greek system is a modern day albatross on college campuses

Parents Forum
41

I think it is idiotic to ban Greeks from being on campus. While it was the last thing I would belong to, for a lot of reasons, they also do provide for people benefits. On a campus that has few minorities, a house focused around their culture or faith might be an oasis for them, or for others, a house may be a way to forge ties with people not like themselves. It all depends on the house and their culture, there are houses I found repugnant, because they were full of a lot of well off, elitist jerks destined to be grown up, elitist jerks, but I also had good friends at a house that was centered around being jewish and I always had a wonderful time at their events, and they would be thrown out with the garbage if we did as someone proposed.

My take on this is that the Greeks themselves need to take a lead on this, and realize that in this world, especially today where nothing is secret, that the actions of the few can mess it up for others. While I don’t agree with the OP, I think the Greek groups, instead of whining, need to realize that if they have a bad image only they can do something about it. If this is truly a ‘few bad apples’ and not what their frat stands for, then give the bad apples the gruesome twosome, either they start acting like brothers instead of animals or get lost, and have rules against hazing and enforce them, someone tries hazing pledges, they are gone. The national chapters and the alumni have to realize that fair or unfair, the actions of the few can mess it up for all, and it only takes one jerk doing something to lose the efforts to build the image. Just ask Joe Paterno, who spent decades building his image and that of his program, and one slip, one failing pretty much ruined what he had tried to build. The defense of ‘it wasn’t the frat, it was an individual or individuals’ is an excuse, and as a friend of mine used to say, an excuse can get you out of trouble, but it won’t win you honors, either. Policing the behavior of the members is never fun, and when you are dealing with college, where kids have gotten away from parental control and want the freedom, it is even harder. However, as they say, freedom comes with responsibility, and also with consequences. If Greek organizations want to be seen as organizations promoting brotherhood and lifetime bonds, then make the organization more about that, have a code of conduct that basically says what you do and how you do it reflects on us all. Sure, some seeing that will say “what, I left my parents, now I have to live like that again?”, but quite frankly, those who see a frat as being a free for all, a place where ‘anything goes’ doesn’t seem like someone you would want in a frat, do you want someone who is responsible or someone who is an immature idiot? Do you want to be remembered as a group that had a party where half the people were treated with alcohol poisoning and girls were groped and worse, or do you want to be remembered as a place that was known for being a fun place to party and a place where its members are leaders on campus that are respected


And before someone says it, by telling the frats they need to police themselves, it is not the same thing as those who claim that racial attitudes towards blacks are because the AA community doesn’t police their own, they ‘let them run wild’ and so forth. When you belong to a fraternity, you have the choice of joining the group, you have the means in the group to exclude someone who misbehaves, whereas with race it is something you are born into, you have no choice, the association is forced on you, and it is unfair to say ‘it is your duty to clean up your racial group’ because of that. Greeks have a choice and if they want to have a positive image, they need to work towards that, instead of saying “this is the way it always has been, so what is the big deal?” In this day and age, there simply isn’t the wiggle room, what you do is under the microscope


42

Banning all Greek organizations seems like a really stupid idea. If individual chapters or students do stupid/illegal stuff than punish those folks.

My LAC did that-- there was a fraternity that violated college policies and they were shut down in the middle of semester and the members were disbursed to live in dorms.

43

"In 1985, a young man grievously injured in a Kappa Alpha–related accident reached a settlement with the fraternity that, over the course of his lifetime, could amount to some $21 million—a sum that caught the attention of everyone in the Greek world. Liability insurance became both ruinously expensive and increasingly difficult to obtain. The insurance industry ranked American fraternities as the sixth-worst insurance risk in the country—just ahead of toxic-waste-removal companies. “You guys are nuts,” an insurance representative told a fraternity CEO in 1989, just before canceling the organization’s coverage; “you can’t operate like this much longer.”

For fraternities to survive, they needed to do four separate but related things: take the task of acquiring insurance out of the hands of the local chapters and place it in the hands of the vast national organizations; develop procedures and policies that would transfer as much of their liability as possible to outside parties; find new and creative means of protecting their massive assets from juries; and—perhaps most important of all—find a way of indemnifying the national and local organizations from the dangerous and illegal behavior of some of their undergraduate members."

