FAYETTEVILLE – Rush week, Tuesday afternoon. “You can do it,” is written on the T-shirts that the applicants have to wear. Almost all of them are white and most of them are blonde, they rush along Maple Street from east to west, without hats, without visors, with sweaty and happy faces in the August sun.

The sororities hang banners to announce the causes they support. To the pedestrian whose only concern is the liberal arts education of young women, they are a Zen puzzle.

“Liberal arts” is often used as shorthand for “arts and humanities.” This is a dangerous shorthand, because it means we have forgotten that mathematics and science were not handed down at Mount Sinai, that they contain no immutable truths, that they are as clumsy human endeavors as sculpture, politics, and poetry.

Forgetting leads to statements such as “I am science,” “Thank you for your science,” and “I believe in science,” all of which are shocking violations of the principles and spirit of scientific inquiry. Science does not require belief, only adherence to its method.

A liberal arts education at a modern land-grant university should begin with demanding mathematics and foreign language requirements, followed by broad exposure to the natural sciences (geology is a given in Fayetteville) and the humanities (including history and modern literature), and finally a chronologically ordered study of music and the fine arts, especially architecture.

Cheerleaders of the cargo cult of economic development often complain that only 20 percent of Arkansas residents have a bachelor’s degree. If anything, 20 percent is too many. We have a lot of very smart people in this state who deserve to go to trade school or go straight to work, live a good life, and take care of the rest of us.

Those who attend four-year colleges need a real liberal arts education, and that is especially true for the young women who were looking for sisters on Maple Street last week. Whether they work or not, most will become wives and mothers in Arkansas’ upper middle class. They will manage households. They will manage large amounts of discretionary spending. They will raise the youth.

Should you prepare for homemaking and parenting by taking classes in nutrition, child development, and thread counting? No. These things can be learned on the job, from a well-trained mind that can absorb and evaluate new information.

For all its joys, raising children is a boring business. The same is true of being a housewife. A full intellectual life is the best way to endure the boredom and enjoy the pleasures. It is also the path to a mature and aesthetically informed philanthropy; when the young women of Maple Street learn that both the Chi Omega House and the Chi Omega Greek Theater are on the National Register of Historic Places, they are likely to rekindle awareness of historic buildings in the state. I am thinking of the time when the Little Rock Junior League saved the Woman’s City Club – an effort led by a Tri-Delt.

. . .

Black sororities are strong in Little Rock. I see t-shirts and license plates everywhere, I see women’s groups and photos in the newspaper. Maybe I’m not going to the right places in Fayetteville, because other than a gathering at Mount Sequoyah in 2005, I don’t remember ever seeing a black sorority here.

I look at the university’s website to confirm their existence. It turns out that the white sororities are administered by the Panhellenic Council, while the black sororities and fraternities are administered by the National Pan-Hellenic Council.

Delta Sigma Theta was the first black sorority to establish a branch at the University of Arkansas (1974). The sorority was founded at Howard University in 1913 and claims Aretha Franklin as one of its alumna. Zeta Phi Beta, founded here in 1978 and also founded at Howard University, claims Zora Neale Hurston.

Alpha Kappa Alpha, also founded in Howard, established a chapter here in 1976. They claim Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, Phylicia Rashad and Eleanor Roosevelt. Sigma Gamma Rho, founded at Butler University in Indiana, has been here since 1993. They claim Hattie McDaniel, probably the most popular American actress of all time.

I am a little dismayed to learn of the existence of an Office of Greek Life. What is the budget? Every administrator hired is an unemployed teacher. In a perfect world, faculty and students would run the entire university.

The ancient Greeks invented the clumsy human art of self-government; instead of collecting money for charity, our Greek university students should spend their leisure time learning this art.

Brooke Greenberg lives in Little Rock. Email: (email protected).