Tolerance
When it comes to Greek Life, it becomes tricky to discuss the issue of "tolerance," because both Greek Institutions and the word tolerance can be taken with either positive or negative connotations. When it comes to Greek Institutions, they can be seen as a bond of sisterhood and brotherhood that supports, uplifts, and ties individuals together in the most positive of lights. However, on the flip side, there has been a lot of discussion in the media lately about how people get to enter into these brother and sisterhoods--hazing, and what happens within them--drinking and sexual assault. When one discusses tolerance, they can either talk about it as a good quality that benefits the whole of society, i.e. when people are "tolerant" of one another they respect each others' differences. However, tolerance can also be seen as a sort of bare minimum, i.e. there is a tolerant sort of coexistence that does not necessarily include learning or even a sort of like for one another. As a best case scenario, Greek Life could be "tolerant" of Muslim Americans, and accept them per se because they like them and accept them as people, if they can ignore the religion. I am not saying that this sort of negative, minimum definition of membership and friendship actually exists within Greek Institutions. If anything, in my research I found that Greek Institutions uphold a positive connotation of tolerance, meaning that they accept all of you or none of you; it seems that simple. However, the point can be made that the opportunity for this bare minimum definition of tolerance exists, especially when it comes to institutions with such inherent in-group mentalities.