I do appreciate all points of view, we can all agree that we don’t want this type of behavior to occur, I guess The debate is about the bet way to remedy
I attended the University of Texas and dated a guy who was a KA at the time that accident occurred. A bunch of the guys were in the bed of a truck, probably all drinking but probably all of legal age, as the drinking age was 18 or 19 in those days. From what I understood at the time, a guy literally jumped through the open window of the truck and attempted to mess with the driver’s feet or something. The truck crashed and threw the guys in the bed out of the truck, and the young man in question was in a coma for a couple of months and of course was never the same again. It wasn’t a hazing incident or anything, but was certainly alcohol related and occurred while the guys were going from sorority house to sorority house as some kind of prelude to their spring formal, so it was considered a fraternity event for the purposes of that lawsuit.
I always wondered what happened to that young man. I’m glad to know that at least his ongoing medical care was taken care of, but of course, he never got his life back as it could have been.
Wow, cobrat, just what exactly does this have to do with fraternities on modern day campuses?
I think it would be pretty presumptuous on the part of any school to mandate that people must invite everyone in a class to a child’s birthday party. As long as invitations are not disbursed at school and the kids don’t make an issue of talking about it in front of others, a school has no business directing how its students celebrate their birthdays on their own time.
For D1’s 11th birthday, she invited 4 or 5 girls to go to Six Flags and spend the night afterwards. But you would have her school “sanction” her for not inviting every kid in the class? And for the record, I’m pretty sure neither of my girls were invited to every birthday party that ever happened and I’m thinking it was just kind of considered part of life that you can not expect to be invited to every social function which is going on at any given time. All I can say is I’m glad I didn’t choose a school which attempts to police the private lives of its students!
I attended a school with a very large Greek presence. I never joined a sorority. My D2 attended the same school and did not join a sorority. My D1 attended another school with a large Greek presence. She did not join a sorority. My H did not join a fraternity.
My S did join a fraternity at his school and I have nothing but good to say about it. He loves his frat and his brothers. But they did not engage in destructive hazing. He belonged to an elite singing group that had much worse hazing. Damaging hazing actually. And when he tried to fight it he was ostracized.
He has nothing to do with the singing group but always goes to his fraternity for alumni weekends.
I would choose his frat over his singing group any day.
If I were running a college I’d do more with the residential college system such as what exists at Harvard, Yale, Rice. At least at Harvard there is a professor who lives attached to the house, a dozen or so grad student who reside in the dorms, and a number of other professors and grad students who come for meals. Do bad things happen at these schools? Absolutely. Are there unauthorized Greek-like clubs off campus? Yes, but they represent a tiny, tiny portion of the school population. And I think the culture of the house system encourages grown up behavior. In addition since each house has plenty of ammentities (squash courts, pool tables, a pottery studio, a dark room, a grill, music practice rooms, a small library in my house) friendships are encouraged, I also like the fact that because nearly every one stays on campus and is associated with a house for multiple years you get to know people outside of your natural comfort zone.
It is very creepy, in this day and age, that a professor would live with students.
As for natural comfort zone, did anyone see this:
I really love this op-ed - it should be a must read for all the PC folks out there, all the folks who want protection for them and their family, at the expense of everyone else.
Kollegeguy stated the debate should be about how to remedy the problem behavior and I agree.
I have often wondered if it would be helpful to ban freshmen from Greek involvement - not letting them rush, pledge or affiliate with a house, not letting them attend any parties held in Greek houses, etc. Maybe they could start the process at the end of their first year, but any attended events would have to be dry.
I think giving freshmen the space to figure out the academic demands of college, become independent, make friends from a diversity of settings and just mature a bit would be hugely beneficial. I would be hopeful a freshmen ban would tame some of the Greek problems.
Not creepy and they didn’t eat many meals with the student. It was considered a prestigious position and many very well known professors were also masters at houses. Think of it as a way to foster faculty student relations. The idea is that your education should not be confined to the classroom. They aren’t babysitters, but you might think twice about throwing up outside their windows.
I think it’s kind of creepy that we segregate people so much by age. Real life isn’t like that.
Actually, these are faculty members that staff this position known as Master of the House, (as it is known as at Yale) and frankly, there is nothing weird about the situation. The Professor lives there with his/her family, as well. The Master is the chief administrative officer and the presiding faculty presence in the college, and lives in the Master’s House. The Master is responsible for the physical well being and safety of students in the residential college, as well as for fostering and shaping the social, cultural, and educational life and character of the college. During the year, the Master hosts lectures, study breaks, Master’s Teas (intimate gatherings during which students have the opportunity to engage with renowned guests from the academy, government, or popular culture) and other events.
The Master’s Office is staffed by a Senior Administrative Assistant , Operations Manager, and Service Assistant . Master’s Aides, generally are upperclassmen, are also on hand to help keep the Master’s Office running smoothly. The Master’s Office handles anything having to do with life at each college, including but not limited to key issues, packages and mail, events and activities in the College, and facilities such as the gym, buttery, and music rooms. The Master’s Office is the place to go with any questions about college life at that specific college.
Sorority was one of the best experiences for my D. at college. Why Greek has to be banned? Nobody is forced to participate. And if you think that obnoxious will not find other way to disturb and destroy, you are wrong!! They will, they have proven it over and over. There is a system in place for any criminal activity, it is called police. There is an anti-police sentiment out there, but it needs to be dscussed in a different thread. As long as police is allowed to do their work and as long as they are following their own procedures, Greek or non- Greek criminal activities will be dealt with properly.
