College is a place to further one's education and attempt to make dreams come true. But there's more to college than just obtaining a degree and heading into the real world. College is about the friendships, the all-nighters and the memories. If someone doesn't have any wacky stories to tell their children about their college days then they did college wrong.
When students step onto a college campus for the first time as freshmen, they are exposed to multiple clubs and organizations that are trying to recruit potential new members. There is an odd notion on college campuses that being in a club is not the “cool” thing to do. However, being a part of something more is the best route to having a complete college experience. Whether students join student government groups, an athletic team or a club, they should do something. Those club booths at the beginning of the school year are the college’s way of saying, “Hey there, don’t just stay in your dorm room and watch Netflix all day!”
What is a fraternity?
Last fall, Tomoya Takahashi grew bored sitting in his room all day, so he took a stroll to downtown McMinnville. On the way, the exchange student from Yokohama, Japan, saw a few houses with Greek letters on them. Not knowing what a fraternity was, he was taken back by American culture.
“What a confusing place,” he thought to himself.
This confusion is not specific to international students. It is apparent that, before going to college, students have no idea what a fraternity is. And it is possible that even those who are already in college still have no idea what the purpose of fraternity life is.
Fraternity and sorority life creates lifelong bonds, while also giving college students an opportunity to get involved on campus and in the local community. However, movies such as Animal House and Neighbors give FSL organizations a bad rap. Media often portray fraternities as a source of social life, and nothing more.
- “It’s all about social status.”
- “They only joined for the parties.”
- “All they do is drink alcohol or do drugs."
- “There are so many instances of sexual assault and hazing.”
These are just a few of the many stereotypes that American society has of fraternities. To an extent, many of these stereotypes have been proven by past cases, but those stereotypes only cover a small handful of the entire FSL system. As a result, many students, with a little help from their parents and society, choose not to get involved with fraternities.
One group in particular that has been discouraged from joining fraternities is student-athletes. Student-athletes are busy. From morning workouts to classes to long evenings of practice, the day in the life of a student-athlete can be grueling.
Linfield fraternity life
Then there’s Linfield College, a small liberal arts college in the heart of Oregon wine country. Linfield offers more than 50 clubs and organizations, as well as 19 Division III athletic programs. The figure that stands out most, however, is the FSL population. According to the 2016 Linfield Student Body Overview, 27 percent of men at Linfield are in fraternities.
Fraternities are popular on the Linfield campus, but contrary to the stereotypes, many of the men in Linfield fraternities are student-athletes. The two largest chapters on campus are Pi Kappa Alpha and Theta Chi. Pi Kappa Alpha, or “Pike” has 55 total members. Twenty of those members are student-athletes.
“I think athletes go Greek because they find a community on their sports teams and want to grow that community,” Asa Richerson, president of Pi Kappa Alpha, said.
Having a sense of community is important at a school with a small student body. For some college men, being a part of a collegiate sports team is enough to have a fulfilling college experience. But others look for a place to belong on campus outside of their sports teams.
Theta Chi fraternity’s Delta Alpha chapter at Linfield is highly saturated with student-athletes, primarily football, baseball and basketball players. Theta Chi has 65 initiated members on its roster. Out of those, 53 are student-athletes, and seven out of the remaining members are former Linfield student-athletes. It makes one wonder: Why are there so many athletes in this chapter, and is it an outlier?
To compare numbers with a neighboring Division I school, Oregon State University’s Theta Chi chapter also has 65 active members. None of those members are student-athletes.
Linfield doesn't stand alone in the D3 realm
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a private Division III university located in Troy, New York, also has a Theta Chi chapter with a bevy of members who are on the RPI football team, or were a part of the football team in the past before deciding to stop playing sports. In fact, out of the 52 members on roster, only two brothers have never played football for RPI at any point during their college careers. Those two members compete in track and field.
RPI Theta Chi president, Samuel Lednyak, plays offensive line for the Engineers. Lednyak said that his chapter’s history has always been full of football players. And since that is the case, a lot of the recruiting that the chapter’s football players do can be done just by noticing how teammates act every day on the field.
“On the field, our football program’s ideals coincide very closely with Theta Chi’s ideals of building and accepting the most resolute of men,” Lednyak said. “Without bias, we welcome others, but with the chapter’s recent reputation of being an athlete and football chapter at RPI, that is the crowd we tend to draw.”
Lednyak commented on why he thinks football has taken over Theta Chi at RPI. The football players arrive on campus before everyone else moves in for the fall semester. That gives them a lot of time to bond in the locker room. Since many of the Theta Chi members are on the football team, they have extra time to recruit those potential new members. On top of that, Division III athletics isn’t as demanding and time-consuming as Division I athletics, so it’s easy for fraternities to plan events around athletic teams’ schedules.