That quote is from the article I linked above. The Nationals DO NOT WANT to get involved with helping, supporting or dealing with with their individual brothers who are in legal trouble. Insurance, risk management, etc.

It’s not personal, it’s just business, guys. You messed up? You are on your own.

44

  1. I’d like to see emphasis on reform rather than replace.

  2. Young people (in and out of college) do stupid/risky/dangerous things, whether they are in fraternities or not. There is likely, for many fraternities, an amplification effect of being among a crowd of like minded 20 year olds. But I think crowd effects also offer an avenue of reform. (i.e. It is probably easier to create/enforce certain social norms at fraternities than among unaffiliated college kids and young people).

  3. I’d really like to see the federal government back off from the drinking age of 21. I’d like to see this become, once again, primarily a state level decision, and to see some states experiment with lower drinking ages. Most college students arrive on campus as 18 year olds, and don’t turn 21 until sometime in/around their junior year. Thus for somewhat more than half of all college students (on the four year track anyways), they are unable to buy a Coors Light legally. A major reason for fraternities popularity is that they allow underage students to get easy, consistent access to alcohol. If students could buy their own beer at age 18 or 19, fraternities (and fraternity parties) would have less pulling power.

45

eastcoascrazy, we have all seen frats in action and it is more than a tiny 'minority" that are a problem. separate from the lawsuit issues that make frats a huge liability , I always (at least in a fantasy) pictured college as a place where smart and nerdy kids got to head off to learn and grow
free from bullies, peer pressure and creepy “bro” culture. I do understand that bullies , phonies, and insecure people do get to go to college too 
but in my dream those people would stay behind in your hometown and be forgotten. as somebody else mentioned it is good to have a frat row so all those people are segregated from everyone else. if what you said that toxic waste removal is almost a better insurance bet than insuring a frat that says a lot. insurance companies run numbers, nothing personal just hard data to come up with risk assessment.

46

"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. "

Well, except for when there actually isn’t any hazing. I was never hazed. Not in the least. But let’s continue to pretend all Greek systems are the same.

47

“The Nationals DO NOT WANT to get involved with helping, supporting or dealing with with their individual brothers who are in legal trouble. Insurance, risk management, etc.”

Because those individual chapters are rogue. What part of that is difficult to understand?

48

" emergency room visits for injuries due to wine enemas, tattoos gone bad, ** branding done badly,** and other (usually alcohol related) problems."

I have always found it interesting that it’s the black fraternities who, as far back as I can remember, actually physically branded their new members - which I find absolutely repellent and cannot imagine a young man standing for that kind of behavior. Yet there never seemed to be any massive outcry against that. And there still isn’t.

Not that one excuses the other, but it’s kind of interesting how when majority-white frats do bad things (e.g., the SAE song), the frat system is condemned, but not when the black frats do branding.

49

To be fair, I’ve seen the reverse here on CC and in the real world, but hypocrites are going to be hypocritical.

50

@Pizzagirl, there may be some that don’t haze. More often I think it’s likely that members aren’t considering certain things hazing, just “what we’ve always done”, bonding, fun, etc. I had a friend at Cornell at the same time I was in college (so 20+ years ago) who said there easbt any hazing in her sorority, and maybe there easbt. She also said part of the initiatingor one of the fraternities involved breaking a finger. Sounds like a roll of the dice I wouldn’t want to be a part of.

Aside from the hazing, the exclusivity aspect is still there. I think it was the first reply in this thread that bragged about the fraternities and sororities only cheering for one player at some recent sporting event. Like that’s a point of pride? I would have been embarrassed of my school if only one athlete at a sporting event was cheered for.

51

Also, fraternities are generally regarded as being much rowdier (and risky) than sororities.

52

They didn’t cheer just for her, but they were there because of her, supporting her. I was a parent there because she is my child, but I also cheer for the other players. If my daughter wasn’t playing it is unlikely I would go to the games. If my daughter wasn’t a member of the sorority, it is likely these other students wouldn’t go to the game, and therefore her being in the sorority promotes participation in school activities by other students.

