<p>Link didn’t work to post #279</p>
<p>Here’s a good link to the Washington Post’s [UVa’s</a> Entrenched Fraternity](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/boozing-hazing-and-sexual-assault-allegations-have-u-vas-entrenched-fraternity-culture-at-tipping-point/2014/11/29/e6b5a8ee-75a2-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html]UVa’s”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/boozing-hazing-and-sexual-assault-allegations-have-u-vas-entrenched-fraternity-culture-at-tipping-point/2014/11/29/e6b5a8ee-75a2-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html) article.</p>
<p>What’s the difference whether you need to be invited to a frat party, or it’s open to everyone? In the UV case, the girl was an invited guest. She was the key perpetrator’s “date” who then “shared” her with 6 other buddies, one of whom used a coke bottle instead. </p>
<p>It’s the frats (stupid.) </p>
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That is essentially the point made in an excellent article in the UVa student newspaper: <a href=“What I didn't know then - The Cavalier Daily - University of Virginia's Student Newspaper”>What I didn't know then - The Cavalier Daily - University of Virginia's Student Newspaper;
<p>“What’s the difference whether you need to be invited to a frat party, or it’s open to everyone? In the UV case, the girl was an invited guest. She was the key perpetrator’s “date” who then “shared” her with 6 other buddies, one of whom used a coke bottle instead.”</p>
<p>The difference is that in systems where the guest list has to be registered with the university, there is an easier way to corroborate who was there and who wasn’t, versus a wander-in-and-out situation.</p>
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<p>Interesting article, but it applies specifically to UVA and has little applicability across all campuses which have a Greek system, such as those I am familiar with, including one in which the fraternity houses are owned by the university and ban alcohol and parties to the same extent they are banned in the dorms, and three others in which the fraternity houses are not the main focus of campus social life at all. </p>
<p>How many campuses are like UVa in their frat system?</p>
<p>^^I’m not sure what you are asking. Do other campuses have deferred recruiting until spring (for sororities or fraternities)? Yes. Several years ago this was suggested, but it doesn’t seem to work very well for the big universities that have big houses. They need to have full houses, with fall pledges, to help pay all the costs. It’s also difficult to have Rush in late January, because unlike in the fall, they can’t do it before Labor Day with a dedicated 3-4 days. </p>
<p>If you are asking do all frat houses require an independent man to bring 6 women with him to get in? I’ve never heard of that. Most frats I’ve been to welcomed everyone or they were ‘date’ parties where each brother asked just one female, or a group asked a group. This was true even for the fraternities at a nearly all male school near mine. They were happy to have as many females attend at wanted to but no requirement for a certain number.</p>
<p>Houses can be on campus or off, or no house at all. At DD2’s school, the Greek campus is owned by the university, but about 5 miles from campus. 12 members of each house can live in the ‘house’, which is a converted townhouse complex. No house mothers. It is considered university housing so dorm rules apply but no RA’s. There are very few parties at the houses. Much more likely to have a party at a house where several of the fraternity member live off campus.</p>
<p>I agree with the author that freshmen women would benefit from the support of a sorority in the fall. Both my daughters have attended several safety lectures. DD1 lives in the dorm right across the street from her sorority house, but is not allowed to walk alone from the house at night even though it is much closer than it would be for her to walk from the library or the theater or the student union. One night she wasn’t feeling well and wanted to leave, but two girls walked her home and then returned to the house. Buddy system. The school has ‘safe ride’ whenever anyone wants it, even to the fraternities on campus (not more than 3-4 blocks from the dorms), but the sorority girls stick together all the time and I do think it is safer than the dorm groups that form.</p>
<p>On what dimensions, CF? That’s a really broad question. </p>
<p>At UVa, according to the Wa Po article and the Rolling Stone article, freshman women who want to go to parties don’t see other alternatives than frats. I was wondering what happens on other campuses. Also, what to do freshman men do, if they are not welcome at these frat parties?</p>
<p>There were 18+ dance bars near my D’s colleges that a lot of freshmen frequented. </p>
<p>Where I was, dorms had parties. Indeed, the dorm where my son is an RA is notable for throwing extensive ones. Or people just get together and do other things. It’s not frat-party-or-bust. </p>
