<p>Why would you put the onus on the fraternities not to admit freshman women? The women can easily borrow someone else’s ID to get in, and how can the fraternity students police that? Why not put the rule on the freshmen women not to go there, and if they do and get caught, they get kicked out of school?</p>
<p>The parties should have guest lists, previously supplied, as they do at TransferGopher’s school. These lists could be checked, and any freshmen eliminated from the list. Then, to get in, the drunk freshman girl would have to show the ID of a person who was invited, and how would she get it?</p>
<p>Guests lists are fine with me, but as PG pointed out, elitism and exclusion are the main criticisms of the Greek system. Fraternities at some colleges have open parties now, in order to combat that perception, but now you want to limit them. </p>
<p>College students can easily borrow IDs from older friends. That was a very common phenomenon when I was in college.</p>
<p>National fraternities (and sororities) are self-policing to a degree. They have to carry and pay for insurance coverage, so every incident that violates the law or subjects them to a lawsuit puts their coverage at risk. This means that they are cognizant and interested in what the local chapters are doing, and often from my experience, the local alums are very much involved in their activities. Obviously, this doesn’t always help, as in the UVA case, but you may have noticed that at least three (if I remember correctly), of the fraternity party death examples cited in this thread involved local non-national fraternities, who have more free-reign to go rogue.</p>
<p>Actually, Bay, as someone posted upthread, the national fraternities have cunningly off-loaded their insurance risk. [url=<a href="Why Don’t Colleges Get Rid of Their Bad Fraternities? - The Atlantic the article again. I’ll quote the relevant part, but the tl;dr is the fraternity insurance doesn’t cover anyone who isn’t following the 50-page list of rules that frat boys are supposed to follow. As soon as the frat boy violates any of these rules, which more or less happens the minute the kid picks up a beer, he is no longer covered by the frat’s insurance policy.</p>
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<p>I didn’t say first year women. I said freshmen. Period. And if the kids took someone else’s ID, and were caught, of course they’d get punished, too. This is done for underage students caught drinking, at many universities - it’s easy to include “sneaking into a fraternity” into the list of violations that will result in a fine and/or other punishment.
But any fraternity that willingly lets freshmen into its building - either by not carding them or giving them fake IDs… or any other means - is responsible according to the “carding” system.</p>
<p>Note that your point about students exchanging cards was made wrt underage kids getting into bars and liquor stores. And it didn’t turn out to be true. Few 18-year olds can pass for 22, and most don’t have a fake ID (despite popular hollywood convention). They ask random adults to buy the alcohol for them, or they go to parties where alcohol will be supplied. So, the “carding” system works to a certain extent. Does it prevent 18 -year olds from getting alcohol? No. But if you stopped carding in liquor stores and bars, do you really think <em>fewer</em> 18 year olds would get in?</p>
<p>And why put the onus on fraternities? Because they’re respectable organizations that want to police themselves, know the laws, respect them, and have lawyers and accountants and alumni.
They’re not a bunch of underage kids who are on their own for the first time.</p>
<p>That brings up an interesting point. I don’[t know how the insurance works. Do the colleges require all the fraternity chapters at their school to carry $X million coverage against these kinds of incidents? (the way, for example, a hospital requires all the doctors who are affiliated to carry $X million coverage) Or is the amount of coverage independently determined by each chapter and / or the national organization - so House A carries only $500,000, House B carries $1,000,000, etc.?</p>
<p>BTW, the fraternity lawyers will throw any fraternity member under the bus if something happens and they can’t find another way to protect the fraternity. The college’s lawyers are there for the college, not for the students. The fraternity’s lawyers are there for the fraternity, not the students.
