by Greg Beatty

In Inside Greek U. Alan D. DeSantis provides readers with a valuable guidebook to an often alien and confusing reality: the Greek system. Anyone who teaches at a college where fraternities and sororities are active should read it; anyone who wants to better understand how higher education really works will want to read it.

Inside Greek U. is not perfect—more on that below—but it is extremely useful. Much of that utility comes from the author’s particular identity and position in relation to the Greek system. As DeSantis notes repeatedly, frats know it isn’t cool to study too much, or to pay too much attention to grades. However, DeSantis is not just an academic, and not just a professor who serves as advisor to fraternities; he is a former fraternity brother himself, and is thus “bilingual,” speaking both fratspeak and academese. Given the high-minded and humane concerns he articulates throughout the text and especially in the conclusion, one might suggest that the dominant language spoken throughout is a third dialect: that of the responsible adult citizen.

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