Many Sacramento State students say they join sororities and fraternities to gain friendships and social experiences. For the next week, 19 fraternity and 10 sorority booths will be set up along the walkway near the Library.

For some people who come straight out of high school and into the college environment, the thought of making new friends in a new place can make their palms sweat with anxiety.

“I joined a sorority because this school is so big and when you make the split from your high school friends it is really sad. When you get into college you don’t know that many people, and this is a great way to meet people,” fourth-year Sigma Chi sorority sister Roni Keleske said.

Students may want to pledge fraternities and sororities to gain admittance into a world of social opportunity bringing job prospects to them after they graduate.

“There is an alumnus of my fraternity who is in the F.B.I.,” criminal justice major and Epsilon Sigma Rho brother Pablo Martinez said.

A quarter of all CEOs at the nation’s top businesses listed on the Forbes Super 500 list were members of fraternities, including 44 current CEOs on the Forbes staff.

Employers look for the same job skills and qualities in their applicants that fraternities and sororities build in their members. Some of these traits are considered to be strong social skills and moral character; some employers consider fraternities a shortcut to success, a Forbes article reported.

In addition to the social privileges of the organization, others may join for the camaraderie aspect provided to them through the notion that their organization is also their second family.

Second semester sorority sister of Lamba Theta Nu Johana Garcia said she wanted to join a sorority because she wanted the emotional support, academic help and the professional contacts that a sisterhood would provide her.

Though going Greek may help you secure a shortcut to success, it is not a college necessity. Other students walk past the library quad with their heads down, making sure to avert their eyes from the dominant force of wooden Greek letters looming on either side of the walkway.

“I want to get in and out,” fifth year liberal studies student Kari Porter said. “I’m not a joiner type person, plus that whole paying for your friends thing,” Porter said.

Greek organizations are stigmatized with the beer-guzzling party image imprinted by such glorified “frat’ boys as John Belushi from the film “Animal House.”

“There is a place for it, I think it’s more for the incoming students that want to have the social aspect of it all,” graduate student Patrick Lochelt said.

In the first week of the semester, incoming freshmen Joe Abhulimen Jr. has been approached by a number of fraternities that wanted to show him “how good being a part of a fraternity could be,” Abhulimen said.

However, that does not mean Abhulimen is actually going to become a fraterity brother of any organization. “If the frats’ can show me something that will benefit me in the long run, then I’ll join,” Abhuliman said.

“But we still have those myths that when you join a fraternity, you leave school because you’re so caught up in the partying aspect of it all. I have to learn more about it, because I’m still new to this environment,” Abhulimen said.

The fraternity and sorority booths will be set up in the library quad for the next week, for those who are interested in learning more.