<p>And physical layouts matter a LOT, IMO. CF, our fraternity houses were in quads that literally butted up against dorms. They were university property. They were as on campus as can possibly be. That’s very different from separate, off campus private housing where the university has little to no jurisdiction. </p>
<p>I did think it was a little odd that the student-author felt she had no alternative but to attend fraternity parties. I didn’t do that as a freshman. I never visited a fraternity house at all until I moved off campus sophomore year. But as PG points out, the layout of the campus probably has a lot to do with what freshmen do on weekends. </p>
<p>There are clearly benefits to social organizations including fraternities. But, the costs borne (i.e. rape, gang-rape, and other attempted or completed sexual assaults) by what the frat folks would like to argue is a small number of females (and who knows maybe a few males as well) but seem in fact at places like UVa to be a pretty sizeable number seem so high that the benefits – most of which could easily be attained in other ways – are de minimus in contrast. There are also costs among some frat members who, like the kid with the bottle, that likely wouldn’t have participated in a rape except under the influence of alcohol and the social pressure of a group like the frat.</p>
<p>As long as:
a) frats are an important, university-supported locus of social life (one of the only places for kids to get free alcohol at UVa it sounds like);
b) the cultures of the frats seem to treat women as objects (likely but not necessary in all-male organizations);
c) young males with free access to alcohol take risks and engage in behaviors they wouldn’t without the combination of alcohol and the social group – which get worse in a culture that treats women as objects (all of these are a given IMO); and
d) organizations like the national frats and the universities are around to protect criminals from being prosecuted (or even slapped on the wrist in order to avoid reputational damage to the institution’s (frat or universities),</p>
<p>then, I think the costs of frats dramatically outweigh the benefits by orders of magnitude. </p>
<p>The costs can be reduced by making frats coed (kills or at leasts lessens point b and probably ameliorates point c) or banning them. Of course, one size doesn’t fit all and there are no doubt frats who only have upside – they build social relationships and treat women like people and not sexual objects and aren’t fertile environments for bad behavior to occur. But, all frats will say that they are among the good ones. It will always be hard to tell.</p>
<p>My analogy is that the frats with the characteristics above are like stagnant pools of water. Most pools will breed mosquitoes. In some pools, some percentage of the mosquitoes may carry West Nile Virus or malaria. Our approach to public health is not to check stagnant pool by stagnant for malarial or WNV carriers but to eradicate or treat all of the stagnant pools. Even if we eradicate frats, rapes will still occur on campus, but by taking away the conditions that make it easy to see rape as an acceptable thing and hard to be punished for it, we reduce the overall incidence of rape. </p>
<p>UVA has a number of student organizations where alcohol is readily available - it is not limited to fraternities. </p>
<p>The catalyst that brought UVA under closer scrutiny? A complaint over how a case was handled. Incident didn’t occur at a fraternity party - it originated at a debate club meeting. Bad people are everywhere. Scroll to the end - Document 1 summarizes the allegations. The legal complaint itself shows the difficulties schools and complainants are confronted with. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.title9.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Jane-Doe-v.-Arne-Duncan.pdf”>http://www.title9.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Jane-Doe-v.-Arne-Duncan.pdf</a></p>
<p>"The costs can be reduced by making frats coed (kills or at leasts lessens point b and probably ameliorates point c) or banning them. "</p>
<p>Princeton has co-ed eating clubs. (Call it am eating club, and it assumes a veneer of class that fraternity doesn’t have, but it’s the same thing). Google Princeton and rape and see how well that works for them. </p>
<p>shawbridge: excellent post - I agree with everything you have written. It is very encouraging to me how many posters here, and people I know in real life, are ready to change the status quo. I refuse to believe we can’t do anything about rape on college campuses, other than tell young women to be more cautious. </p>
<p>Also the percentage of men that join a fraternity can vary wildly form campus to campus. At a Big 10 school that percentage can be under 10% of the total male population. I’ve seen numbers upwards of 25% per capita of males for UVa but I’ve also seen the number 30% for all Greek Life at UVa so I suspect that 25% is too high of a statistic (for males). </p>