A university needs to figure out whether allowing fraternities and sororities is on balance harmful or beneficial to the campus. Benefits are irrelevant if they are outweighed by harms, like harm to other students, harm to the members, and bad publicity for crimes, alleged crimes and other bad behavior that reflects poorly on the university.
I think colleges make the decision all the time that Greek life is more beneficial than no Greek life. Every year they think about it. Colleges are adding houses and chapters all the time because more and more students want to be part of Greek life. When I was a member in the 70âs, my chapter had about 70 members. This year there are 253 (which I think is too many)because so many more students want to join sororities.
I do think there are students who choose a college because it has an active Greek life,just like some students want big time football, to be near a beach or ski area,to be part of a marching band (often at the same school?). Also, some schools have no Greek life, and if a student doesnât want Greeks around, he can choose a school thatâs Greek free.
When a Greek organization does something wrong and is punished or banned, someone always stands up to insist that all Greek organizations should be banned.
There are 5,500 fraternity chapters which belong to National Interfraternity Conference chapters, with approximately 350,000 undergraduate members. Of these chapters, about 25 will do something incredibly stupid each year. A larger number might do something that is kinda-sorta dumb, but forgivable. So less than one percent of the chapters will do something really out of line, yet people would call for the entire system to be disbanded.
If one-half to one percent of the citizens of a city commit a crime in a single year, should we pull that cityâs municipal charter? In fact, since there are almost 15 million arrests of U.S. citizens each year, shouldnât we just disband the nation?
Based on the statistics, we should disband the United States and put the Greek system in charge of the nation. These people with their far-left agenda who want to deny innocent Americans the right to join a fraternity or sorority quite honestly make me sick.
On the other hand, some schools have decided to make recognition dependent on following rules intended to curb alcohol-related problems, although in some such cases (e.g. CU Boulder), most of the fraternities have gone completely off-campus with no school recognition.
Okay, who had post #23 in the pool for when [The Otter Defense](The Otter Defense - YouTube) would be invoked?
Iâm not a fan of the Greek system either and never have been. It was one of the reasons I chose the college I did when I was a kid. Sure, there were other groups (mostly sports) who did some if their own hazing and heavy partying, but it was nothing like the stuff happening at friends college fraternities.
I admit, I believe I would be really disappointed if my kids joined a sorority. The need for exclusivity and divisiveness alone annoys me, let alone the hazing aspects. But I canât see universities on the whole tossing them all out. Too much money involved, they donât want to lose those big donors.
Universities should just ENFORCE a code of conduct, and kick the chess club, debate club, greek organization off the island if the organization violates the code.
I just want to make very clear that I am a huge proponent for womensâ rights and believe in the very real presence of a rape culture in todayâs society. However, I still donât believe that banning fraternities/sororities will help solve this issue.
Letâs face it. A lot of fraternities attract loud, obnoxious, sexist, racist, and misogynistic young men who just want to party. Not all fraternities target men like this, but tbh I would say a good majority of them do. I obviously think this is an issue; however, I donât feel that banning Greek life as a whole will fix this. I donât think it will because imo the loud, obnoxious, sexist, racist, and misogynistic men will find each other anyway and they donât necessarily need a fraternity to do that.
Instead of banning Greek life altogether, I think we should focus on banning the fraternities and sororities that are considered the âproblematicâ ones. There isnât a doubt that there are some very beneficial frats/sororities out there- for some people it can be a great way to make friends and get involved in the community on campus. I just donât think all of the Greek life system should suffer because of some bad apples. Time would be better spent spreading awareness about negative frats/sororities on college campuses.
My point is that, although Iâm very aware the Greek life system is very messed up and has been for many many years, itâs too intertwined into college culture to completely disperse of. Get rid of the bad apples and let the ones who are truly benefiting from it thrive.
I have some hope that the increasingly common bad press that fraternities are getting is actually because they are no longer able o get away with things that used to be allowed. I hope that more hazing and other inappropriate activities are being reported and the situation will improve.
It is a mystery to me how the Universities say they do not know which Greek Organizations are hazing, dealing drugs, are ârapeyâ etc. The students all know, just ask them.
a·nach·ro·nism
ÉËnakrÉËnizÉm/
noun
noun: anachronism; plural noun: anachronisms
a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned.
"everything was as it would have appeared in centuries past apart from one anachronism, a bright yellow construction crane"
an act of attributing a custom, event, or object to a period to which it does not belong.
I think that frats attract a certain type of person and these people are willing to submit to being degraded mentally and physically(hazing) to get accepted into the group. the group focuses on unhealthy behaviors(binge drinking and drugs often times) and groupthink and not being an individual and exploring and learning about life, instead you emerge yourself in frat culture(acting phony) and when you are part of a pack it allows you and often times encourages you to act and do foolish things, it is true you do not need to be in a frat to act and do foolish thingsâŠbut it does seem attract a certain type of person and can bring out the worst in those people. (this is my opinion)
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For what itâs worth (and it may not be worth much), my son thought that Greek houses were a terrific invention because they caused the worst elements on campus to self-segregate and get out of everyone elseâs way. He considered Fraternity Row to be a ghetto of sorts, which was avoided by civilized people who were living with their friends in nice apartments.