There was such a problem with finding insurance for some fraternity houses that a whole separate branch (specialized in fraternity challenges) was developped.</p>
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<p>I am fine with this. I don’t think I will ever be convinced that an 18-year old adult should not be held responsible for his/her own decision to drink or rape. This includes my objection to laws that assign liability for serving alcohol to 18+ college students. Show me an 18-year old college student who doesn’t know s/he is violating the law by drinking a beer, and I will show you an 18-year who was raised under a rock.</p>
<p>Even if the fraternity can avoid liability for its errant member, the cases still must be defended and that costs money.</p>
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<p>I have no idea what this means. You are saying that 18 year olds don’t have fake IDs or get into bars and buy alcohol with them? You are kidding, right?</p>
<p>There’s been 20+ posts since my last post so I can’t really comment on everything. If you want questions answered or want to know whether or not something would work, please ask me. Also I posted something about Greek life at my school couple pages back that is a little different perspective. </p>
<p>Let me know! </p>
<p>There is drinking, drugging and sex at the universities, not just at the frat houses but at the private student dwellings as well. My son goes to a large state U and the drinking patrols are out in full force starting Thursday night and grabbing those who are drunk and rowdy. I think LE around a college town should be keeping an eye out for parties where contraband seems to be served including underage drinking. In our area here, if there is some high profile bash going on, the police will likely check it out and if it looks like underage drinking is happening, they will investigate. A number of “HOme Alone” parties put into check that way. University neighborhoods need to be put into check the same way any residential ones are. Frat houses and other so designated placed should be put to the same standards as other places when there are parties. This has not been the case. Not a single sanction against those admitting to serving scads of underaged students at UVA, including Hannah Graham who ended up dead one weekend.</p>
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<p>The fraternity scene at Dartmouth is very unlike almost every other school: it is generally very open and very inclusive. Pledging does not happen until sophomore year. Policy has been that any person with a D student ID, or a guest of a student with ID is welcome, except during a few private gatherings, such as formals and members’ meetings. To my knowledge, they do have someone at the door looking at ID cards at actual parties, and I believe that they usually try to repel anyone who is obviously already very drunk, especially if underage. I have been reading about the greek scene there for 6+ years, and I’ve never heard talk of houses preferring to let in drunk, hot girls. Not even from the harshest critics. There is some kind of policy about registering parties and alcohol purchases, I don’t know exactly what it is, but houses with low GPAs are not allowed to host parties, and presumably the same is true if they have some kind of other violation. Most of the alcohol served routinely is reportedly cans of weak beer (Keystone Lite?). Some houses serve some trademark punches on big weekends, apparently. I have read that houses are considering closing their parties to a guest list in order to avoid being held responsible for drinking that takes place elsewhere. A lot of people think this is a shame, and will lead to exactly the kind of exclusivity decried elsewhere. (The Valley News article I posted about the Parker Gilbert case includes details about the complainant stating she drank some significant amount of vodka in her room before going out to a party. While she was upset about her dog, this kind of pregaming is apparent very common everywhere. I remember that in the case years ago at Brown that became very famous, the girl said she drank something like 10(!) shots of vodka before going to the house, where she drank more. Please note that I am not saying the fact that they drank made being raped their own fault! I am just saying that is reveals something about the college drinking scene.)</p>
<p>This past year, D put in place a policy that no first year student was allowed in a fraternity house until after Homecoming Weekend, which I think is 6 weeks into the term. The idea was obviously to try to keep them safer during that period when kids tend to go wild. Despite this, 12 intoxicated first years were transported to the hospital over that period of time. (On a related note, the greek organizations recently decided to unilaterally do away with pledge term, so as to discourage any kind of hazing.)</p>
<p>The plan suggested by the fraternities and sororities at D included various measures to try to control drinking in their houses, including letting them have a keg controlled by a paid bartender, non-student bouncers, and encouragement of alcohol-free social events on at least a monthly basis. It is, as they pointed out, out of their control to affect drinking in dorms.</p>
<p>I just saw online that UVA shut down all its fraternities for the rest of the semester in the wake of the article. Reported by Washington Post.</p>
<p>Yep.</p>
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<p>[U-Va</a>. president suspends fraternities until Jan. 9 in wake of rape allegations](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-president-suspends-fraternities-until-jan-9-in-wake-of-rape-allegations/2014/11/22/023d3688-7272-11e4-8808-afaa1e3a33ef_story.html]U-Va”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-president-suspends-fraternities-until-jan-9-in-wake-of-rape-allegations/2014/11/22/023d3688-7272-11e4-8808-afaa1e3a33ef_story.html)</p>
<p>Sorry but that just seems like a slap on the wrist. Students are heading into finals and one would think the social activities for the semester would mostly be done anyway.</p>
<p>I am glad they are doing SOMETHING…we’ll see if it’s enough. Obviously, there have been problems there for years if not decades.</p>
<p>No, it isn’t much. But Phi Psi had already suspended itself, and none of the other fraternities has been publicly implicated by name, anyway. </p>
<p>It’s a step in the right direction. She didn’t say that they would be restored at that time. She certainly left open the possibility of extending the ban if no one comes forward with information.</p>
<p>“However, aren’t first semester frosh most vulnerable, since they have not been around long enough to hear the stories about how certain fraternities are “rapey” (i.e. harbor sexual predators), unlike upperclass students who know which houses’ parties to avoid?”</p>
<p>This seems analogous to - there’s a dangerous intersection on campus, so forbid the freshmen (who haven’t figured out the pattern of traffic and the crosswalk) to avoid it, instead of just fixing the darn intersection. </p>
<p>Well, if you’ve tried to fix the darn intersection for 30 years, freshmen get maimed crossing every year, and still nothing has been done, steering the freshman to another crossing may be a good choice till you fix the crossing. :)</p>