[splok]

Originally Posted by Wrathcaster

I'm not speaking on behalf of myself, I'm speaking on behalf of a good portion of the population here who simply can't afford to spend extra money on what amounts to a social club: people who have to work one if not more jobs to keep up the pace in college and still manage to keep grades up to the level where they can maintain their GPA for scholarships. Perhaps you can suspend your disbelief a bit to understand that I can see an issue from multiple points of view.

These organizations are a business. They need money to do the things that they do, and a large part of that comes from dues. They could charge less, but that could hurt the organization in a number of ways. Additionally, being fully involved can be very time consuming, and if a person needs to work excessively outside of class, they aren't going to have time for it. Maybe that sounds shitty, but these aren't just clubs that you can pop in ans show up whenever you want. Its almost like a raiding guild. If you don't have the time to participate, you shouldn't bother applying. Of course, as with everything, the time commitment required varies hugely between groups, but most of them have mandatory events at least semi-frequently. I worked during my time, but not very many hours, and I always made sure my work schedule wouldn't interfere. That may sound like having fucked up priorities to you, but wouldn't a group prefer to have members that give priority to the group over other things, if there was a choice?

Granted, my campus wasn't really that expensive, so it might be different in other places, but most of the time, when someone would complain about the cost, it wasn't that they weren't able to come up with the money, it was just that their budget didn't place a high enough priority on paying dues. People complain about not being able to afford dues but are perfectly cool with dropping god knows how much every weekend at bars or on other shit that college kids waste tons of money on. Sure, that's not the case for everyone, but it is pretty common.

Originally Posted by Wrathcaster

That type of information caters to a specific type of person, and eliminates a whole host of potentially excellent people that didn't fit a particular mold before joining.

By nature, people tend to gravitate toward people that are very much like themselves. This may not be the best way to behave, but it happens regardless. Also, you have to realize that when you have 19-20 year olds essentially making human resource decisions about how and who to recruit, you're going to end up with less than optimal results very commonly. Of course, that's not to say that it isn't a problem, but it's more of an explanation than an excuse. It's not as if there's a national policy that says "only recruit people in this brand of shoes!" Its just the work of a few undergrads who may or may not be qualified to do their jobs.

Really, its very likely that few people in leadership positions in any undergrad organizations are actually qualified for them. They just don't have enough experience. However, they get those positions anyway and struggle with them as best they can, and the ones that really invest themselves in their groups grow and develop hugely because of it. So ya, it means that there will always be a certain amount of shittiness, but at the same time, that's really the big benefit that these organizations provide.

Originally Posted by Wrathcaster

And before you mention "YEAH BUT THAT'S ONLY SOME NOT MINE" more than one chapter of the frats mentioned in this thread were culprits.

Each chapter is its own animal. My SigEp chapter is nothing like the other SigEp chapters that I've visited, and I'm sure members of the other chapters feel the same way. Each national organization has its set of policies that each chapter must follow, but the implementation of them and the attitudes are unique to each group of people. This can even change every couple of years within a single chapter as different people come to power. My chapter certainly has a different environment now than when I was there. It's easy to point at a group name and say "those guys are asshats" because of a shitty experience you had with their chapter at your campus, but when you do that you're really only referring to that specific group of 50-100 people (and even then, the problem is likely the result of a couple of people's decisions). For most of these stories of extreme asshattery, there are likely thousands of other people within the same national organization that would agree that the people involved were being asshats.