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Where Are All of the IT Fraternities?

Posted by Cliff on from the professional-brotherhood dept.

SteakandcheeseUm asks: "Upon meandering around the net today, I was displeased to find that there seems to be a lack of professional academic fraternities that are dedicated to Information Technology or Computer Forensics students. Has anyone here ever come upon a group that does such a thing? Would anyone be interested in joining if one were to be founded?"

5 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Re:ACM by zeath · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Fraternities are about social networking and getting drunk at wild parties, not coding and playing HL2

    Though I was not a member, a CS major that graduated the year before me was the president of a frat, and most of his pledges were involved at one point or another in our daily Medal of Honor between-class routine in the lab. Of course this was a small college, and "pledges" numbered less than half a dozen, as did my graduating CS class.

  2. Preferences in hiring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Actually, I think the reason this guy is posting the question is because he wants to stay out of the unemployment line. Frat members are known to give fellow members preference when hiring (for no good reason other than tradition). The submitter is probably one of the millions of average Joes who went into CS in the dot-com era thinking it was the road to riches. Now that jobs are hard to come by, this guy needs every unfair advantage he can get to land a job.

    Before you mod me as flamebait I ask you, why other reason would a geek want to join a frat? And don't say because of all those hot IT sorority chicks...

    1. Re:Preferences in hiring by the+morgawr · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Few things:

      First, he's talking about a professional society, like Eta Kappa Nu (The Electrical Engineering Professional Honor Society), not about a Social Fraternity.

      Secondly, please don't use "frat", many Fraternity men tend to find it offensive. It implies a group like you see in Animal House, which despite public opinion is the minority of Social Fraternities. You wouldn't shorten "Country" to "cunt" would you?

      As for why you would want to join a fraternity, well it depends. At some major Engineering Schools over a third of the campus is in a Greek Social organization. Different organizations tend to offer different things. The basic idea of a fraternity is that a diverse group of guys gets together and pools their cash and their tallents to generally make college life easier and hopefully supplement your education so that you are more likely to succeed latter in life.

      Going Greek was the best decision I ever made. I strongly encourage everyone who is in college to look into it. If none of the organizations on campus fit what you want, get some guys and start your own.

      --
      The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
  3. Frats? We don't need no stinkin' FRATS!!! by gerald626 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is it just me? I thought that frats were exclusivfely anti-IT. Back in the day when I was in college, the whole idea of an IT, a.k.a. 'Geek' frat was just against everything the comp.sci kids stood for. We stood for individuality, not conformity. We made fun of the frat people to no end. And we never felt we had to be part of a bigger group just to have a party and get wasted and/or lucky (yes, on the rare occasion, it did happen!!!)

    Today however, there are enough professional associations around if you want to feel part of a bigger community... get your MCSE if you like... then you'll be unique, just like everybody else ;)

    Now what I want to discuss, is how come there aren't any IT-centric unions? IT folk tend to work long hours and we don't necessarily get paid for it either, as my former boss said, "it's expected that you put in 60-80 hours a week and get paid for 40". That was one of the reasons that he's now my 'former' boss. But I digress...

    Any ideas? Anyone???

  4. Ahem by Eil · · Score: 2, Interesting


    Geeks already have many fraternities.

    Here, we call this one Slashdot. There are other, smaller, close-knit fraternities all over the place as well that massquerade as Linux/BSD user groups, mailing lists, IRC channels, web forums, and newsgroups.

    (Point being that geeks are no less capable of socilization, organization, and banding together for a cause, they just prefer to do so through primarily electronic means. There are also cons that are sorta like ad-hoc fraternities, when you think about it.)