Students have been perfecting the art of spending hours on social networking Web sites like Facebook and MySpace for years. This week, fraternity and sorority members will have the opportunity to visit a site specifically for them.
GadZeus.com, a fraternity and sorority networking Web site co-founded by a Vanderbilt alumnus, will be officially launched at Vanderbilt on Tuesday. The site will allow Vanderbilt Greek life members to communicate and connect with each other and with chapters on other campuses.
The Web site was founded by brothers David and John Warren and launched in January. Both were members of Kappa Alpha Order, but went to different schools. John Warren is an alumnus of Washington and Lee University and David Warren graduated from Vanderbilt in 2007.
"We are trying to bring the Greeks to the net," said David Warren. "Normally each chapter has their own page, but usually they are not very useful. They charge you for it and Greeks don't use them. GadZeus would replace the chapter Web sites and connect all the Greeks on campus."
GadZeus will work like Facebook and will be entirely free. But unlike Facebook, instead of having individual profiles each chapter will have their own profile, and any member of the chapter can change the pictures and the information within their page.
"I've spent the past 20 months working with a GadZeus team of over 20 people, mostly engineers, to build a tool to unite, protect and strengthen student-led Greek life at campuses across the country," David Warren said.
He added that they are seeking to protect Greek life from all the bad publicity and promote all the things that Greeks do. He said he thinks the first step to achieving this is communication.
"Ever since the GadZeus concept was first introduced, I knew that it was something that was going to be an exceptional tool for my chapter and many other chapters on campus. A modern, sleek, well-designed and user friendly mode of electronic communication is something that truly has been a long time coming for Greeks," said Josh Woodward, president of Clemson's chapter of Lamda Chi Alpha fraternity.
In the future, GadZeus is planning to expand and connect all national Greek life chapters, as well as creating a rushing and pledging section so students interested in going Greek can also access the site. For now, however, GadZeus will remain strictly for the Greek chapters on campus.
"Facebook is used by everyone in the Greek community ... But national regulations dictate what our members can make public," said senior Caroline Fabacher, vice president of fraternity development for Pi Beta Phi sorority. "We also use another system that we pay for on a yearly basis. However ... it does not allow us any form of inter-chapter communication. GadZeus combines the functions of both of the systems. The service is free, and as a private site, our members are protected."
Greek members can sign up individually at GadZeus.com or they can pre-authorize their entire chapter listserv by emailing zeus@gadzeus.com.
