@dstark
How am I supposed to know who the people you know, know? I won’t generalize greek life, just like you shouldn’t.
In my personal experience, I’ve seen more sketchy behavior at house parties than at greek parties. They aren’t regulated and generally attract random people. Which is a liability.
“You’re looking at it the wrong way. In the same way we have drivers ed to teach people how to not break the law, we should teach men to not break the law and rape.”
I have a son. I didn’t need to explicitly say to him, “Hey, hon? When you go off to college - don’t rape girls, ok?” any more than I needed to tell him not to run over elementary school children in the parking lot or shoot people who cut in front of him in the grocery store.
That’s crap. Ten seconds with Google brought me to this:
http://www.mndaily.com/2012/10/23/u-fraternity-sanctioned-alleged-sex-assaults
Just over two years ago, Sigma Chi was put on probation for two different reported sexual assaults. Moreover, “At least five 2011 sexual assaults at fraternities were reported to the Aurora Center for Advocacy and Education in 2012, according to the University police crime log.”
There was also a sparkling proud moment for Minnesota frats in 2010, with three different sexual assaults in three weeks at three different fraternities.
What do you want the “good guys” to DO about this, precisely, CF? You seem to want to hold everyone who joins the Greek system complicit in the bad acts that some members commit.
“You’re looking at it the wrong way. In the same way we have drivers ed to teach people how to not break the law, we should teach men to not break the law and rape.”
I think you are looking at it the wrong way. If we could just simply “teach” guys to behave better then we wouldn’t need to have a law against rape. But actually we have had and will continue to have laws against rape because rapes actually will continue to happen, just as car crashes do.
I think the advocates’ zeal to stamp out every and any whiff of “victim-blaming” actually gets in the way of common sense. The ROI on teaching girls to do a few things in their own selfish interest is massively higher than all this OCR adjudication stuff. Especially since my experience is that there are very few people would actually blame a victim of rape or some other terrible event.
Dumb. And exactly counter to what experience (like rhandcos above) tells us.
I want the university administrations to stop having fraternities to be the main way for freshman women to socialize with men and alcohol. The fraternity party scene is custom-made for predators to sexually assault women. Men control the space and the alcohol (and even the transportation, apparently, at Indiana) which gives rapists a chance to rape unimpeded.
Rhandco was sexually assaulted. Are you fine with having rhandco learn how not to be assaulted by being assaulted? As it happens, she wasn’t raped, but obviously in the situation she could have been. Would you be fine with her being raped to learn how not to be raped? Is this the system we want to stick with?
Northwesty, why can’t we teach guys?
I read your 4 points. I probably said those to my daughter. My wife says 1 drink an hour is too much for her. I don’t know your daughter. Other than that, I think the odds your daughter will be sexually assaulted goes down if she follows those 4 points. Nothing close to zero though. And point number 4 may not happen. The brain goes into self preservation mode when a person is assaulted. Hopefully she will never have to find out what happens during an assault.
Plus…people slip up. May not intend to put herself in a bad situation but stuff happens. We aren’t robots. Your daughter may become comfortable with somebody or a group and let her guard down. Many people are assaulted by people they know.
“I want the university administrations to stop having fraternities to be the main way for freshman women to socialize with men and alcohol. The fraternity party scene is custom-made for predators to sexually assault women. Men control the space and the alcohol (and even the transportation, apparently, at Indiana) which gives rapists a chance to rape unimpeded.”
Do you think guest lists should be registered or that there should be open parties? What are the pros and cons of each? It seems to me that when colleges institute policies whereby all the guests / guest lists need to be registered with the university in some regard, then the Greek system gets tarred with the brush of being exclusive and snotty only-the-girls-in-the-right-houses-need-apply.
Should the college throw its own mixers / parties, presumably without alcohol?
Should freshmen women be forbidden to enter frat houses? If so, why would we then “allow” upperclass sorority women to do so?
Should women be required to have a “relationship” (for lack of a better term) with a fraternity guy before going to an event there?
And how does this all work at places where the houses are privately owned / private property versus where houses are university-owned and thus more readily monitored?
There are no easy answers. I don’t think Greeks are all choirboys, but nor do I think they are all rapists either.
I think the vast majority of frat guys are upstanding people. But they’re not realizing that they’re harboring predators. TransferGopher telling us that there have been no sexual assaults associated with frats at Minnesota in the last four years is revealing. I’m sure he said that because he believes it, but it’s utterly untrue.
As to what I’d do if I were a college adminstrator, after I threw all the fraternities off campus… I’m not sure.
It seems, though, that you think that there is some “community” among Greek houses where everyone knows about or should know about and is / should be somehow responsible for, everyone else’s behavior. The simple fact is, though, even in a smaller school like mine, if there were (let’s say) 12 frats each with 50 members - who the heck knows what all 600 of these guys are like or are up to? I sure as heck wouldn’t have. I doubt my son who is a current member in the system does - heck, I doubt he knows what all 100 guys in his own house are up to, much less others. I think you think there are stronger links / bonds than there really are, that enable people to have special insight into others.
I don’t blame TransferGopher for not knowing that the Sigma Chis at his school did something bad. If he’s not a Sigma Chi, why is he expected to have some special insight into it or keep special tabs on it, just because he’s in another Greek house?
Universities need to do a better job of providing social outlets for their students, but they are constrained by drinking age laws. Fraternity men should not be blamed for the criminal acts of their brothers any more than two random people sharing housing should.
@TransferGopher
I know you’re trying to cover for your brothers, but you are honestly lying to yourself and others and quite frankly, it’s disgusting.
I mean aside from the article just posted above, this happened two years ago.
http://www.mndaily.com/news/metro-state/2013/05/02/u-responds-alleged-rape
Oh yes, and not to forget that glowing moment a few years ago where you had THREE incidents in THREE weeks.
So you’ve already shown yourself to be a liar, so why should anyone else believe anything else you say about Greek life and what you and your brothers do and don’t do?
It really speaks to YOU as a person though. Because I think colleges should do more about sexual assault, that means I’m against Greek life? I guess that shows where the problem is right there. If being against sexual assault means being against Greek life, you need to look in the mirror because you have A LOT of reflecting to do.
I’ll give the rest of Greek men the benefit of the doubt though. I can’t let the few taint the many.
Aren’t there studies showing that people are opposed to rape but are more tolerant of behaviors that constitute rape as long as you don’t use the word? I think that’s what the education programs are trying to challenge. