<p>“no means yes” shouted in front of the Womens Center at Yale isn’t seen as an example of rape culture but explained away either as an example of postmodern humor or “boys will be boys”</p>
<p>Any fraternity party with a theme objectifying women isn’t an example of rape culture; again just a joke.</p>
<p>We really aren’t to a place where it is possible to joke about rape in my opinion. Fraternities (overall, though not every single one) create a negative campus culture for the majority of women on campus. imho </p>
<p>Shifting the discussion from rape and rape culture on college campuses to a debate about whether sorority women have been insulted or denigrated in some way is a diversion - again, imho. Once again, we can’t actually talk about rape.</p>
<p>blossom: I (unfortunately) believe that a non-sex-worker can consent to serial sex, or at least some form of consent, because someone I know very well apparently did that at least a few times. There is, as you might imagine, a complicated background, but the simple version is that she has always been socially and emotionally somewhat awkward, especially outside of defined roles. For an important portion of her youth, her “romantic” life seems to have consisted of getting really drunk at parties or in bars and having sex with whomever presented himself. During the latter part of that period, when she was an adult with a responsible job, she would pick up strangers in bars, and give them a fake name and phone number so they wouldn’t ever be able to contact her again. In the early part of that period, when she was still in high school, and there wasn’t really any opportunity to be anonymous, she sometimes had serial sex at parties. She was always pretty intoxicated, but I am reasonably certain that part of her intent in getting drunk was to loosen her (normally extremely high) inhibitions and give herself permission to be vulnerable and to do sexual things, without taking full responsibility. She also of course wanted boys to like her, but was completely mystified about how that might happen other than through sex. I think she would be offended at the suggestion that she had been coerced or exploited.</p>
<p>She’s not some kind of cartoon skank. She’s highly intelligent, a skilled, responsible professional whom people trust with their lives, but who has always been emotionally constricted. She grew out of that kind of extreme behavior, although not as quickly as she, or those who care about her, might have wished. Lots of therapy was had.</p>
<p>She was a sorority girl in college, too, at a large flagship state university. I don’t know anything specific about her sex life in college, but it’s hardly impossible to believe that it resembled her sex life in high school and post-college. On the other hand, maybe the close relations among the women in the sorority house gave her enough of what she needed emotionally that she didn’t have to get drunk and trade sex for a bit of emotional connection, and I would bet that at least the peer pressure of the sorority constrained her behavior.</p>
<p>Yeah, I can think of at least one example, too. She had to leave the geographic area when she decided she wanted to get married. The difference to me is when it is described as non-consensual by the woman. I am going to take that at face value. I don’t believe what is being reported as gang rapes in fraternity houses, is women seeking out those experiences. Of course, that will be one way to interpret it. It already happens.</p>
<p>Bay- here’s what would help your arguments and would make some of the posters here less irritated with your attitude-
"Hi it’s me Bay. Although most (all?) of the fraternity and sorority members I’ve known in my life have been ethical, honest, upstanding citizens who spent their college years volunteering and doing good works, I realize that on some campuses, fraternity houses become “lord of the flies” type environments where men with poor impulse control congregate. They join frats because they like to drink and they like to feel in charge/powerful when they do so. Some of them may, in fact, have distinctly anti-social behaviors and preferences- non-consensual sex, damaging personal property (“trashing the campus” when a football team loses), etc. Some of them, in fact, may be criminals.</p>
<p>While it is painful to me- someone who loved the Greek experience- to realize that on some campuses, fraternities are places where criminal activity is condoned or facilitated, I understand that some of you think that by eliminating fraternities we could eliminate this activity. This is surely an option. Perhaps another option would be to understand Greek culture and figure out why certain frats are places where even the “good men” won’t report a violent crime, or why on some campuses, hosting parties for high school girls in the local community is considered a legitimate social activity (whether or not a rape occurs at each of these parties is kind of irrelevant. 22 year old seniors shouldn’t need the company of 17 year old high school girls on a continuing basis.)</p>
<p>We could also discuss what colleges can do better in their admissions processes to make sure that kids with a criminal record don’t get a free pass when it comes to applying to college."</p>
