“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.”
This is an interesting point - I suppose there is no reason that a college who wanted to discourage Greek life and / or keep a tight rein on the Greek life they had couldn’t require that the local house corp carry $X million worth of insurance, right? Kind of like how a hospital might require an individual doctor who wishes to practice / do surgery to carry $X million worth of insurance? I wonder how that’s set and whether colleges can do that. I suppose it may have to do with who owns the physical house. If the college owns the house and it’s leased out, I suppose they can do so, but not sure how they can require anything if the physical plant is separate / privately-owned. Anyone with any knowledge of how this works?
“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.”
I think girls today engage in LESS dangerous and reckless behavior than we (collectively, not me, I was a good girl, lol) did 25 years ago. They now have designated sobers and designated drivers and “watch your drink” and “don’t leave without your sister” types of things that - quite frankly - years ago, we didn’t have or do - or if we did, it wasn’t part of the culture.
If you ban Yale’s Greek system then, which serves a relatively small segment of the student body, you are denying them a social outlet that they obviously want and enjoy, which is not met by the current college system. I don’t know why you think those students’ needs are not valid or valued, or why your negative opinion of how they want to socialize trumps their needs.
I make the decision based on the following: One, it has been said by several posters that the Greek system is nothing more than a national social organization–let’s for sake of argument that is more or less correct. Now, what would you say if this social organization which has the implicit support of both private and public universities also has the following features, features that we know will take place every year of their existence:
there will be a death (for the last 45 years this has been true–and in some years, more than a few); there will be violent sexual assaults of women, including but not limited to gang rape and sodomy; there will also be explicit displays of racism–this will be numerous in numbers; there will be hundreds of unlawful acts (everything from underage drinking, drug use, vandalism, assault and battery…etc); their membership will be largely limited to white middle class folks; and there will be hidden door settlements that total over a 100 million.
Now, did I just make this up or is this the very same thing that college presidents and their respective BORs are currently engaged in and seeking to address. Actually, all things considered, not a hard decision to make.
But it’s not all one big organization, that’s the part you keep missing.
Why should my son’s fraternity be “guilty” of what SAE did when he and his buddies did no such thing and have no affiliation with SAE? It’s as asinine as suggesting that the tennis team at one school should be sanctioned for what the lacrosse team did at a different school.
Show me the actual numbers–please. Do the numbers reflect society–do they even reflect the student population of the respective institution? Finding a couple of situations that are outliers, is a far cry from saying equality or diversity has been achieved.
Bully for them. Who says that individual college presidents shouldn’t reevaluate whether the presence of Greek life on campus is good or bad for that particular campus? If they decide to kick Greeks off campus, well, then so be it - their show to run. It’s the broad universal condemnation and stereotyping I object to.
Leaving aside the Greek system for a moment - my friendship groups have never been as diverse as the college as a whole / my city as a whole. Is that something I must work on? Must I ensure I have just-the-right-proportion of white/black/Asian/Indian/Jewish/Catholic/Protestant/whatever friends as the immediate world around me? Because that aint’ ever going to happen - not because I’m prejudiced, but that’s not a criteria I care about when “evaluating” friends.
I’m Jewish (nominally and secularly) but I always managed to attract and be friends with Catholic girlfriends. I don’t know why. It just was. We just had stuff in common, maybe guilt :-). But whatever. Should I be upset that in my friendship groups, Catholic and Jewish are overrepresented and Protestant underrepresented? Should I actively do something about that?
Or why don’t I get you the contact information for the Presidents and BORs of Williams, Colby, Middlebury, Bowdin, etc… and dozens of other colleges, that have abolished the Greek system, and make that same question. See-- http://www.newsweek.com/inside-colleges-killed-frats-good-231346
These are men and women that are far brighter than myself…
Why do they have to reflect society or even the campus? There are clubs and organizations everywhere that reflect the interests of a segment of society and there are living learning dorms and houses on many campuses…boola why do you think Greek organizations do not reflect society when society strategies into social interests. It starts much earlier than adulthood…you have the band kids, the robotics kids, the theater kids, the choir kids. That part of your argument falls apart for me.
It’s not meant as an argument. On the other hand, I would not pre-suppose you have been called the N word to your face, or an African monkey, or to console your daughter when photos have been taken of her, without her permission, and then posted on internet sites. This then came to a head when several members of a frat admitted to both taking and posting the pictures ( only after a computer forensics person I hired made the identification) and their fathers begged me not to follow through with charges and ruin their lives. Their trite rationale-- they are actually good boys. I ultimately relented, but the photos were then still captured by other sites, and we needed the assistance of the US attorney’s office to shut down the multiple sites that still had these unauthorized pictures.
Now, I ask you in earnest, would you be so accommodating if you had these personal events happened to you and your family…??
As for a reflection of society, well, I’ll leave you the words of the Middlebury College Dean, when asked about the effects of abolishing the Greek system at their school:
"We’re pleased that Middlebury decided some time ago to make our residential life system inclusive of all students,” said Shirley Collado, Dean of the College. “I think that Middlebury is stronger and more diverse.”
I already said - great for them. If that’s what they feel they need to do, they know their campuses and they know their systems and whether they are a force for good or for evil. I don’t have an objection to individual. college presidents assessing their individual systems and making a judgment - so be it. I object to the groundless “the entire system should be razed, everywhere” mindset.
You are the person that implied that the Greek system is not an organization largely composed of white upper middle class folks, so I merely asked to show me the numbers that reflect that statement–still waiting.
@boolaHI I’m so sorry this happened to your daughter. I know my empathy cannot take anything she experienced away. The more of us who quit being “innocent” bystanders, and start speaking up, the more we can make a change.
Had I been in your place, I don’t know if I would have relented like you did. It hopefully saved your daughter from further duress. The reality is that other posters here keep wanting “proof” of what these guys are doing. And here you had the proof–but you did not make it public. You must have been so torn.
Thank you for your kind words–I will say, for many of us, myself included, when events are in the abstract, it is difficult to comprehend or lend introspection to events and institutions in which you only have a single lens and dimension. The reality is that something is awry–and the information on the actuarial information on the pricing of insurance for the Greek system is a telling data point. D1 is well into medical residency and the event is long behind her, but as a father, well, your perspective is certainly altered…