxist species-life on a modern American college campus, with collective material projects taken on, and--with the exception of their national affiliations--free from the constraints of a singular, forward-moving agenda.

Of course, practically speaking, the system requires a national affiliation. Even newly founded fraternities will find themselves to be proselytizing and spreading chapters to other colleges, but perhaps we ought to think as a community as to why we are involved in Greek life in the first place. Is it the values and ideologies, or the friends and people? What was it in its conception and what is it now? Should we stay true to the "intentions" of our ancestors or have we transcended the molds they've created for us?