#79: Explaining to people from other schools how dorms function as Quasi-Frats

Probably the most unique aspect of student life at Notre Dame is the Residence Hall system.  This system is unique not only because 80% of the students live in the dorms, or that these buildings are single-sex, but because the system also necessitates that there is no Greek life at Notre Dame.

The popularity of the dorms combines with the lack of Greek life to create a system that is utterly confounding to students from other schools around the country.  When Notre Dame Students tell their friends about student life, these friends can’t possibly understand why anybody would want to live in a dorm for four years—especially when the dorms operate under the archaic rules of parietals (see #63).

Because of this disconnect, Notre Dame Students use the idea of Fraternities and Sororities to describe the residence hall system at Notre Dame.  The students talk about the camaraderie within the dorms and how students are proud of their dorm.  They talk about interhall sports and other competitions between dorms, and they describe the intense rivalries between dorms.  Notre Dame Students then use these descriptions to describe the dorms at Notre Dame unlike those at most schools, but more akin to Quasi-Fraternities and Sororities.

The irony in this is that Notre Dame Students actually want their dorms to function as Quasi-Frats. 

Notre Dame Students throw dorm parties that aren’t remarkably different from Frat parties with their loud music, crowds of people, and floors covered in beer (but more on those later).  They attempt to haze freshmen with Dis-O rituals that could be found in a Greek System; and they refer to groups of people by the name of their dorm in the same way that students at large state schools describe each other by the name of their Fraternity or Sorority (see #16).  Like fraternities and sororities, a person’s dorm stays with them much longer than they live in it, and Notre Dame Students see the camaraderie and brotherhood in the dorms as the greatest similarity with Greek life at other schools. 

However, while students might describe the dorm system as similar to a Greek one, they ultimately prefer it because of the differences from a Greek system.  While dorm parties might get loud and messy, they are also firmly entrenched in the culture of the Notre Dame Hook-up (see #21).  While some Notre Dame Students participate in something that could be construed as hazing, most Dis-O activities come nowhere close to actually making students do anything embarrassing, unsanitary, or demeaning.  Dorms might get loud and raucous, but unlike Frats they become quiet and controlled when most students need to study.

Notre Dame Students might like to describe dorms as being like Frats, but the reality is that most of the students probably wouldn’t even be involved with Greek life had they ended up at a state school.  The dorm system is uniquely perfect for the students at the school, and it is for this reason that people who aren’t from Notre Dame will never be able to understand it.