Talk:Service fraternities and sororities

United States vs. Philippines GLOs

For the sake of cleaning up the list, should we perhaps separate the Filipino groups into their own section? Granted, this would be slightly tricky with APO, but aside from that, the list is confusing in its current state. Having all of them heaped under the title "National" is misleading when we're actually talking about two different nations. If nothing else, we could just list APO twice, and have the second one say "see above."

For that matter, do we need the separate listing of single-gender groups? At the very least, we could just change the title to Local/Regional Groups and either drop the "single-gender" qualifier or mention it in a note elsewhere. Maryamanda (talk) 20:32, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and made this revision, because I was trying it out to see how it would look and it was so much better. I tried to standardize all of the Filipino listings, because they were pretty messy, but for some of them I couldn't find much useful information with a quick search (e.g. is Alpha Theta Omega a fraternity or a sorority or what? The word "Althonian" didn't tell me what I needed to know).

Since information on the Philippines groups can be scarce (I know the system works quite differently there), can we somehow confirm that these are, in fact, all service orgs and not social? If they are in fact primarily social groups, then they don't belong on this article in the first place.

Also, I maintained the local/regional group section as it was (I now realize that my earlier comment may have made it sound as if I wouldn't) and simply renamed it. I would like to know, for those groups for which it isn't already specified, whether each group is a local or a regional, and if local, what school they're at. Maryamanda (talk) 21:05, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not certain how well you'll be able to ascertain whether or not they are true service orgs like APO, GSS and OPA are in the US. Service Fraternity/Sorority, in addition to stating the mission, carries significant legal ramifications in regard to Title IX, but that obviously doesn't apply to the Phillippines. I guess the best way would be to look at their websites and make a judgement call on the talk page? Justinm1978 (talk) 21:24, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that the Fraternities in the Philippines don't nicely divide into the concept of Social and Service Fraternities in the way that American Fraternities do. The primary differences between Social and Service Fraternities in the USA (& Canada) are in the area of Housing, Mutual Exclusivity, Gender and the Social National Councils. As far as I know, the Fraternities in the RP don't have housing in the way that American Fraternities and I've never heard of on-campus school run housing. Mutual exclusivity seems to be simply understood (and enforced), a good number of their fraternities have seperate Fraternity and Sorority organizations, perhaps with the same letters, perhaps not joined in one National Organization and there are *no* national level councils bringing different greek letter organization together.

To imagine the Filipino fraternity scene, imagine the following... All of the Fraternities (and Sororities) run like the USA NPHC fraternities do with the concept of once a brother, always a brother. Add to this a history of physical hazing similar to (or beyond) the NPHC without the new concept of membership intake. Include the community service concept that the NPHC groups have aspired to since the beginning. Remove the concept of the *national* NPHC itself and have a large number of National, Regional and Local Fraternities including having the oldest and one of the most well known exist only at a school with a National level reputation beyond that of Harvard and MIT. Also add the concept of within the last 10 years having rumbles between chapters of different Fraternities on the same campus with weaponry...

Both Alpha Phi Omega and Alpha Sigma Phi have separate national groups in the Philippines and although Alpha Phi Omega,USA belongs in the Service grouping and Alpha Sigma Phi,USA belongs in the Social grouping (they are NIC), I'm not sure the Filipino groups would view themselves as separate.

I have probably haven't helped with a solution, but probably have just indicated how *ugly* the question really is.Naraht (talk) 13:52, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Since the concept of Service Fraternities, as this article describes, is non-existant in the Phillippines, why don't we just drop them from this list and move them to a "Fraterntities and Sororities of the Phillippines" article? Justinm1978 (talk) 14:41, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I removed the Philippine list. It had 3 entries. Two were repeats from the list above (which are now designated as International). The third is not listed as a service group in its Wikipedia article, but sounds more like a normal Christian greek org that does service as part of its work. Rublamb (talk) 06:35, 31 December 2022 (UTC)