<p>Bay- this is all you need to post for the rancor to subside. But you’re hoping to discredit the data and therefore scrub the record clean from having sex (violent or consensual) with high school girls; use of sedatives and other “date rape” drugs at parties, drunk and disorderly conduct in public, assault, etc.</p>
<p>Sure- the data is bad. But none of us who live in a college town are prepared to believe that the problem is the statistics. The problem is the problem- I’ve seen frat guys urinating on cars parked on quiet residential streets in lovely towns and cities on a Saturday afternoon. The local cops would be hauling the urinaters off in handcuffs if they were homeless people. But the frat guys get a pass because “that’s what they do” and the local homeowners are just relieved that no windows were smashed (that’s usually during homecoming) and no property was destroyed (that’s Halloween) and nobody from the local HS is on an IV at the hospital (most Saturday nights but only HS girls).</p>
<p>"as are the invention of the adjective “rapey” and its common use, both specifically to describe fraternities, indicates that UVA’s not an isolated problem. "</p>
<p>Sample of one - I never heard the expression “rapey” or anything similar in my Greek experience. Certain fraternities had the stereotype of being wilder, but that just mean wilder as in wilder parties – not as in coercing / forcing / assaulting women. </p>
<p>"The problem is the problem- I’ve seen frat guys urinating on cars parked on quiet residential streets in lovely towns and cities on a Saturday afternoon. The local cops would be hauling the urinaters off in handcuffs if they were homeless people. But the frat guys get a pass because “that’s what they do” .</p>
<p>In Evanston, the frat guys don’t do this because, well, their houses are on campus, it makes no sense, they don’t need to go to residential streets to relieve themselves. Off-campus, non-Greeks have been known to do this (publicly urinate, throw trash on people’s lawns, etc), and they get appropriately chastised by residents and authorities (as they should - it’s disgusting and embarrassing). Again, you are making things specifically Greek when bad behavior is bad behavior. </p>
<p>“Our bad behavior is no worse than the bad behavior of everyone else” is not really a compelling reason for me to keep fraternities around. Perhaps because of all the fraternity men in my family, I expect a much higher standard than that.</p>
<p>I’m reading [alh’s</a> link,](<a href=“CONTENTdm”>CONTENTdm) and so far I’m not impressed. The author is sloppy about her citations. For example, she writes:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>With a statement like that, I would expect the three references to be studies that showed that fraternity men were more likely to rape than other men. They’re not. They’re books about fraternities and rape, or about acquaintance rape. To me, sloppy citations of that sort are unforgivable. When I read that sentence and discover the lack of adequate documentation, I don’t even want to bother to read the rest of the paper.</p>
<p>When I was in school there were a series of attacks on sorority girls, especially at the houses that were a few blocks away from the campus (our house was about 3 blocks away, and another 2 more blocks from us). Was this attacker targeting the sororities? Of course. That’s where the women live. The attacker was not a fraternity member.</p>
<p>Many fraternity chapters don’t have houses, or only a few members may live in the house. It would be interesting to see if those schools/chapters have fewer incidences of sexual assault, if houses that are on campus and thus have to answer to the university have fewer reports of crimes or problems. Can schools that have experienced big problems be reformed to look more like Greeks at schools with fewer problems? Can limiting the size of the membership, the requirements for oversight by alums (liquor control), or some other reforms prevent tossing the baby with the bathwater? </p>
<p>Pizzagrl, it’s not a sample of one. In my days no one used that word. (The word, indeed, was “wild” and it absolutely didn’t mean rape, although it typically involved destruction of property or vandalizing, including at some point a sort of contest to uproot a lampost.)</p>
<p>I’d never even heard that word until about 4-5 years ago. In the past two years, I’ve heard it used casually by many young people. It’s a new adjective and it’s been invented specifically for fraternities. That, I think is revealing, as is the fact it’s used casually, almost “objectively”.</p>
<h1>348 - It’s a dissertation. I already said I don’t know if it’s "true’ and was just googling for ‘gang rape fraternities’ while I waited for you to show up with some more “good” links. I did find it fascinating she’s writing that at Alabama.</h1>
<p>CF found the Foubert study that is based on the Foubert study that I referenced earlier as the study that everyone relies on to prove that fraternity men rape more but contains no data on the actual identity of actual rapists. </p>
<p>I hope someone will soon publish a survey of college women asking more detail about where they were raped and whether the rapist was a fraternity man. I’ll shut up if someone can find that. I haven’t been able to. </p>
<p>It’s not that I don’t think the Campbell article is “true.” It might be. I think it’s sloppy.</p>
