Note: I ran the search on a bunch of colleges, and found fraternity sanctions at all of them, except for the one that didn’t have fraternities–there, the rugby team was sanctioned.
In response to @Hunt Post 58
You think fraternities members do bad things. I think most don’t. I know I don’t, I know none of my friends don’t, I know none of my brothers don’t, I know none the chapters of my fraternity and others across the nation don’t.
I have first hand experience inside houses across the country. You have here say and rumors from your college days.
This is just ridiculous. Again, try living the life or talking to people who have before judging. You are generalizing and stereotyping an entire group of people.
This is statistically irrelevant. Do the same for athletes and you’ll get the same result. Nobody hates athletes. AND generally there are more fraternity members than male athletes making it a higher percentage of athletes. Soo.
(Source?) These things are totally unrelated. Insurance is a complicated issue, but it makes sense that insuring hundreds of thousands of undergraduate college males who throw more parties than average are expensive to insure. It makes total sense to me.
Again, doing charity work and needing to be insured are totally unrelated. All fraternities donate to charities and do volunteer work.
You actually totally sidestep the issue all-together. The events that occur are in direct relation to the exorbitant price of insurance–period.
Yep. There’s a big problem with them, too. It’s probably the same problem.
Notice that if you did a similar search for female athletes you won’t get the same result. And you’ll find much less misbehavior if you search for sororities. Why is that?
Testosterone is a hell of a drug.
^^^^True, but it’s a reason not an excuse.
@TransferGopher And the data is actually from an association directly related to insuring entities within the greek system: see–http://cmssites.theginsystem.com/uploads/fipg/userfiles/FIPG_MANUAL.pdf
@boolaHI I’m very familiar with FIPG and risk management. I just don’t think it’s unreasonable for it to cost a lot of money to insure hundreds of thousands of undergraduate males who regularly throw parties weekly where hundreds of college students come to drink.
And you just made my point. These are highly risky endeavors, with a long history of very bad decision making. Over 40 years, with at least a fatality a year, and many years, multiple deaths, speaks for itself. And I speak also a former D1 scholarship athlete in football, and thus no stranger to both lurid and sometimes all-together heinous behavior.
I certainly don’t fault you, but to say the greek system is good, but then try and parse out the vast vast documented history of both unforgivable actions and sometimes criminal, and then say, they are not part of the same system, is saying like you only support democracy when it serves your individual needs. And BTW, if college football continues down its path with chronic brain injuries, a minor league for the NFL and not having greater cohesion as part of the greater university community, then yes, I would say it would be appropriate to have discussions about downsizing or eliminating it all-together.
“And I speak also a former D1 scholarship athlete in football, and thus no stranger to both lurid and sometimes all-together heinous behavior.”
Are you personally to blame for bad behavior that other D1 scholarship athletes do? See, that’s the problem with the Greek system discussions on CC – the good ones DO get blamed for the bad.
@boolaHI – What percentage of division one football programs would you call “good” programs that are beneficial for the community?
I think most people would say that most if not all football programs are positive for the community despite most of them having some kind of history of illegal or unethical activity.
Now, what percentage of fraternities would you call “good” or beneficial for the community?
I think people are going to say that there are more “good” football programs than fraternities.
That is an interesting question. Football teams have the same legal issues as fraternities, they get worse grades, and do less philanthropic work. But yet fraternities are evil rape dungeons because the media portrays them that way.
Think about the Jameis Winston situation. If Jameis was in a fraternity instead of on a football team, he would have been expelled from school and his fraternity would have been kicked off campus.
But it would be ridiculous to destroy a football team that tons of people love because of one person, yet it happens all the time.
As a college athlete, you should understand how this goes. But maybe it was different in your time.
What I don’t get is why the members of all these good fraternities aren’t the ones who are most outraged by the bad behavior of the bad ones. They are obviously giving you a bad name, and have been doing so for decades. Why do you put up with it? Why do you let them stay in your “system?”
As for football, I think in many ways the problems are more shameful, because they are enabled by adult coaches and leaders, including staff “fixers” who help make problems go away in order to protect the program. Greeks don’t typically have that kind of adult “supervision.”
Here is where I have differed from both you and Gopher. I am ready to at least consider that if continued, I would be open to the discussion of football being downsized and/or even potentially eliminated. Again, these institutions, while both having a deep and storied history with universities, are only ancillary to colleges/universities…
Well, while you bring up relevant data points for the Greek system, then one that does not go away is a fatality a year, for the last 40 years–even big-time football does not have this scarlet asterisk assigned to their name. As for why football does not receive the same criticism as football–my generic thoughts are in no particular order: money, race and hierarchy.
Football, both college and the NFL near 20 billion in revenue annually—this is an awfully large dog to put back on the leash. Moreover, most every facet of society loves football, whether you live in a sleepy hollow in Arkansas or the UES of Manhattan, and it is the rare thing that also crosses the street on income, gender, class and race. The same cannot be said of the greek system for most of America…
“What I don’t get is why the members of all these good fraternities aren’t the ones who are most outraged by the bad behavior of the bad ones. They are obviously giving you a bad name, and have been doing so for decades. Why do you put up with it? Why do you let them stay in your “system?””
Can you clarify if you mean –
a) “why do the good XYZs at Michigan put up with the bad XYZs at Georgia” (schools picked arbitrarily, for illustrative purposes),
or whether you mean
b) “why do the good XYZs who are fine upstanding young men most everywhere they plant their flag, put up with the bad ABCs who cause havoc on whatever campus they wind up on.”
The answer depends greatly on which of these two scenarios you are referring to.
How about this: why do the good ABCs at Whatever College allow the bad XYZs to remain part of the “Greek System” at that college? Why does the college have to expel them? Why do the members of sorority DEF continue to go to parties at XYZ after bad behavior?
Because of alpha male power and social capital, at the college and beyond the college in alum groups.
That’s a southern Greek system answer, as in the North there’s no “power” in alum groups - they are just social clubs.
Then how do you answer Hunt’s question? It is clear all the problem groups aren’t southern. What is your answer to the question based on your locale? I think it’s an excellent question and deserves a serious answer.