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In post #15, ucbalum posted the CU regulations for Greeks and apparently the Greek organizations are unwilling to sign it. At first glance, it seems reasonable. What do they find objectionable?
CU boulder frats decided not to agree to the universityâs rules,so are not a recognized student group. Iâm not sure if there are other schools that once recognized fraternities as student groups but now donât where the groups are still active as off campus groups. CU gets no say in the running of the frats or in discipline. Seems to be working fine as there are still hundreds of members of the off campus groups. I do know there are schools (Harvard) where the groups formed off campus because the school didnât recognize them or doesnât want Greeks at all. Those groups seem to be doing fine too.
âItâs cyclical. Eventually college kids will drift away from Greek life when it is seen as a more negative than positive association.â That was what I started to write. Then I went looking for statistics to back up my thesis that participation in Greek life has risen and fallen and risen again over the decades, and that probably in the near future the idea of fraternities and sororities will once again become as âuncoolâ as they were in the late 60âs and 70âs.
What I found was this excellent article, which covers the history of American fraternities, the end of in loco parentis, the right to freedom of association, the interdependence between colleges and fraternities, the power of Greek organizations on campus, the very, very long history of âfraternities behaving badlyâ, and the numbers of assaults, sexual assaults, deaths from falls, injuries and assorted (sometimes funny - unless it was your own kid) emergency room visits for injuries due to wine enemas, tattoos gone bad, branding done badly, and other (usually alcohol related) problems.
The article also covers insurance, risk, liability and how fraternities have come to protect themselves from lawsuits brought by people injured or killed in fraternity houses (falls from windows, alcohol deaths, etc.).
âThe interests of the national organization and the individual members cleave sharply.â
âIâve recovered millions and millions of dollars from homeownersâ policies,â a top fraternal plaintiffâs attorney told me. For that is how many of the claims against boys who violate strict (fraternity) policies are paid: from their parentsâ homeownersâ insurance. As for the cost of providing the young man with legal defense for a civil case, that is money he and his parents are going to have to come up with."
Quote from Douglas Frierberg, well known plaintiffâs attorney when it comes to fraternity related litigation: âUntil proven otherwise, they are all very risky organizations for young people to be involved in. Fraternities are part of an industry that has tremendous risk and a tremendous history of rape, serious injury and death, and the vast majority share common risk management policies that are fundamentally flawed.â the risk management policies, according to Frierberg, " are primarily designed to take the nationalsâ fingerprints off the injury and deaths."
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/02/the-dark-power-of-fraternities/357580/
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Do people really not see the rampant double standards in this thread? Posters are up in arms about Greeks and their stereotyping and racism and behavior and then the same posters stereotype all Greeks.
I think the key to all of this was posted up thread by @Much2learn. âIt is a mystery to me how the Universities say they do not know which Greek Organizations are hazing, dealing drugs, are ârapeyâ etc. The students all know, just ask them.â
Why donât universities deal with the bad apples? It seems that they hope nothing bad happens on their watch. If a crisis does happen they act surprised and outraged. Their management of problem Greek houses is reactive and not proactive.
But what specifically about CUâs conditions did most of the fraternities find objectionable?
(CUâs conditions are at http://www.colorado.edu/greeks/downloads/rfoa0607.pdf )
Note that three fraternities apparently do agree to CUâs conditions and are recognized (see http://www.colorado.edu/greeks/organizations/index.html ), although all of them are historically Latino or Asian. Fourteen sororities also agree to CUâs conditions.
There are eighteen unrecognized fraternities at CU, sixteen of which are in the IFC (see http://www.coloradoifc.org/chapter-profiles ) and two of which are not (see http://www.coloradoifc.org/ ).
I realize itâs a bit of human nature to sort people out, but this post really made me queasy. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/13796574/#Comment_13796574 And Tufts is not a campus that has a strong Greek life component.
I do like Marianâs sons notion (post #32) that putting all the bad elements together was a good idea sort of amusing.
I think the biggest objection to the university demands at CU were the housing conditions, specifically that each house have a âhouse motherâ (or adult live in supervision)and the control of parties and alcohol. There are a few houses where that might have been possible, but most of the frat houses are small, just houses rented by individual members, with maybe 10 or 12 members living there. The only benefit the frats would get from agreeing to the universityâs condition would be to use university facilities like meeting rooms. The sororities at CU have always had big houses with house mothers. National sorority rules forbid alcohol, so the sororities agreeing to CU rules is no hardship,and the houses benefit by getting to use university facilities.
at CU, all houses are off campus. No campus security, no cheaper rent. Not much benefit to the houses agreeing to the conditions.
The comparison with racism is not entirely accurate, since being a member of a fraternity or sorority is the result of a voluntary action, while being a member of a race (often as defined by others) is involuntary.
Of course, this does not mean that every fraternity or sorority is poorly behaved. In the CU Boulder situation, a few fraternities and most or all sororities seem to think that the schoolâs rules for recognition (which seem perfectly reasonable and not particularly draconian from an outside point of view) are perfectly reasonable.