Zachary Grayson

Professor Wright
ENC 3331
March 24, 2015
Rhetorical Analysis of Civic Issue
In this paper I am going to discuss the why Greek Organizations have a negative
stereotype put on them, why it is a problem, and what are solutions to fixing this problem. The
ways that I have gone about finding out whether or not this is as big of an issue as I feel it is was
by conducting a survey that I posted to Facebook and by doing research from previous reports on
this topic. The first of my three goals was to gain my own research on this topic and the area that
I wanted to focus on for this part of my research. My next goal was to gain as much insight as
possible about other areas involving this topic. My main goal was to conduct research from the
students that are or have attended the University of Central Florida and anyone else from all over
the country and the world.
My first method of research was forming a survey that had multiple different components
in which I am going to look at and analyze for my research. It was made up of ten different
components which are as following: gender, in or out of college, year in college, are you or have
you ever attended the University of Central Florida, have you or were you ever in Greek Life, If
you pledged did you finish pledging and what year you pledged, if you did not rush why not,
opinion on Greek Life, knowledge about Greek Organizations philanthropies, and if people think
that only people in Greek Life party. With this survey I have received fifty-seven responses and

hope to continue to get more to further my research. From this survey I aimed to get whether or
not people thought Greek Life was good for college campus, if they knew about Greek Life
philanthropies, and if they thought that only people in Greek life party. The most important
question for me was actually the responses that I received from my question, If you have never
rushed why not? From this question I received valued insight as to why people did not want to
rush Greek Life in the United States and one about a similar organization from Sweden. I am
hoping to gain a large sample in which I can use to rhetorically analyze this situation. I know that
I only eight people of fifty-five that answered the question have never attended the University of
Central Florida and I hope to get at least thirty percent of my sample from a school that is not the
University of Central Florida in order to expand my ability to rhetorically see how Greek Life is
perceived on other campuses.
The problem that I have realized from the people that have said they did not want to join
Greek Life ranged from they did not have time for it because of school, financial reasons, does
not agree with how Greek Life places its priorities, or just was not interested. This was basically
what I was expecting to hear but I actually got fewer responses to this question then I was hoping
and I realized I might need to rework this question to not a comment question but a multiple
choice question in hopes more people will answer and a more accurate response based off of
these answers I was given to obtain a more concentrated answer.
The last thing that I learned from this survey was that I may have made it a little to biased
due to the fact that I am in Greek Life. I plan on having my roommates who are not in Greek Life
help me make my next survey less biased by having them help me word the questions a little
better. I have yet to fully analyze each set of responses to see what people in and out of Greek
Life actually put because the way the survey site, SurveyMonkey, is set up is just to show you a

graph of what people answered. I can then go in to each individual respondent and see what they
answered for all of the questions. By doing this is how I plan on obtaining most of my more indepth information about what people at the University Central Florida think of Greek Life and
why a great deal of us feel the pressure to help people understand what we are truly about.
To help obtain more research I looked up general stereotypes of Greek Life and found
articles that talked about them and why they believe the stereotypes are wrong. I came across a
USA Today College article titled, Viewpoint: Debunking 4 Greek-life stereotypes, and I found
this article to be extraordinarily helpful. The four stereotypes that this article talks about are,
Greeks only care about themselves, Greek life isnt taken seriously in the professional word,
Greeks dont branch out beyond their social circle, and Sororities and fraternizes are
notorious partiers. This article was also written by, Lindsay Holmes, who is a journalism
graduate and former sorority girl from the University of Central Florida. I am going to
rhetorically analyze this by the elements of research of concepts and constructs.
For the first point Greeks only care about themselves, it talks about Greeks
philanthropies and how Greeks are the biggest volunteer groups in the United States by
achieving over ten million hours of volunteer service each year. Next is that Greek life isnt
taken seriously in the professional word and they prove this wrong by quoting George
Washington Universitys Greek-life website stating that in as of 2012, there are more than nine
million people in the United States that are or were a part of some Greek Organization at some
point. They also talk about how alumni members are also extremely helpful with getting
internships during college and getting your foot in the door after college.

Third is that Greeks dont branch out beyond their social circle, this is debunked by the
fact that most Greek Organizations require their members to be a part of other clubs or groups in
order to be more active throughout the school. Lastly is Sororities and fraternizes are notorious
partiers, this is debunked for a few reasons. The first one is that the majority of people in
college party and the main reason Greeks are stabled for it is because there is a group or name to
put to it unlike people that are not in Greek Life you cannot just be like that group over there are
the parties. Another reason is that many chapters have support groups to help members battle
substance abuse or other disorders. This gives them a great deal of support that they might not
get from being in Greek Life. Lastly, being in Greek Life does not make you a party person but it
does make a leader and a better person by living up to the values of your organization and your
potential.
In this analysis I have brought up research of my own in which I plan to continue to
develop over the next few weeks in hope of obtaining a bigger pool of people so I can analyze a
larger sample. I also analyzed and talked about the general stereotypes of Greek Life and how
they are inaccurately reported and thought of by people that are not in any Greek Organization.
My goal is to show that Greek Life is not what it is shown as in a movie, television show, or any
other form of media that shows it as a joke. Greek Life is a serious network in which people join
to build live long friendships and enjoy their college experience in another manner.

Bibliography
Holmes, Lindsay. "Viewpoint: Debunking 4 Greek-life Stereotypes." USA TODAY
College. USA Today, 23 Jan. 2013. Web. 17 Mar. 2015.