For Parents

Sigma Tau Gamma is a fraternity of college men brought together by a set of ideals. You may be wondering what we mean by this. You may be hearing similar statements from other fraternities as well, especially if your son has been considering joining a fraternity. Well, the spirit of a fraternity is a group of people who come together and pool their resources for a common task. This includes anything from something simple, like spending money on something that the group wants, such as a big screen TV or a house on campus, to contributing our time and talents towards common goals. We put our efforts into things such as philanthropy and Carnegie Mellon's Spring Carnival. For someone who's considering joining, this means that he'd be joining an organization dedicated to a set of ideals - Ideals including things like hanging out and playing video games, as well as ideals like being dedicated to Booth, or Greek Feud - Ideals that are always dynamically defined by the current membership.

As much as I'd love to just say who we are, it is often a much more difficult question to answer than just that, especially when you consider that your son would help to shape our ideals. He would contribute to who we are and what we are about. In fact, this is one of the great things about being in a fraternity: when you join a fraternity, not only do you join an organization of men who all support you and who all strive towards common ends, but you get to help shape exactly what ends for which we strive; You get to join an organization full of friends that will help support you in whatever you want, even if it is unrelated to our ideals. In fact, we love to invite members who would help to redefine who we are and what we're about. We hope that, not only will we help to shape and better every one of our members, but that each member helps to shape and better us as a whole.

Despite this difficulty in saying who we are, I can say is that we always stand for a underlying set of ideals - Value, Learning, Leadership, Excellence, Benefit, and Integrity. Even though we do dedicate ourselves to very different things over time, and even though our membership changes every few years, we are always fundamentally motivated by the same principles. Everything we do is geared towards developing ourselves both as individuals, as well as developing ourselves as a group. We respect one another and always strive to incorporate each individual's ideals into our own, alongside our fundamental principles. We strive to teach people to become better leaders to prepare them for the future. We help to make sure that we succeed academically, professionally, and personally. We commit ourselves to one another to ensure success and growth, and form friendships for life. We pride ourselves on caring about the personal development of every member. Unlike other organization on campus, whose primary concerns are completing the task that the organization was created for, and determining whether or not the members are capable of contributing as much as much the organization wants them to, we take a personal interest in what brothers are going through. For instance, if a brother is not doing well in school, rather than deciding whether or not he has enough time to contribute to us, we work with him to make sure that things are going well for him. Sometimes this means scaling back his commitment, or making greater allowances for his absence, but only after discussing it with him to make sure it's be helpful to him.

Parents and students alike, often have reservations about fraternities, especially when it comes to the stereotypes about fraternities. The most prominent stereotype about fraternities is that we're all about drinking and partying. This is a difficult stereotype to address, because of how ingrained it is in our culture. Not only do movies and shows (such as animal house) nearly always present the same stereotype about fraternities, but many people believe that they have seen exactly those stereotypes in their own experience. It is important to consider that virtually nobody is unbiased on this topic. Of those who are involved in fraternities and/or sororities, they are obviously going to biased towards their own organizations. Of those who don't have much interaction with fraternities or fraternity members, the bias simply comes from the fact that you have already been presented with information that would suggest that fraternities behave a certain way - any additional information would be filtered through a confirmation bias, where events that confirm any preconceptions are remembered, and those that don't are shrugged off as insignificant or outliers. Having said that, it makes it very difficult to prove that fraternities are not simply about drinking and partying, since it is coming from one biased perspective to likely another. People often have the preconception about fraternities, not only because of movies and TV, but sometimes because of the news as well. Furthermore, people often see terrible instances of alcoholism at fraternities when they themselves attend college. Given all of this information, it would be ridiculous to suggest that fraternities are all good. However, these are the most extreme cases. Not only do these cases not represent most fraternities. They often don't represent the fraternity they depict most of the time. There are fraternities who are really all about drinking; There are some fraternities who have members who only care about partying, but this by no means represents everybody. There are also fraternities, who are dedicated to important things. Certainly, Sigma Tau Gamma is one of the fraternities dedicated to more important things than just drinking and partying. The problem is that most fraternities are probably going to say the same thing. The truth is, there are probably some of each type of fraternity at just about every university, and if your son is interested in joining greek life, then the best way for him to figure out which fraternities are which, is to visit as many of them as possible. Often times, the fraternities that are about things that you are not interested in, will present themselves pretty quickly. Having more information (especially relevant information) can only be helpful when making a decision about fraternities.

