My Bookmarking Buddy.

Apparently there are not many people dedicating their life to research on college Greek life. After searching numerous social bookmarking sites and a plethora of resource databases, I came across only a handful of users who had bookmarked more than a couple sites on the topic.

Jreading was one such user, whom I found as I was browsing through article titles on citeulike.org. While Jreading was not quite the bookmarking maven I was hoping for, she had a collection of 28 sites dedicated to the issue of young adults entering college. One of her largest categories uses the tags “fraternity” “greekstudents” and “sorority”, which is where I was able to obtain a wealth of information on differences between students who were involved in Greek life compared to those who were not.

Most of the articles that were tagged were actually based on scientific research—study after study that analyzed the correlation between alcohol consumption and Greek life participation, the relationship between academic dishonesty in sorority women, sexual orientation with respect to fraternity life and so on. I was thrilled with Jreading’s findings because most of the articles I have found thus far have been anecdotal or circumstantial evidence. These articles, however, were peer-reviewed and published in academic journals, giving me a more concrete foundation for information on my topic.

Each site jreading has bookmarked is denoted with a short paragraph summary of the article’s contents, making it very easy to browse through her links and pinpoint exactly what I would be interested in reading and what is irrelevant.

One of the most interesting articles I came across was titled, “Gay and Greek: The Identity Paradox of Gay Fraternities”. The article chronicled the foundation of Delta Lambda Phi, a nation-wide Greek fraternity for gay men. Fraternities are based upon the traditions of brotherhood, family, acceptance and inclusion; college students and more importantly gay men are searching for their place in the world and a fraternity is a great place to foster community. With such a large LGBT community here at USC, I was surprised that we did not have a chapter chartered on campus.

On another note, I was disappointed to find that jreading was not linked to any groups or authors that could lead me beyond her site. Though she has been a member of citeulike.org since 2008, she has only bookmarked a total of 28 sites, which is a very minimal amount, and I am uncertain if she will be able to provide more information beyond what she already has flagged.

However, after power browsing through some of the links that jreading’s bookmarks referred to, I stumbled upon the crowning glory of my research—a book titled “Inside Greek U: Fraternities, Sororities, and the Pursuit of Pleasure, Power and Prestige” by Alan D.DeSantis. Though I could not find the text online, I was able to locate a hard copy at Doheny library. Reading the summary provided by the USC library database, I was immediately fascinated by the content this book might have to offer.

Gold.

 “DeSantis, himself once a member of a fraternity, shows the profoundly limited gender roles available to Greeks: “real men” are taught to be unemotional, sexually promiscuous, and violent; “nice girls,” to be nurturing, domestic and pure. These rigid formulations often lead to destructive attitudes and behaviors, such as eating disorders, date rape, sexual misconduct, and homophobia…” 

Not only does the author go into explicit detail on the psyche of Greek-lettered students, but he also relates his findings to the larger social backdrop and culture that stems from fraternities and sororities. This is everything I could have ever hoped for and more.