50 Fun Facts About Fraternities and Sororities

Animal House drew on co-writer Chris Miller's fraternity days on which Ivy League campus?

Dartmouth College is where Miller joined Alpha Delta, and many of the film's characters and their nicknames were based on his fraternity brothers there.

In the 2001 film Legally Blonde, Elle Woods is a proud member of which fictional sorority?

Delta Nu is Elle's house at a Los Angeles university, and a former member of the same sorority turns out to be the defendant in the murder case she works on at Harvard.

Which Greek-letter honor society was founded at the College of William & Mary in 1776?

Phi Beta Kappa began as a secret society and set the precedent for naming American college societies after the initials of a Greek motto.

As a student, Kamala Harris joined which sorority, whose colors are salmon pink and apple green?

Alpha Kappa Alpha held its first Ivy Day in 1909 by planting ivy on campus, and later named its magazine the Ivy Leaf.

Before a professor coined the word sorority in 1882, Greek-letter groups for female students were called what?

Women's fraternities is still the official label of several groups; Latin professor Frank Smalley proposed the new word because fraternity sounded wrong to him for a group of ladies.

The historically Black fraternities and sororities of the National Pan-Hellenic Council share which nickname?

The Divine Nine got the name from author Lawrence Ross, who coined the phrase as the title of his history of the nine organizations.

Fraternity rush is said to be named for members hurrying to greet freshmen arriving by what transport?

Trains full of incoming freshmen were met at the station by rival fraternities, Baird's Manual says, and each recruit won was pinned with a lapel badge to mark him as taken.

Which 1984 comedy set at Adams College inspired a real fraternity named Lambda Lambda Lambda?

Revenge of the Nerds gave its heroes the Tri-Lambs, and in 2006 students at the University of Connecticut founded a co-ed fraternity under the same letters.

Which fraternity, whose members included Martin Luther King Jr., led the drive to build his memorial in Washington?

Alpha Phi Alpha conceived and funded the memorial beside the National Mall; the fraternity grew out of a Cornell study club in 1906 and uses the Great Sphinx as its symbol.

The TikTok craze known as RushTok began in 2021 with videos of sorority recruitment on which Southern campus?

University of Alabama recruits posted their outfits of the day, the hashtag drew billions of views, and a film crew followed four students for a 2023 documentary.

What three-letter word names the formal invitation to join a fraternity or sorority after recruitment?

A bid only counts once it is accepted; the recruit then starts a probationary new-member period that ends with initiation.

What term describes a recruit whose parent or sibling already belongs to the fraternity or sorority being rushed?

A legacy traditionally meant the child or sibling of a member, though some organizations have widened the definition to other relatives.

What name was traditionally given to the final, harshest stretch of hazing faced by fraternity pledges?

Hell Week has been recast on some campuses as Help Week, with the days of torment replaced by community service.

Which percussive dance of stomps, claps and chants is a showpiece of historically Black fraternities and sororities?

Stepping uses the whole body as an instrument, and each group guards its signature moves, such as Kappa Alpha Psi's routines with canes.

In which 2003 comedy do characters played by Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn start their own fraternity?

Old School has the trio exploit a university loophole to open a fraternity to anyone, student or not, which is how an elderly war veteran called Blue ends up a brother.

Which 2014 comedy pits new parents played by Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne against a fraternity led by Zac Efron?

Neighbors was released in some countries as Bad Neighbours, and its 2016 sequel carried the subtitle Sorority Rising.

In Pixar's Monsters University, Mike enters the Scare Games with which small fraternity of misfits?

Oozma Kappa takes Mike in after the top house on campus, Roar Omega Roar, turns him down for not looking scary enough.

Which American Idol winner is an alumna of Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma?

Carrie Underwood belongs to the sorority's Alpha Iota chapter and graduated magna cum laude in 2006, the year after she won the show.

Which director drew on his Morehouse years for a 1988 musical about fraternity pledges at a Black college?

Spike Lee wrote, directed and starred in School Daze, which follows the Gammites, a line of recruits hazed by their Big Brothers during homecoming week.

Phi Beta Sigma fraternity and Zeta Phi Beta sorority, bound by their constitutions, both began on which Black campus?

Howard University also hosted the 1930 meeting that made the National Pan-Hellenic Council, the umbrella body for Black Greek-letter groups, a permanent organization.

Ronald Reagan joined which fraternity at Eureka College, where he served as president of the local chapter?

Tau Kappa Epsilon started in 1899 as the Knights of Classic Lore, a group that read classic literature together at its weekly meetings.

The Kappa Alpha Society, the oldest surviving social fraternity, was founded in 1825 on which New York campus?

Union College added Sigma Phi and Delta Phi two years later, completing the Union Triad, the trio that set the pattern for social fraternities across North America.

Beta Theta Pi and Phi Delta Theta, two thirds of a famous fraternity triad, were both founded on which Ohio campus?

Miami University in Oxford saw the pair founded in 1839 and 1848, and Delta Zeta sorority and Phi Kappa Tau fraternity followed there in the early 1900s.

Which sorority, founded at DePauw University in 1870, was the first Greek-letter society established for women?

Kappa Alpha Theta grew from Bettie Locke's wish for a Greek-letter group of her own, encouraged by her father, a professor and Beta Theta Pi member; its badge is shaped like a kite.

Which sorority, founded at Monmouth College in Illinois in 1867, wears a golden arrow as its badge?

Pi Beta Phi started life as I.C. Sorosis, and in 1912 it opened a settlement school in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, as its first philanthropy.

