NIC President & CEO Jud Horras
Every spring, I watch another class of young men cross stages, shake hands, and step into the next phase of their lives. As President and CEO of the North American Interfraternity Conference (NIC), I have had a front-row seat to this moment for two decades.
This year, the young men graduating will face an even more difficult landscape than generations before. The current job market is challenging. Many of them will move to a new city where they will need to start over socially, a task that does not come easily to many and has become increasingly difficult in the digital age. Coupled with an environment that has largely treated masculine characteristics as factors that must be inhibited instead of social assets that provide value to families, workplaces, and communities, many young men find themselves adrift.
But the ones I am least worried about? The young men who joined a fraternity.
The first fraternity in the United States was created the same year America was founded. Since then, these institutions have provided semi-structured, authentic environments that bring young men together around shared interests and values. These spaces allow them to be strong and vulnerable, ambitious, and unsure, competitive and caring. Fraternities’ diverse communities and consistent in-person engagements pull young men away from isolating activities and push them toward rewarding interaction.
In an October 2025 poll by Cygnal that surveyed 1,000 males ages 16 to 28, those who belong to a fraternity report overwhelmingly healthier behaviors and optimistic outlooks than their unaffiliated peers. They are 12% more likely to report having positive mental health, 24% more likely to say their lives are going the way they envisioned and nearly 30% more likely to have a male mentor. Being part of a fraternity also means these men are significantly more likely to have three or more close friends, less likely to spend time online and more likely to engage in in-person activities. Embracing a pro-social brotherhood is a clear antidote to the social ills that afflict young men.