Itʻs ironic that you mention police, because it is in some instances, a similar model to cutting-off appendages of an organization that has some analogy to the current greek system. In the last 30 years or so, several major metropolitan police departments have taken a thorough review of a particular division, and have decided because of systemic problems they have created (e.g. public corruption, graft, excessive force…etc) they needed to be eliminated or revamped. They did NOT say, they would eliminate the entire system, or that these concerned divisions were not also a force for good, but rather, judged against everything else, they had become either antiquated, obsolete or did not exhibit the values of the current leadership.
I would also reiterate that this consideration of dialogue and discourse is not coming from some radical, uninformed quarter, but rather these are the sentiments being articulated, as we speak, by college Presidents and their respective BORs.
Yale has an off-campus Greek system. And secret societies. One might therefore conclude that it’s residential college system has not sufficiently met all students’ social needs.
Specific to the Greek system, it is a little under 10% at Yale, so while it is represented, it is certainly not large. By way of comparison, someplace like William and Mary, has close to 30 percent of students participate in Greek life. So to your point, and in fact, it is because the college system does meet a variety of needs and interests…
“It is very creepy, in this day and age, that a professor would live with students.”
Is it creepy that Greek houses have house moms and dads? Almost all of them do. I think it’s a good thing for young people to have grownups around. Students are supposed to be learning from their elders as well as from one another.
The Finals Clubs at Harvard predate the House System and they objected to it. It’s not surprising that they didn’t go away completely. But I think for most people the House System combined with all the extra-curriculars serves them very well. This article gives a bit of the early history: http://collegiateway.org/reading/morison-1936/ I think the most important benefit of the system was that it prevents social stratification by income. All housing at Harvard costs the same and the amentities of the various houses, while different, are theoretically reasonably equivalent.
“It is very creepy, in this day and age, that a professor would live with students.”
Ever seen the Lawn at UVA? Ever been to Notre Dame?
The “Academical Village” was designed by Thomas Jefferson to have faculty houses (called Pavilions by TJ) connected to student dorm rooms. It is still used like that to this day.
The highest honor a UVA student can get is being awarded the right to live in a single dorm room on the Lawn during their senior year of school. Deans and esteemed faculty members are given the right to live with their families in the Pavilions on the Lawn with students as their neighbors.
Notre Dame doesn’t have frats but has single sex dorms that function somewhat like a residential college or a frat. Most kids live in the same dorm building all four years. A faculty member (often a priest or nun) lives in the dorm as “rector.” Domers say that their dorm/house system provides the pros of frats (community, activities) without the cons (hazing, exclusion).
“It is very creepy, in this day and age, that a professor would live with students.”
Really? Lot of schools have professors in residence in their dorms, I had one at NYU when I was there, what is creepy about it? Having professors or grad students live in greek houses would help temper things a bit and it can also make life easier for the kids. I’ll give you a rough analogy, when my dad served in WWII, the unit he was in consisted of kids his age (18+), and also had guys in their 30’s, and he said that having the older guys helped stabilize the unit, that while a 30 year old can be scared and so forth, they generally are going to be a lot more stable than a 18 year old kid. Compare that to Vietnam, where units were almost entirely young kids (you often had 18,19 year olds leading the units), and it often led to problems if the histories of the Vietnam war I have read are to be believed.
I don’t think it is at all creepy to have a prof living amongst students.
I also agree that if fraternities had a strong older male presence in the frat house, 99% of this crap would never happen.
I have to comment on something, and that is that the bad behavior we are talking about generally is in the realm of fraternities, sorrorities while there may be bad behavior there, like the ones where being a member is about how good looking you are and how well off your family is (and yes, they exist…), or ones where they may do stupid things and get drunk, you just don’t hear about it. When I was involved in campus life discipline stuff 30+ years ago, for every report against a sorrority (weren’t a lot at the school I went to, granted), there were probably 25 against frats, and it doesn’t surprise me, girls can be mean at that age, but boys tend to be shall we say full of testosterone and lacking control in some cases…so I don’t think Sorrorities are even in the same ballpark.
As far as fraternities goes, the fact that insurance companies find them that risky is interesting, that liability insurance went through the roof. Insurance rates are based on statistical data, actuaries figure it out, not from what the newspapers write or the tv shows talk about, but do so based on reported claims, and what that tells you is that fraternities have real problems that go beyond perceptions. If fraternities are listed as severe risks, it is because the companies (who cross report data to each other), see a heightened statistical risk based on past behavior. It is like arguing that if you live in a city area your insurance should not be higher than if you lived in a rural area, since you are a good driver, the higher rates are based on the statistics of where you live which determines the base rates. If the liability insurance is rising on frats as a whole, that says there is a broad problem there and backs up what people are saying about frats. If it were a few bad apples, it is like the auto insurance analogy, if an area has some bad drivers who have accidents, but other than that the area is low on reported incidents, the base rate will not be going up; but if you live in an area with a lot of accidents and other claims, the base rate goes up, period. A good frat probably will pay less then one with a history of claims, but if it is going up broadly, that indicates that ‘bad frats’ are not exactly in a minority. Insurance doesn’t operate on perceptions, legally and in a business sense that is not workable, they operate on statistical data and that data seems to be indicating problems with the frats.
I had a young prof living across the hall in my freshman dorm. She became a lifelong “friend” of our freshman crew. There were (single) profs living in several dorms and several living in college owned houses in the grove area of campus. I think those relationships that develop are priceless. I don’t find it the least bit :“creepy” unless one “thinks” their kids are “children” and the profs are “adults”…which clearly I do not believe.
I tend to think that “girls” getting into some bad behaviors are probably rare. I can’t, for instance, imagine a bunch of women ransacking a ski resort. But I think girls today engage in more dangerous and reckless behavior related to their drinking than a few decades ago, they put themselves in harms way which to me is worse than property damage.