Perhaps in a racial/ethnic sense, but most of them are not very reflective of society in an SES sense (Columbia does better than the others in terms of students from low SES backgrounds, though). Most of them have about half non-financial-aid students, meaning those from families with income of $250,000+ or so (top 2-3%).
I donât know why the sorority and fraternity houses at CU are off campus and owned or rented by the chapters; they always have been. Most are just across the street from the university, often in groups of 4-5 houses, but a few are 8-10 blocks away. The school has very little say in anything to do with the sororities, and of course since the fraternities are not a student group, no control over them at all. There are also Boulder city ordinances to deal with about the size of houses in residential neighborhoods, and only a certain number of unrelated people can live in houses so they canât just build a new house and have 100 people live there.
There are all kinds of arrangements for Greek houses. At some schools, they are on campus and owned by the university. At others, the university might own the land but not the houses (Alabama) so youâd have to read the land lease to see how much control the university has over the house; since the houses cost $5M+, Iâm sure there is some pretty strong language in the leases restricting what the university has to say about closing the houses. Some schools have no houses, others have sections of dorms reserved for chapters. At my daughterâs school, there are only 12 rooms in the houses and the Greek village is pretty far from campus, so I doubt sheâll ever live in the house as she has to be on campus too much, too early.
That I concedeâŠthis is also more about the general state of education in the US, private v. public, and well funded school districts v. not haveâŠ
You get to have your own opinion, but you donât get to have your own facts. The facts are that fraternity and sorority members drink more than other students.
One might claim that the fraternity members and sorority members are the kinds of people who would drink more even if they werenât in their fraternities/sororities. Theyâre whiter than other students, and white students drink more. Theyâre more extroverted than other students (particularly the sorority women) and maybe extroverted students drink more. But the fact remains that fraternity members and sorority members drink more.
"College students drank when I was in college and they are doing it now. Unless you can think of a way to stop it, I opt for doing it safely. Kind of like saying, âWhy do people have sex before they get married? Just say no.â "
Oldfort, your enablist mentality is a part of the problem.
The apologist usually tacks to the past, as they reminisce about a time they somehow view as better; what they miss is the opportunity to shape a better now and future.
Zoning laws can be changed or modified. Variances can be granted. College overlay zones can be created. Thereâs a local college in my area that adds dorms all the time - the neighbors arenât thrilled but the zoning board gets convinced to let them build new dorms every time they ask. Certainly some neighbors might think a dorm might be a better neighbor than a frat.
Do we know Williams students drink less in general than Colgate students?
I am a realist. I donât have my head in the sand and have magical/wishful thinking. âWe will solve the problem by banning alcohol and Greek life. All of our students will spend all of their time on academic with no influence of alcohol or drugs.â
Boulder is always trying to limit growth. I lived in a house that held about 50 but it was used for a different purpose for one year and only 18 people lived there. The city then capped the capacity at 18 and of course that was much too expensive to run (many law suits, many appeals). The university can build dorms and buildings, but not in the neighborhoods. Itâs a little more commercial right across the street from the University, but this was about 4 blocks up into the neighborhood - the neighborhood where Jon-Benet Ramseyâs family took a regular sized house and made it a mega-mansion, but only one family lived in the house. Boulder city/county controlled growth for many years by limiting new sewer tap permits. Boulder really doesnât care that you want to live there, it is happy being a small town.
thumper1, can you elaborate? Why would you not have been considered for membership, and why would you want to spend so much time with people who didnât consider you eligible for official status? My discomfort with Greek organizations is not focused on misbehavior which, as so fully discussed here, varies widely by individual organization and pervades college life in general, but revolves around their criteria for membership and the whole recruitment process that formally deems individuals worthy or unworthy, so your experience is of great interest to me.
MommaJ. FirstâŠmy parents were divorced. This was1970, and that alone would have been sufficient. In addition, I was raised JewishâŠand back then this sorority was not.
And most important, I had no interest in being a member.
To be honest, maybe if I had gone through Rush, I would have been accepted. But I didnt.
Still, these girls were very welcoming to me as a non-member and I remember their many kindnesses.
I pledged in the late 70âs and 3 of my 4 best friends in the house had divorced parents. We had at least 3 Jewish women in my pledge class (there may have been more, I just donât know).