“We get to know everyone like the back of our hands,” he said. “Division III most definitely plays a role in RPI having a lot of athletes joining Greek life. Our school also has other chapters that have been localized by other teams.”
CHRIS STINCHCOMB
Chris Stinchcomb is a senior in Linfield's Theta Chi who is also a defensive tackle on the football team. When the Vallejo, California native first decided to begin the recruitment process for Theta Chi, he didn't know what he was getting himself into. He primarily chose to rush a fraternity because his best friend was doing it too, so he tagged along. There were also six members of his football position group already initiated into the fraternity, so being a part of a second brotherhood with the men that he spends every day with at practice sounded ideal.
“I saw the relationships that my friends had and felt like I was missing something in my college experience,” Stinchcomb said.
Stinchcomb knew that he would be well taken care of in Theta Chi because he already knew many of the brothers in the chapter. What he didn't know, though, was why he wanted to be in a fraternity. Shortly after being initiated, he would find out just that.
“After going Greek, I realized it was more than just joining a group of guys that I was already friends with from my first year and a half in college. I was able to see the inclusivity and relationships between men that were in fraternities," he said.
Playing football and being in a fraternity keeps Stinchcomb busy throughout the entire week. Not to mention, he also works as a student assistant in the Linfield mailroom. On any given day during football season, he would go to class, then go to work, then head over to the football field for practice until 8 p.m. And on some nights after dinner, he would have to head back to campus for more football meetings.
The only off day for the football team: Sunday. Stinchcomb would love to kick back and watch some TV for once, but Sundays are when Theta Chi has its chapter meetings and events. So when he finally gets a break from football, he finds himself busy with his fraternity.
“Sunday is the only real day you have off from football, and that’s the busiest day with meetings for Theta. They are both things that you need to make time for while you’re participating in both,” he said.
Outside of school, work, football and Theta Chi, Stinchcomb is also the president of the Linfield Cozine Conservation Corps. The Cozine Conservation Corps is a Linfield club dedicated to restoring a healthy ecosystem in the Cozine Creek area just north of the Linfield campus. The club partners with the Great Yamhill Watershed Council, and has met once a month this school year.
As an environmental studies major, Stinchcomb takes pride in preserving the nature around the creek, but he also takes pride in his work for a different reason. The club fits in well with both football and fraternity life. Since he is a member of both, he naturally knows a lot of people from multiple Linfield organizations. For him to be able to reach out to members of the student-athlete community and the FSL community has given the club more exposure.
“As a member of both communities, it gives me a group of people to reach out to and hopefully get them to participate and be involved at Linfield,” he said.
To be able to reach out to a wide variety of students is special, but to be able to wear his fraternity’s letters while committing to service has allowed him to become a spitting image of what it means to be a fraternity man on the Linfield campus.
“We all work together and work hard,” he said. “I feel like it represents Theta Chi pretty well because through work parties that I coordinated, I was able to showcase some of our brothers in front of different groups such as the environmental studies department and the Greater Yamhill Watershed Council.”
If Stinchcomb weren’t involved with Greek life, he’d still have football. But if he didn't have football, life at Linfield without Theta Chi would have be difficult. Many Linfield athletes, as stated earlier, decide to join fraternities. Unfortunately, some of these student-athletes decide to stop playing varsity sports, but Stinchcomb said that a major reason why these men stay at Linfield is because of the FSL community.
“From my experience, many of the people I have met chose to attend Linfield for athletics. A good number of them chose to stick with their sport, but a good amount of people also move on from their sport, and fraternities at Linfield are what I believe is the reason a good amount of them are still attending school here. Greek life becomes such a big part of our lives that it fills the void that is left after they stop playing sports," he said.
Theta Chi has fulfilled Stinchcomb’s college experience. And he isn’t the only one, as there are many other fraternity men who have had similar experiences. No pun intended, tackling football with school and extracurricular activities isn't an easy task. But being at a Division III school like Linfield has given Stinchcomb the opportunity to do just that. It’s something that he said wouldn't have been possible had he attended a large Division I college or university, regardless of whether he was a student-athlete or not.
“If I went to a Division I school as either an athlete or a non-athlete, I wouldn't have rushed a fraternity,” he said. “I really believe that at a bigger school, there would have been more offered that may have kept me more occupied or involved on campus.”
Sam Gomez
Sam Gomez is the president of Linfield’s Theta Chi Fraternity. The junior from Happy Valley, Oregon, is also a defensive tackle on the Linfield football team. But the route that Gomez took to get to Theta Chi was a little different than Stinchcomb’s.