<p>The [Armstrong</a>, Hamilton & Sweeney (2006)](<a href=“U-M Web Hosting”>http://www-personal.umich.edu/~elarmstr/publications/Armstrong%20Hamilton%20and%20Sweeney%202006.pdf) article I linked before sheds some light on what aspects of fraternities might make them more conducive to rape. They examined one particular large midwestern university (I’m guessing it was Indiana, since all three authors are from there) and interviewed the freshman women on one particular dorm floor throughout the year, examining their social lives, which revolved around frat parties for most of the women. </p>
<p>The authors inquired why the women wanted to go to frat parties, and what their experiences were like at frat parties. In this particular school, alcohol was severely policed in dorms, but not so much at the off-campus frat houses. The young women wanted to meet men, and they weren’t meeting men in their large lecture classes. The fraternity men controlled access to and from parties (via transportation and door guards) and the young women were socialized to be “nice,” making them less able to avoid sexual assaults.</p>
<p>Anyway, the article sheds some light on how universities might change the way they organize fraternities and the rest of campus social life in order to make social life safer for female students. </p>
<p>Honestly, for me I think that it’s less that fraternities (or anyone else) cause rape and more that certain demographics or certain groups of people tend to be treated better or given the benefit of the doubt to an unreasonable, sometimes delusional extent. </p>
<p>To take a recent example from the news, with Hannah Graham tragedy. Did you hear anyone trying to argue ‘boys will be boys’ with the suspect in the case, Jesse Matthew? People did talk about what Graham and her friends ‘should have done’ but there wasn’t this aggressive attempt to displace large amounts of the responsibility for violent crime on the victim of the violent crime. </p>
<p>But when it’s someone else, someone like a clean-cut fraternity brother or lacrosse player or someone like that, the authorities don’t see them as slavering madmen but as being someone like their son or their daughter’s friends. A good kid, who made a bad mistake. No one wants to really hurt them so the goal of adjudication isn’t about public safety or even rehabilitation but instead to make sure that the accused feelings are protected as much as possible regardless of the consequences to anyone else.</p>
<p>To a certain extent that’s a good thing – we shouldn’t dehumanize anyone, not even people who are accused of (or even convicted of) horrible crimes. We sometimes take it too far though and make so many excuses for appalling behavior that we end up accidentally creating an environment where certain people see themselves – often correctly – as being above the law while others see themselves as being beyond the law’s protection. It’s basically the “campus bubble” in its most toxic form and it actually goes beyond fraternities specifically though I realize that they might have other problems.</p>
<p>Please explain to me why it’s an insult to call the Greek system antediluvian. It is QUITE LITERALLY true. What’s so offensive about calling an institution outdated? There are people on this site that call the Ivies outdated and no one takes that as an insult, not even alums and the parents of current Ivy students. This is a ridiculous and defensive reaction. </p>
<p>I have a sister-in-law who’s president of our alum group and a niece who just pledged. They would certainly consider it an insult and I could argue their POV but that would be a different discussion entirely than a concern with rape, and specifically gang rape, at fraternity houses by fraternity men. And I want to focus. </p>
<p>I’m extremely interested in CF’s analysis and grateful to her for taking the time to research.</p>
<p>This is getting out of hand, so, to close this side of the discussion:
Bay said
responding to Katliamom saying
which may be intellectual but not a put-down of women in sororities. Here the adjective clearly applies to Greek institutions (the word “institution” is used, not implied). You can criticize an institution without putting down people that are part of it, even though you can of course do both. Katliamom may have meant either (I don’t know what Katliamom meant and I think this is getting off topic so I won’t detail.) The word “antediluvian” is pejorative but is not a put down.</p>
<p>I think we can close that parenthesis now. Everyone okay with that?</p>
<p>Justlookingnow post 331. I just want to shed some light on the process per my son:</p>
<p>The fraternities at UVA do sometimes hold a fall rush for transfers and upperclassmen. In addition the “dirty rush” may take place. Dirty rush results when a freshman returns to a fraternity multiple times and gets to know the brothers early. Or has a previous association with one or more brothers. But when that happens anyone who pledges or is “dirty rushed” they do not participate in the pledging process until spring along with the spring pledge class. In the fall they get to participate in social events only. Meaning, they get personal emails about parties etc. It is usually only a few. So while there may be rush in the fall there is not pledging activities. </p>