Maybe divorce was accepted by the later 70âs, but in the late 60âs my divorced mother was denounced from the local church pulpit (she was not the cause of the divorce and did not want it).
In my house, which I joined in 1977, there were plenty of members who had divorced or divorcing parents. We had a number of members who were Jewish, and I attended my first Seder at the house. We also had a black member. The school didnât have many minorities at the time. We also had several members who were pretty wealthy, but many more (including me) who worked to pay our dues, who were on financial aid, who didnât have much money at all.
Were there houses that were all white, all Christian, super picky about the size and weight of the Rushees? Yes, and there still are. But that wasnât my experience at all. My daughters werenât interested in colleges that lack diversity so it wasnât a problem they expected to encounter during Rush, and they didnât.
Clarification from me. I never went through rush at this college. I was not interested in being in a sorority. My point was that even though I was NOT a sorority member, I was welcomed into their communityâŠand often. I donât think that is a bad thingâŠand it spoke highly of the members, and their fabulous house mother (who would remind me that a seat was set at the dinner table).
You knowâŠthey didnât have to do thatâŠever. I remember offering to pay for the meals, and being told it was not necessary.
My point isâŠGreek or notâŠthese were very nice people.
I didnât read this whole thread, but I got some very negative overall generalizations from the smattering of posts I did read.
Iâm trying to figure out why one else will respond to Boolaâs post #213 about his own child. Anyone?
We donât knowexactly what happened to boolahiâs daughter. As parents, we always feel bad our kid is hurt, or even when it is someone elseâs kid. I gather some brothers posted unflattering pictures of boolahiâs daughter on the internet. It is a danger for all of our kids to not have compromising pictures taken, with or without their knowledge.
As a parent of 2 girls, I am constantly reminding them not to have any pictures taken that they couldnât show me, even if it is for their long time boyfriend. I google them all the time to make sure everything is clean. But internet safety is a separate discussion.
Picapole: I didnât respond only because Iâd said I was leaving the discussion. Thank you for pointing this out.
BoolaHI: I am so very sorry that happened to your daughter. Thank you for all your posts on this thread.
Oldfort: I am always impressed with your parenting. I do not agree internet safety is a separate discussion. We have a thread going on about a fraternity that allegedly posted nude or partially nude photos of unconscious or semi-conscious women at their parties, without their consent, on a facebook page. This is an example of fraternity rape culture. It is a dehumanization of women. As I said upthread, I want to ban fraternities because (overall, not necessarily individually) they contribute to rape culture and a dangerous campus environment. When we shift the burden to young women to protect themselves from rape culture activities, we enable the continuation of rape culture. We sort of say this is all we can expect out of those boys. It is up to girls to prevent these situations from coming to pass.
And as Iâve posted before, that doesnât mean we donât teach our daughters how to protect themselves. We just blame the men who victimize them for the victimization. Those men are responsible for their own actions. It isnât up to our daughters to protect them from themselves.
alh - it was hard to respond because we donât know how those pictures were taken. Did she have pictures taken in the privacy of just her and her BF? Was she drugged and taken advantage of? Did she take those pics herself and sent them to select few or post them on her social media? This is not a blame to BoolaHIâs daughter, but depending on what circumstances it may not be related to the fact that they were frat boys, and therefore conclude Greek life is bad. This sort of thing happens in high school too without presence of Greek life.
As far as name calling, I was taunted and teased as the only Asian growing up in a Midwest town. Last time I looked, there were no Greek life in middle school. That being said, majority people I met were very nice and kind. They helped my family settled in a foreign country. You wonât hear me say that everyone in the Midwest is racist.
His fraternity has been among the best aspects of my sonâs college experience.I hope to heck they did not do anything to harm others, as far as I know they didnât.
I certainly see the problem though. Teenage boys are not known for their maturity, as a group, to start with. Then you get that subset of them that is most prone to âboys behaving badlyâ and put them together in a fraternity, (Not one that my son would ever successfully pledge, but whatever). with like-minded individuals. Individuals specifically selected on the basis of being compatible with those others. Then you leave them on their own, without parental supervision, for the very first time in their entire lives. Now thatâs true of all of the kids, but this particular cohort becomes a âgroupâ. And âgroupâ behavior is known to deviate from individual behavior, not always in socially constructive ways, So there really are some problems, in formulation.
But I would hate to see a solution that would eliminate the kind of very positive experiences that my son had .