During his freshman year, Gomez made some immature decisions that led to his departure of the college. Since his return to Linfield last year, he has had a change in mindset. He was determined to prove to himself, his family, his teammates and his classmates that he belonged on the Linfield campus. His return gave him a chance at redemption in more areas than one.
Reconnecting with the friends and teammates that he had left after his freshman year scared Gomez at first because he wasn't sure if they thought of him differently since he had left them for two years. But those same peers took him in with open arms and were glad to see him back with a mission.
Technically still sophomore standing when he returned to Linfield last spring, Gomez had a lot of time left to make the most of life at Linfield. And very much like Stinchcomb, Gomez turned to Theta Chi. After proving his commitment on the football field and in the classroom, the fraternity has given him a second chance to show that he can be committed on campus to something other than sports.
Gomez had just reestablished himself on the football team. And there are other clubs and organizations on campus that he could have signed up for. So why join a fraternity?
“Go Greek because all of the opportunities that sprout from it. From leadership roles to organizing events, I feel like the skills it develops go beyond the normal student experience,” Gomez said.
The next question: Why Theta Chi? Gomez admits that he considered joining another fraternity on campus, but after considering what both organizations had to offer, it was clear that Theta Chi was the better fit for him. Theta Chi has a rich history of athletes, primarily athletes from his very own football program. Since he is used to having a sense of camaraderie on the gridiron, bonding with a group of men who share those same values meant everything.
“I gained a new family,” he said. “Theta Chi is a brotherhood, which is the most outstanding value to me. So I wanted to be a part of that. The bond that the Theta brothers shared seemed deeper than any other fraternity to me.”
Playing football and being in a fraternity tests commitment every day. However, being committed and loyal in both social circles has allowed Gomez to strengthen his relationships with his Linfield peers. And he understands that it’s not so much that Linfield gives him time for both, as it is he making time out of his busy schedule for both. Becoming a fraternity man means he has to be willing to make sacrifices.
Prior to joining Theta Chi, Gomez would have been hesitant when asked whether or not he would have rushed a fraternity had he attended a larger school. Now that he has been initiated into Theta Chi for a year, he looks at fraternities differently.
“A fraternity offers a chance to be loyal to something much bigger than yourself. I think students rush fraternities at bigger schools to enhance their normal student experience because they know it is not the same to not be in a fraternity," he said.
As the president of Theta Chi Fraternity, Gomez has seen every aspect of Linfield fraternity life. The good, the bad and the ugly were all worth it for him. Every fraternity has a different set of values, both written and unwritten. However, he has observed that other fraternities on campus have their share of student-athletes. So much, in fact, that it seems a bit odd compared to his preconceived notions of fraternities. Still, he said he thinks he knows the reason why so many Linfield student-athletes are joining fraternities, despite the negative stereotypes.
“The time commitment with Division III sports is so much different than Division I and Division II,” he said. “We play for the love of the game at this level, not because of the opportunity to play professionally. It allows for multiple avenues of life to open up that may not be available at the Division I and Division II levels.”
Through commitment and service, and the opportunity to lead his brothers to a positive image on campus, Gomez has been a good face of Theta Chi. His secret: Getting involved and showing up to as many campus events as possible. This doesn't only pertain to Greek life events. Supporting other clubs and athletic teams has been his goal as a leader. And his biggest mission as president is to have his brothers buy in to the same mindset.
“Being a good Theta means being able to represent Linfield well. The two are not exclusive ideas," he said.
Despite all of the negative preconceptions of fraternities, a handful of these Linfield athletes are still contributing to the culture. Linfield's Theta Chi is not an outlier on campus, as there are other chapters with athletes of their own. However, the chapter's student-athlete numbers are astounding. Linfield's Theta Chi is also not the only sporty chapter across the nation, as RPI's Theta Chi also has a large chapter full of football players.
When looking at Division I schools, there's just not much time for student-athletes to join fraternities. Some do, but those are rare cases. It's not until people study Division III schools that they see the rise in attraction in fraternities. With more time on their hands and encouragement from the school to get involved in multiple areas on campus, Division III student-athletes are conclusively more likely to join fraternities.
Every college student belongs to a community. Whether FSL is the way to go is their choice. Either way, fraternities are on the come up.
*Photos courtesy of Kaho Akau, Kelly Bird, Sam Gomez, Kiana Anderson, Samuel Lednyak and Fraternal Composite Service, Inc.*
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About the Author
I am a senior journalism and media studies major at Linfield College. As a member of Theta Chi Fraternity's Delta Alpha chapter, I have noticed a trend in student-athletes joining Linfield's FSL community, which sparked my interest in this project. Being a fraternity man has allowed me to get involved on campus and in the local community. In the past four years, I have seen my fraternity at its worst and at its best. Both have inspired me to make a change in the way society views the FSL community.