Another major concern for everyone, in regards to fraternities, is hazing. Hazing is something that has been involved in fraternities for many many years, probably as long as they have been around. Unfortunately it is something that many organization still do. Organizations (fraternities and others alike) often place unfounded "importance" on hazing their members. Our chapter of Sigma Tau Gamma does not haze any of its members - we make sure to take care of our members. We put effort into making sure that none of our members are stressed beyond what they should be. One of the reasons that we are so adamant about this is that our chapter used to haze, but we learned the hard way what harm it can cause. When our organization nearly fell apart due to the hazing of a particular new pledge class, we all agreed to put a stop to hazing altogether in our chapter. It may be hard to just take our word for it that we don't haze, since nearly every fraternity in the world says the same thing. Obviously not all organizations are telling the truth. However, in the hopes of helping to both discourage our chapters from hazing, as well as put the minds of our potential new members and their parents' minds at ease, our national office has published a completely open member education program - the Path of Principles. Anyone has the right to read it if he/she wishes. Our new member education program is designed to teach our members about our six principles (Value, Learning, Leadership, Excellence, Benefit, and Integrity). If you would like to discuss any of the details of our program, or would like a copy of it, you can email the President, Stefan Sullivan at ssulliva@andrew.cmu.edu, or call him at (814) 881-3066.

Finally, if your son is considering joining Sig Tau, he is by no means committed when he starts going through the Path of Principles program. There is a four week period before initiation where he learns about the fraternity, and has the option of not joining if he wishes. After initiation, he still has the opportunity of leaving the fraternity, but this would preclude him from being able to join any other fraternity that is a member of the NIC.

If you have any question about the hazing policy of Sig Tau, there are a few relevant documents at the links below.

A little more information about fraternities:
Sigma Tau Gamma is a national organization grouped into individual fraternities at many different universities. Each appearance of Sigma Tau Gamma at a different university is called a chapter, and each chapter is given its own unique designation. The Carnegie Mellon University chapter of Sigma Tau Gamma, for instance, is called the Delta Xi chapter. The national organization, Sigma Tau Gamma, is a member of the North American Interfraternity Conference (the NIC), which is an organization that governs the standards for a national Fraternity and is the highest level of governance for fraternities. Many national fraternities are members of the NIC, and each of them have chapters in various parts of the country. The NIC puts forth rules that all its members must follow, such as not allowing any person to join more than one fraternity in the NIC. The NIC also provides services, such as insurance, for all member fraternities. There are other fraternities on campus that are not members of the NIC (such as Alpha Phi Omega), which are primarily service fraternities, or professional fraternities, and are not bound by the rules of the NIC. The Delta Xi chapter of Sigma Tau Gamma (at Carnegie Mellon University) is a member of the Inter-Fraternity Council (IFC) on campus, which is the local self-governing body for fraternities. It is run by fraternity members and advised by university officials. The IFC governs any NIC fraternities to make sure that each fraternity's behavior is consistent with university policy and law, as well as any legal restrictions. When a fraternity does something that violates any of a number of policies or laws, the IFC is the body that punishes the fraternity.

Our national organization is founded on 6 principles - Value, Learning, Leadership, Excellence, Benefit, and Integrity. Joining a fraternity is an important decision, as it could impact the rest of one's college career, and if he makes the right decisions, may affect the rest of his life.

External Resources:
If you would like to find more information about fraternities, there are several resources that you should probably look at.