"Florida State University President John Thrasher announced today he is imposing an indefinite interim suspension on all fraternities and sororities at FSU effective immediately.
The action follows the death three days ago of Andrew Coffey, a pledge at Pi Kappa Phi…"
http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2017/11/06/fsu-posts-press-release-greek-life-ban/836939001/
What do you think? Appropriate action or overreach that punishes the innocent?
I believe the FSU Greek Community was warned after the deaths at Penn State and LSU, that a similar incident would be felt by all.
If a dorm party gets out of control, they don’t close all the dorms, fire all the RAs, cancel all social activities.
^And they don’t end the football/basketball/baseball season early and disband the team when one athlete is arrested.
(The FSU chancellor paid $950,000 in 2016 to settle a lawsuit against the school that charged FSU worked to make sure rape allegations against a football player were not aequately investigated.)
Pledges are in a subordinate position to Active members and they can be denied active membership into the organization. That is not true of dorms. You can not be kicked out of your dorm for refusing to participate in drinking or other hazing activities that occur in fraternities and sororities You are not subordinate to your fellow dorm mates. Even though such activities have been banned by universities and the organizations themselves for a long time, they are still occurring within some chapters and we have to put a stop to that.
They roll all the fraternities and sororities into one group and treat them all the same so one person can bring down the entire system. I think there are more than 7000 members of Greek social houses at FSU. but 54 total (many serve special purposes like music, religion, ethnicity). Sororities have no alcohol in their houses, they have house mothers/parents to keep things under control, but that gets no consideration when the decision is to close down the Greek system. What are the houses that were following the rules supposed to do to prove they are worthy once again?
A death of a pledge happened at CU about 15 years ago. The fraternities were closed, the sororities agreed to a lot of conditions (most of which they were already following) to remain a student group (they get an office in the student union and a little bit of funding). The fraternities have never returned as a student organization. IFC is an off campus organization and now the school has no control over them and they are as strong as ever.
Virginia immediately suspended Greek organizations when the ‘Jackie’ story was printed in Rolling Stone. The houses were reopened for social activities in Jan., long before the story was found to be false. It just made no sense to punish thousands of kids for what might, MIGHT, have been the actions of a few several years earlier.
The idea is that they want to prevent future deaths. This is not an isolated incident, and it’s safer for the welfare of all future greek students by ending the system altogether. A teenager died. Why risk another person’s life?
Somehow universities, fraternities and sororities have to come to a place where the behavior is not acceptable and members are willing to step in to prevent these things from happening. I was Greek and I will tell you that our sisters looked out for each other. We always had sobers sisters who monitored parties and were the DD’s. I’m just appalled at the recent events and we need to force change in those chapter who can not change themselves. I would strongly caution anyone from joining a non-university sanctioned fraternity or sorority.
But people in dorms have died, out drinking in bars, driving cars on campus. I agree that all colleges need to clamp down on drinking but is the way to do that to shut down 54 student organizations? UVA knows of the big drinking fest that takes place in the fall just when school opens and does nothing about it. The Halloween parties, the tailgating.
Tell me that FSU is going to shut down tailgating. Ha. They dedicate school parking lots to tailgating.
They are suspended for an indefinite time period - so they are not shut down permanently. They are looking for ways to correct this problem. I’m sure it will be agreements and such that have to be signed to be active again. Maybe more training. I think the real difference about things you mentioned versus Greek life is that in those situation there is not an imbalance of power, but in the pledge/active relationship there is.
There is most often an imbalance of power in any campus activity. The freshman (although the pledge who died was a sophomore) are trying to get into the club - band, student council, sports teams, cheer leading, the newspaper - and other students or faculty are judging them.
Hazing is banned by all sports teams but it happens. Hazing is banned by all Greek organizations but it happens. Sometimes it isn’t hazing that causes the injury by the pledge trying to impress the older members. “Look how much I can drink!” This isn’t limited to Greeks.
I think my daughter living in a sorority house is in the safest environment on campus, even safer than the dorms. Her house is secure and nobody can just wander around once inside the front door like they can in a dorm or apt building. No alcohol in the house. No roommates leaving the door open or inviting unknown persons in for a drink. If she goes to a party at a neighboring frat house, she must be escorted home by another girl. The school keeps a pretty tight rein on the fraternity house parties (the houses sit on school property) but has suspended houses that can’t follow the rules. They don’t close down the whole greek system because one house isn’t following the rules.
Perhaps just maybe, the risk profile in fraternities (for both men and women) is somewhat different from that in sororities…
I’m sure sororities are safer if for no reason that alcohol is not allowed in the houses, but the schools are treating them all the same. One Greek house has a problem, close them all. FSU shut down Greek life activities for 54 houses (even those that are not IFC or Panhel (traditional social groups), but also the music, christian, academic Greeks. It also put restrictions on 700 other clubs and organizations.
I still don’t understand why when something terrible happens in a fraternity/fraternity system the sororities are also punished. The rules regarding alcohol, etc. are completely different. Sororities and Fraternities are not governed by the same organizations so why are they lumped together?
Maybe it’s been done to send a very strong message, to the students and nationwide. You can’t compare hazing deaths to kids getting out of control at a random party, because it is the unique nature of hazing and the pledge system that is inherent to the problem. No doubt the ban will be lifted at some point.
While I am generally in the camp of “why punish all for the actions of one,” it does seem as though the entire FSU system has had its share of problems:
“FSU police and university officials have investigated 15 different organizations for allegations of hazing since January 2015.” (NOTE: According to the FSU website, there are 21 members of IFC, to give you an idea of how widespread the issue is.)
http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2016/04/01/fsu-leads-sus-hazing-reports/82440388/
@tutumom2001 - As it was pointed out above, the ban is for all Greek organizations - including cultural and professional - and not just IFC fraternities. I think it’s overreach. I was in Tau Beta Pi (engineering honor society) and it’s just not the same as an IFC fraternity!
Honestly, I think IFC really needs to change the culture. I was a member of a sorotity in the late 80s/early 90s. At that time, changes were being made by Panhellenic Council to reduce hazing. I can remember having to sit through trainings outlining what was and wasn’t considered hazing. None of that stuff had been in existence when I was a pledge. My particular house shortened the pledge period and eventually allowed pledges to wear letters. The message was clear that hazing would not be tolerated. Chapter advisors weren’t going to turn a blind eye either. There was even a program where if Nationals was concerned about your chapter, they’d send a trained recent alum of another school to live in your house and watch over everything you did! None of this happened because of the university, though. It came from within. I expect it would not have been as easily accepted if it had been pushed on us by the university.
The universities really do need to work on educating all students about alcohol consumption and the dangers. Many students don’t really know how much alcohol is in a mixed drink, or how many servings of beer are in a red cup. They don’t realize that not everyone binge drinks and that they don’t have to do it to fit in. My alma mater has had two students - neither of them fraternity pledges - die from alchol poisoning since I graduated. A university close to where I live now had a student die from drinking in her dorm room. I recently read in a magazine about a program (can not find an article online) that assumed students were going to drink and went from there. It even had students calculate how many calories were in what they were drinking as a potential deterrent! My husband and I decided to do this with our daughter before sending her away.
I saw a video of a “non-incident” in the yard of an FSU fraternity from earlier this year. The football team had just lost a game. (this was much earlier in the season when they still had hope of doing well) There was a large party going on in the yard. There were also people partying inside the fraternity house. This video showed someone from the house shoving a large TELEVISION out a second story window. The thing fell straight down and missed hitting two unsuspecting women by inches. They were fortunate it didn’t turn out to be the “TV Tragedy” or the “Fraternity Flatscreen Failure.”