Societies

[Felsen]

what's a gdi?  i'm assuming it's some southern lingo that i don't know b/c i was greek in college too...else i'm just really out of the loop 

I don't know.  The best I can come up with is Geeks, Dorks, and Idiots.

Looking it up, it looks like it just means someone not associated with an official Greek Frat/Sor.

[Felsen]

No.  It means God-d**mned Independent, i.e. someone who didn't join a sorority or fraternity.

*Warning* This post will self-destruct in 30 seconds.*

Quoting for posterity, then. 

[Felsen]

What do you call the folks who just don't care?  Other than sane and balanced that is.

[Nixlimited]

At least it won't be all GDIs   That being said, I have a feeling it won't be extremely "fratty" Greeks as a whole. (unfortunately)

Bahahahahaha, GDI, good call.

For those that don't know, GDI stands for (and I say this without prejudice) God Damn Independent(s). It's what Greek people tended to call non-Greek people who thought they were too good to be a part of our system. Common arguments by GDIs are things like: "I don't need to buy my friends" and "greek life will ruin my GPA."

Interestingly enough, though it is in-style to try and rid every campus of their Greek systems, despite our long legacies (many fraternities and sororities were born with the schools), at many schools, including my own, Greek GPAs were higher than non-Greeks on average.

As for me, consider me at least one of the "extremely fratty" contigent. I like to wear pink LaCoste shirts with my collar popped if for no other reason than to vex all these Cali folk in San Diego. 

[margee]

We had one fraternity.  They had, like, 6 members.  My junior year they knew they were going to die from lack of membership (I think there were only 1 or 2 non-graduating members), so they tried to get their charter revoked by pulling pranks on campus.  It didn't work 

We had two sororities.  They had very concrete reputations.  That is, one sorority was known for being then, ahem, "friends" of the baseball team.  The other was known for being "goodie-two-shoes."

Speaking of which, isn't that a strange expression? Goodie-two-shoes?  What does that mean?

[margee]

This is what I found:

: : Can anyone tell me the origin of the phrase, "Little Miss Goodie Two Shoes"? Or, can you point me to a good source for history of phrases? Thank you!

: GOODY TWO-SHOES - "A person who is affectedly good or proper; a person who is uncommonly good. Maybe just a mite too good and a bit too optimistic and a tad too nice? In an 18th-century nursery tale, believed to have been written by Oliver Goldsmith, the (Irish-born) English novelist, poet, and playwright. Good Two-shoes is very poor and has but one shoe. When she is given a pair she is so happy that she tells everyone that she has 'two shoes' - hence, her name. She later become wealthy, in the way of worthy nursery-tale children. Thus a goody two-shoes is someone like her; properly behaved, happy, cheerfully optimistic, nice. As you might guess, the term has acquired a negative aura; someone too nice to be completely sincere." From "Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Allusions" by Elizabeth Webber and Mike Feinsilber (Merriam-Webster, Springfield, Mass., 1999).

[lil kat]

i never thought that i'd be one to do the greek thing but then theta ended up being a huge part of my life in college.  i think that some of the reason for that is b/c it's surprisingly pretty big at my school (~50% of guys in frats and ~30% of girls in sororities).

if you ask me, to each his own 

[lil kat]

KATheta, i'd assume?  See, now I'm curious where you went to school -- they were founded at my ugrad.

yup, kappa alpha theta    i'll pm you.

[LitDoc]

I don't object to like-minded people associating with one another, nor do I object to efforts at networking and using connections to get ahead. That's just the way the ball bounces. What I object to, about college Greek organizations, is the elitism that seems to inhere and attach itself. The pejorative use of the term "GDI" seems to be evidence of this. I'm also not fond of the forces for conformity that seem to go along with this elitism. I'm all for like-minded people associating with one another, but I balk at the idea that like-minded people would (or should) create ways to intensify their like-mindedness.

[cozmo]

My school banned frats/sororities.