Temple’s Greek life is 73 percent approved, according to the rank it receives on the website GreekRank.com.
With 31 registered fraternities and sororities on campus, many different styles of organizations are incorporated into the grouped rank. Whether one is looking for an academic, social or philanthropic group, students can research Temple Greek life online at GreekRank.com.
“I’ve been here at Temple for almost two years and have decided to finally join a sorority,” an unnamed commentor wrote on GreekRank.com. “I really want an amazing experience, which sorority would be best and why?”
The responses to the above post varied from, “All the sororities work hard with community service and philanthropy, spending hundreds of hours and raising thousands” to “Most [of] the comments on here are left by individuals within Greek life bashing other organizations or promoting their own organization,” and finally, “I had a blast in my sorority … best decision I’ve made at Temple.”
GreekRank.com is designed as a forum for the Greek community. Rankings and discussion pages provide students with the opportunity to address all things Greek, as the aforementioned participant demonstrated.
“All I knew about rushing was from movies,” junior Phi Sigma Pi treasurer Jonah Fowler said.
GreekRank.com attempts to debase common myths about rushing and Greek life. The open forum setting allows students to offer their perceptions of Greek life, whether they are positive or negative.
“Temple’s sorority recruitment is a bit ridiculous. Every girl that rushes gets a bid, which floods the female Greeks with girls who probably don’t belong. Each sorority is oversized and (though usually run by the right girls) has too many people who don’t fit the Greek mindset,” wrote another commenter on GreekRank.com.
Fraternity and sorority chapters must register with GreekRank.com to be eligible for review and ranking. Temple currently has 17 registered fraternities and seven registered sororities out of 31 total Greek chapters. The site, which has been running since 2012, lists fraternities and sororities from each school and links site visitors to forums about Greek life on any selected campus. Not every organization has decided to participate, however.
“Yeah, we’re not even on here,” Fowler said after checking GreekRank.com for the first time. Fowler’s fraternity, an honors co-ed organization, is one of many non-mainstream Greek organizations that have yet to be noted on GreekRank.com’s radar.
Some organizations are represented on GreekRank.com but are not rated and have limited, if any, mention in discussion boards.
“All of the black Greeks do not have any ratings,” senior Alpha Kappa Alphia Technology Chairwoman Courtney Burrell said. “The National Panhellenic [societies] do not have any rankings because we’re more secretive.”
Though the site is not popular among all Greek organizations, Temple’s Greek life has a favorable ranking overall. Alpha Chi Rho is the highest ranked fraternity, with an 80.76 percent approval ranking from 9 reviewers. The lowest ranked frat, Sigma Alpha Mu, comes in at a 61.74 percent approval rating from 11 reviewers.
Sorority Zeta Phi Beta has a 100 percent approval rating, though only it only has one review. Delta Zeta is the lowest ranked sorority with 29 reviews and a 68.69 percent approval ranking. The median score for both fraternities and sororities are within a 60 and 75 percent approval rating, though the number of reviews is largely inconsistent between the different organizations.
Organizations are ranked based on appearance, popularity, classiness, involvement, social life and brotherhood or sisterhood. Each organization can get up to five stars in each category. Their overall star status gives them low, middle or top tier ranking.
Middle tier frat Pi Lambda Phi is commented as having the “best parties” by GreekRank.com user “TuClassof16.”
Top tier sorority Delta Zeta is mentioned by another reviewer, who said the sorority is “trying to do good things with the community and they also seem to party a lot!”
However, not all of the rankings are positive.
“Stuck up and obsessed with themselves and their house … care more about what people think than their sisterhood,” a user called “TU” said regarding the sorority Phi Sigma Sigma.
Another review with the user name “EW” said the Kappa Sigma fraternity brothers are “creepy, that’s all I have to say.”
However, due to the lack of reviews and the discretionary decision on who can review campus Greek life, the validity of GreekRank.com has been questioned.
“I feel like it’s a bunch of Greeks rating themselves,” Fowler said.
Some of the site’s users agree with Fowler, citing the online ratings as incomplete, biased or irrelevant on the page itself. Self-ranking, Greek-on-Greek bashing and general disinterest affects the verification of these reviews.
“The outside looking in is always untrue,” Buller said. “[GreekRank.com] said something about the Zetas, and you could tell they wrote it. It’s a lot of he said, she said.”
Regardless of whether GreekRank.com accurately depicts Greek life on campus, students said they are still unsure of whether or not it is useful.
“I don’t think there’s a ‘best’ frat,” freshman tourism and hospitality management major Helen Van Natta said. “People should join organizations based on their interests and what the organization means to them.”
Lora Strum can be reached at lora.strum@temple.edu
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