Wow, so this shit just seems to fall into my lap. WTF.
Not a member of a frat. Roommate in college was, roommate after college was (different frat) and two of my closest friends in the world are (same as the after college roommate; we all went to school together). My daughter is now a member of a sorority. I don't know if you'd call it a 'frat' per se, but ex-wife's new husband was in a secret society in college.
There are two sides to the coin.
People are joiners. We want to be part of something bigger than we are. You don't need to subscribe to too many newspapers to see that on a daily basis. Sometimes those "bigger" things need sustenance, so if you want to call it "paying for friends" I think there are enough other people that can frame it differently - and more positively - than that.
I didn't pledge; I don't know what my friends did to get in, but I have to be honest, it couldn't have been a lot worse than what some of the rest of us did just as a "normal" part of college life. I don't know if college was the "best" time of my life, but it is the time I grew the most as a human being. It was the first time I was out of my little cocoon, meeting people who didn't know - implicitly or not - my background or where I came from. It was the first time I really had to bear the full consequences of my life and my decisions and my actions. At a large state school in the 80's, NO ONE was holding my hand. No one gave a SHIT whether I succeeded or failed. Eventually I manned up; it took a while and not without a fair amount of hard discussions (with myself) either in a church pew or in a men's room stall. If having the feeling of an organization behind you that has your back is how you get through that, who are we to judge?
When my daughter started in on the "sorority" thing, I had the same reaction as TAC. NFW, this ain't happnin', and you're on your own. Parents here have to make their own decisions, of course, but in my case, I had to reckon that it was happening with, or without, my support or help. And so I decided to buy in and trust her. In hindsight, it has been a good thing, over all. She was able to get into alternate housing, and had access to a separate, cheaper, but higher quality meal plan (something like 60% of students on her campus are in a frat/sorority of some kind, if memory serves). She has learned that life isn't all classes, doing your nails, and watching One Direction videos. She has obligations that aren't her first choice, and aren't on her schedule (kind of like life). While she's made new friends, her core friends are those she new BEFORE joining the sorority, and that friendship has only gotten stronger for the shared experience. (Bear in mind that a lot of this is just me piecing together; the hardest lesson - BY FAR - that I've had to learn as a parent is that these creatures that you've birthed, clothed, fed and ass-wiped eventually have a life of their own and it's HARD after a certain point to know all of what goes on and why.)
And of course, I'm selfish; for some reason, her school has a decent number of famous* actresses that are alums; while none are in her sorority, I'm still holding out that I would at some point get to meet one of my celebrity crushes through my kid's social network.
(An actress I write about a fair amount here went to her school.)