53

"Aside from the hazing, the exclusivity aspect is still there. I think it was the first reply in this thread that bragged about the fraternities and sororities only cheering for one player at some recent sporting event. Like that’s a point of pride? "

You’re not getting it. It’s not that they are not cheering for their home team, etc. It’s that they are SPECIALLY cheering for whoever “their member” is.

My S ran an organization that invited speakers to campus. His fraternity brothers made sure to show up to his events and generate excitement, applaud, etc. And yes, there was good natured “way to go S!” whenever he spoke. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Same thing when we would go support our sisters who were in theater. Of course we applauded for everybody, like normal people, but we might particularly clap hard when they took their bow.

As for the “exclusivity,” again, some of you seem to have this odd notion that being in a Greek house means you aren’t allowed to be friends with anyone outside it, which is just complete and utter nonsense.

54

No, we mean that some people who would want to be in a particular Greek house are excluded from being in it.

55

I must share that when I read the first reply of this thread, I chuckled and thought of a little checklist entitled “Pros of Joining a Sorority”. Just under “endless event shirts” there was “speciality cheerers”. Like, that’s all they’re good for? Not overlooking the benefits of joining a fraternity or sorority, but I didn’t expect that kind of testimony and found it initially amusing.

56

Gee, so many freshmen saying how they “don’t fit in” and “have no friends” and here we have post #55 criticizing that sorority sisters and a few frat guys will support a player?

And newsflash folks, college is EXCLUSIVE. If you are going to a top college, or even a mediocre college, you got in. And a bunch of other people didn’t get in. Because they didn’t meet the criteria. And y’all can argue about how college admissions “shouldn’t be a black box” but it is. People make up admissions committees.

I would daresay that anyone who is against fraternities and sororities en masse, and as a cultural institution, should be against college as well.

Plenty of kids die from alcohol poisoning without the help of a frat party. Plenty of kids not in frats kill themselves. At what point do we need someone to do their PhD on the incremental benefit or cost of having a Greek system on campus?

Be anti-Greek. But don’t ban it for others who found it a positive experience and one where they harmed no one. If 99% of fraternity parties end with no one going to the hospital from alcohol poisoning, should we close all frats?

57

What puzzles me is the apparent belief that banning fraternities would result in a world in which a certain minority of drunken, testosterone-addled 18-24 year old males won’t find ways to socialize in packs and do stupid shit. I guess none of the rest of you have ever spent time at a foreign university, an NFL tailgate parking lot, a bus stop in India, or a British football ground.

58

“No, we mean that some people who would want to be in a particular Greek house are excluded from being in it.”

I wasn’t part of the “popular crowd” in high school either. I was excluded from being invited to their parties, their lunch table, etc. BTW, they weren’t excluding me deliberately out of a desire to be mean - but, like all of us, we pick our friends and they didn’t want to pick me. What is the difference?

For that matter, what’s the difference if I really desire to be friends with the girls down the hall in my dorm, but for whatever reason, they aren’t interested in being my friend, and they don’t invite me to their lunch table, outings, gab sessions?

You can’t just demand other people be your friends.

59

“No, we mean that some people who would want to be in a particular Greek house are excluded from being in it.”

And let’s be clear. This is a result of the people who desire that they want to be Kappas or Tri-Delts and don’t give the other houses a chance. Oh wait, that’s different.

60

No, I’m not criticizing their support. Support your brothers and sisters. That’s what you’re there for and in some organizations that’s one of your pillars.

Perhaps, before others who jump down poster’s throats for saying anything that doesn’t shine greek organizations in the whitest of lights barrel through, I’m in a greek organization. You need someone to be at your art show? A group of ten of us will roll through. You’re stuck on the highway, you have tens upon tens of people who are available to you. It’s fifteen minutes before your paper is due and you can’t find a stapler? I got you. I always have one on deck.

Have people become so defensive over their organizations that they can’t even joke about it?