Abstract
Active on approximately 800 campuses in the United States and Canada, white fraternities and sororities are ingrained in college culture. Whether your exposure is through movies, news accounts of inexcusable behavior, students displaying Greek letters in your classes, or even through personal membership as an undergraduate, you likely have passing familiarity with Greek life. Few academics, however, have as much insider information as Jana Mathews.
Mathews grew up in a devout Mormon household and attended Brigham Young University, making joining a sorority out of the question. When first hired as a professor of medieval British literature at Rollins College, she had under-enrolled courses and felt unprepared for the culture gap she experienced at the small private liberal arts institution in Florida with a national reputation as a party school. The parallel goals of connecting with her students and increasing enrollments led her to explore ways to learn more about students’ interests. Rollins boasts an above-average participation rate in white fraternities and sororities, so learning about Greek life seemed fitting.
What started as a casual conversation with a table of sorority members led to an invitation to the chapter house and ultimately to join the chapter as an alumna initiate. Soon after enrolling in the sorority, Mathews began serving as the chapter's faculty advisor. Her background and undergraduate experience, far from the realities of a sorority, are why her work is so compelling. The Benefits of Friends: Inside the Complicated World of Today's Sororities and Fraternities stems from the author's journey from having little knowledge of the Greek system to serving as an advisor for several Rollins fraternities and sororities and holding a national-level position with a fraternity.
From 2011 to 2018, Mathews amassed a great deal of experience and access to Greek life at Rollins. As a faculty advisor to multiple chapters, she helped with philanthropic fundraising, recruitment, member development, and party chaperoning, and she picked up the pieces when members faced crises. The author relayed several examples of very personal texts, unexpected overnight guests in her home, and a trip to the emergency room. Leveraging her newly acquired insider status and a desire to learn more, Mathews launched a study of friendships in the Greek system.
Even with Mathews's insights, access to white fraternities and sororities, whether individual chapters or national offices, was difficult. Greek organizations are secretive by design and suspicious of outsiders, particularly academics and journalists. Despite multiple roadblocks, the author visited the national headquarters of “multiple” sororities, three national sorority conventions, one national fraternity leadership conference, and “several” workshops on hazing prevention. Data were also collected by shadowing sorority recruitment at three institutions besides Rollins, interviewing members of “multiple” leadership teams, industry consultants, campus fraternity and sorority staff, and representatives of two trade organizations. Snowball sampling and chance meetings resulted in interviewing current members and recent alumni from 55 colleges and universities, predominantly in the South.
As can be seen with my use of quotation marks, most social scientists will find the general description of the study's methodology to be lacking. The reader is only given a vague idea of how data were collected, never knowing how many actual interviews took place. In addition, contacts were made disproportionately at southern institutions and sororities. Despite these critiques, Mathews has done a thorough job with the dissemination of historical research and secondary sources. The book is well researched from a variety of disciplinary perspectives with sociology playing a prominent role.
While the white Greek system on college campuses has had some very high-profile and tragic problems, it remains strong. According to Mathews, over 750,000 students typically participate in fraternities and sororities in the United States and Canada. Like all social institutions with power, property, and prestige, the fact that only approximately 10 percent of college students participate in the Greek system has little to do with the influence they have on college campuses. As social networks and institutions with long histories, the single-sex and primarily single-race organizations shielded by tradition and powerful alumni are a force that deserves scholarly attention. As Mathews explains, she does not take a side as to whether Greek organizations should stay on campuses (hint, they are staying), but considers what holes would need to be filled if they were gone. More realistically, Mathews argues that studying Greek friendships is important because of the immense power and cultural influence wielded by these organizations.
Mathews begins the exploration of friendships within the Greek system by asserting that the pervasiveness of hookup culture has changed dating and close same-sex platonic relationships on college campuses. In outlining the case, the historical swing from the exclusion of women on campuses to an unbalanced sex ratio of 60 women to 40 men is used to explore how controlling the dating script continues to be a finely honed practice among fraternities. Mathews also explains how members of sororities leverage sisterhood to function within hookup culture, although she is clear that men maintain the power in dating. This is on full display in the author's portrayal of how misogyny informs the way fraternity members often describe and treat women. Two areas in which following more rigid research protocols would have been helpful to the author's case are in the claims that some chapters recruit gay and lesbian members to help secure dates for the majority straight members, and the hint of same-sex sexual encounters between straight-identifying sisters and brothers. The casual nature of reporting interview data makes it difficult to determine if Mathews reported every case she encountered or provided examples representing a much larger pattern.
Through the exploration of hookup culture, Mathews chronicles the common occurrences of risky and illegal behavior such as alcohol and drug use and sexual assault. One of the main contributions of the work is the way defining friends as sisters and brothers perpetuates misogyny and rape culture within Greek life. For example, the author reports how victims of sexual assault often place more blame on the breakdown in the buddy system among sorority sisters than on the criminal activity of men.
Because the author had greater access to sororities, there was more opportunity to examine topics such as magazine-worthy designs of chapter houses and the impact of membership size. While seemingly trivial, they contribute to an understanding of how the physical environment and the number of sisters can impact how close, or family-like, members feel. Readers will find the discussion of chapter size and friendship formations to be most intriguing but will also notice a disproportionate reliance on secondary sources. When focusing on fraternities, Mathews also favors secondary sources over interview data but does an excellent job describing how hazing and warfare analogies are used to strengthen bonds among members. Other strengths include the discussion of inherent racism of white Greek organizations and the comparison of the differences between fraternities and sororities in harnessing the power of alumni networks to help launch the careers of new graduates.
While it would be unfair to hold Matthews to the methodological standards of another discipline, it is fair to point out that the methods and analysis are often not clearly articulated enough for social scientists. Beyond that critique, The Benefits of Friends is a captivating book that expertly incorporates historical and contemporary literature from a variety of disciplines. With these strengths and the relevance of the topic to college students, the book could be used in a variety of sociology courses to examine how traditions, gender dynamics, and sexual expression are affected by power, prestige, racism, misogyny, classism, and organizational memberships.