Madison Schowalter Schowalter 1

Dean Leonard

English 1201.509

25 May 2019

Research Proposal: How does Greek life on college campuses impact students and the

community?

Greek Life has been a very important part of my collegiate studies at The University of

Alabama. I rushed a sorority in the fall of 2018 and although I was very excited, my friends and

family were a bit nervous for me. I didn’t quite get what they were so worried about until I

started reading the articles online that they were reading. When you look into the topic briefly,

you see there are many negative connotations that are associated with fraternity and sorority life,

like hazing, alcohol abuse, expenses and academic distractions. But when I became part of a

sorority, I was able to see more than the typical stereotypes. I was changed immensely because

of my decision to become a member of a sorority. Through Greek Life, I made life-long friends.

I was able to network and line myself up for success by meeting hundreds of different people.

And to top it off, I left freshman year with a 4.0 GPA. At first, I was having a difficult time

trying to decide what I wanted to write my research question about. I knew I wanted to write

about something that not only affected me but will affect many other college students who were

in the same boat as me. I did some research and decided I want to bring awareness to the pros, as

well as the cons that are associated with Greek life.

This topic is important to me because it is something that has made a difference in my

life. I have made new friends and many connections through my experience in a sorority. I think

that most of the time Greek Life is seen in a very negative light, but there are many aspects that

are incredible for the community and the students involved that people don’t hear about. I think

that it is important for people to be open to hearing both sides of the argument before forming an
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opinion. I believe that this topic can be very controversial and that there needs to be more

research done one the topic. I firmly believe that Greek life has some changing to do in order to

fix some of the negative aspects, but from my experience I believe that the negative aspects are

not as prevalent as they used to be. I want to help start a movement to better this system so that

the student to come can experience the wonderful thing I’ve been lucky enough to experience. I

have a pretty good understanding of this topic. With me being a part of Greek life, I have seen

firsthand how much it can do for the community and each individual. I know how much

community service is done through this system, and I’ve seen how it changes the community

near and far.

There will always be more to learn and more to know. I think I have a general idea of

what I need to know, but I need to focus mostly on finding the numbers and details that can

support both the negative and positive sides of my topic. The most important thing to make sure

this is a quality piece of work is to make sure that every source I use is credible and scholarly. I

have already begun to do some research when I was looking into different topics to write this

research paper about. I used the Sinclair database and briefly skimmed over some articles. I will

probably use online sources for the majority of this project. The two main questions I want to

look at are as follows: How has Greek life impacted students positively? I will focus on the

connections that student make with other students and the community, the networking that helps

students in the future, and the social environment. I also plan to counter this question and look

into how it has impacted students negatively. I want to focus primarily on the hazing incidents

and allegations that have been made against different fraternities and sororities. The second

question I will look into is: How has the community benefited from the philanthropy events that
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are held by the fraternities and sororities? I think that these two questions will allow me to keep

focus and spread awareness to all aspects of Greek Life.