Which nautical object, chosen as a symbol of hope, is the emblem of Delta Gamma sorority?

An anchor replaced the sorority's first badge, a plain letter H for Hope, in 1877, and its quarterly magazine has been called the Anchora since 1884.

Kappa Kappa Gamma members wear a small golden version of which everyday object as their badge?

A key was how the founders announced themselves: in October 1870 they walked into the Monmouth College chapel with the golden badges pinned in their hair.

Which sorority, founded at the University of Arkansas in 1895, has initiated more members than any other?

Chi Omega has initiated more than 400,000 women, and since 2002 its chapters have raised money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Which sorority began in 1851 as the Adelphean Society at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia?

Alpha Delta Pi is the oldest secret society for women, yet it took Greek letters only in 1905 and had to alter them in 1913 because a men's fraternity already used Alpha Delta Phi.

Which umbrella body, founded in 1902, represents 26 sororities across the United States and Canada?

The National Panhellenic Conference grew out of a 1902 meeting in Chicago, where Alpha Phi invited eight other groups to agree on common standards for sororities.

Which Yale fraternity, founded in 1844, had both future Presidents Bush serve as president of its chapter?

Delta Kappa Epsilon flags have travelled further still: Robert Peary carried one to the North Pole and astronaut Alan Bean took one to the Moon.

Which fraternity, founded in 1856, is the only surviving national social fraternity born in the Antebellum South?

Sigma Alpha Epsilon broke with a much older tradition in 2014, when it scrapped pledging altogether after deaths and other hazing incidents.

Which fraternity began at Virginia Military Institute as the Legion of Honor, formed after a founder witnessed hazing?

Sigma Nu traces its start to three cadets meeting on a limestone rock at the edge of the parade ground, and its first chapter chose a Latin motto meaning second to none.

Which fraternity was founded in 1865 to help reconcile North and South after the American Civil War?

Alpha Tau Omega was the plan of Otis Allan Glazebrook, who believed Christian brotherly love among young men could help reunite the two sides.

Which Confederate general, then president of Washington College, does Kappa Alpha Order honor as its spiritual founder?

Robert E. Lee was given the title at the order's 1923 convention, decades after his death, and in 1994 the order wrote him into its mission statement.

Zeta Beta Tau, founded in New York in 1898, is recognized as the first fraternity for students of which faith?

Jewish students formed it as a Zionist youth society; it opened to all faiths in 1954 and abolished pledging in 1989 to stamp out hazing.

Which fraternity's white cross badge and Latin motto were inspired by Emperor Constantine's vision before battle?

Sigma Chi founder Benjamin Piatt Runkle helped design the badge, and was once suspended from college for fighting a rival who sneered at it.

Which sorority's founders made their first public act marching in the 1913 women's suffrage march in Washington?

Delta Sigma Theta was less than two months old at the time, and a century later it became the first Black Greek-letter group with a float in the Rose Parade.

Which Harlem Renaissance novelist and folklorist was a member of Zeta Phi Beta sorority?

Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, and in 1948 her sorority became the first Greek-letter organization to charter a chapter in Africa, in Monrovia, Liberia.

Which Supreme Court justice was a member of Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority as a Cornell undergraduate?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg also met her future husband, Martin, on the same campus at the age of 17.

Which astronaut pledged Phi Delta Theta fraternity and lived in its house while studying engineering at Purdue?

Neil Armstrong threw himself into campus life too, writing and co-directing two musicals for the all-student revue.

Which Fox series, first aired in 2015, has a killer in a Red Devil costume stalking the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority?

Scream Queens cast Emma Roberts as the sorority's leader, Chanel Oberlin, and Jamie Lee Curtis as the dean who threatens her and her fellow Chanels.

Which 2008 comedy stars Anna Faris as an outsider who must recruit 30 new members to save an unpopular sorority?

The House Bunny has Faris play Shelley, a Playboy bunny made to leave the mansion who becomes house mother to the struggling women of Zeta Alpha Zeta.

The ABC Family series Greek, which ran from 2007 to 2011, was set on which fictional Ohio campus?

Cyprus-Rhodes University is where freshman Rusty Cartwright joins Kappa Tau Gamma while his older sister Casey is a devoted member of Zeta Beta Zeta.

Which sorority, founded in 1885 by music students at DePauw, wears a badge shaped like a lyre?

Alpha Chi Omega chose the three-stringed lyre as the first instrument played by the Greek gods on Mount Olympus, and its magazine is called The Lyre.

Chi Psi opened America's first fraternity house in 1846 and still calls every chapter house by what name?

A lodge is the word because the 1846 original, at the University of Michigan, was said to look like a hunting lodge.

Which sorority, founded in Farmville, Virginia, in 1898, adopted breast cancer education as its national philanthropy?

Zeta Tau Alpha had no name at first and went by three question marks, a placeholder its founders pronounced Who, Who, Who.

Which kind of costume bash became a campus craze after a famous scene in the 1978 film Animal House?

Toga party scenes in the film echoed real ones: they were already popular at big fraternity weekends when co-writer Chris Miller was a student.

Which fraternity, founded by Freemasons at Ann Arbor in 1904, has a single word for a name instead of Greek letters?

Acacia named its earliest chapters with Hebrew letters instead, and it dropped the rule that members must already be Masons in 1933.

John Belushi's Bluto is a member of which fictional fraternity in the 1978 comedy Animal House?

Delta Tau Chi is the derelict house next door to the snobbish Omegas, and Bluto is the one who rallies its members to strike back at the homecoming parade.