Erica Venancio
As fall fraternity recruitment begins on campuses across Nebraska this month, thousands of parents are having the same conversation I had just over two years ago. My son Dylan wanted to join a fraternity, and I wasn’t sure what to think.
I was never in Greek life and neither was my husband. I’d heard the stereotypes about fraternity houses. My hope for Dylan was simple: reap the benefits of college, including making friends, and focus on academics.
When he told me he was planning on joining a fraternity at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I called my parents expecting my dad, an Alpha Gamma Rho alum, to be the one cheering him on. Instead, it was my mother who surprised me.
She and my dad met in college, and she credited his fraternity with teaching him everything from dinner table etiquette to how to carry himself in professional settings. More importantly, she spoke about the doors it opened—connections, confidence, and opportunities that followed him well beyond college.
More than 50 years after my father pledged AGR, Dylan found brotherhood in the same fraternity, and the same values that shaped his grandfather are shaping him.
What changed my mind wasn’t nostalgia. It’s what I’ve seen at the fraternity house.
The chapter holds two formal sit-down meals a week, one in a full suit and tie, the other in business casual. The house mom lives on the first floor and the young men treat her with a kind of respect you don’t see enforced so much as earned, taking hats off and not using profanity when she’s around.
These small gestures are shaping my son into a more well-rounded man, someone more prepared to walk into the real world with his head high and a real appreciation for the people around him.
Critics point to high-risk behavior on campus and blame Greek life for it, but that behavior isn’t unique to fraternity men — it’s common among young people generally. What data shows is how much fraternity men benefit from the structure critics dismiss.
A recent survey found that 64% of fraternity men have three or more close friends, compared to just 36% of their non-affiliated peers. Fraternity men are also significantly more likely to have better mental health, say their lives are going the way they hoped, and have a male mentor. At a time when young men are struggling across a host of metrics, those gaps matter.
Dylan’s fraternity has also opened doors his college alone couldn’t. Last year, he and his fraternity brothers traveled to Kansas City for the Agriculture Future of America Leaders Conference, a chance to build a professional network alongside peers navigating the same early-career challenges.
His affiliation with AGR made attending the event possible, and attending with his brothers provided helpful support and guidance. The skills my mother credits the fraternity for instilling in my father were now being instilled in my son.
I’ve seen what this has done for Dylan. He’s more prepared to walk into a room, more accountable to people who expect something of him, and more connected to a network that will outlast his four years at UNL. Fraternity isn’t the only place young people find that. But for my family, across two generations now, fraternity is where it happened.
Erica Venancio is the mother of Dylan Venancio, a junior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and member of Alpha Gamma Rho.
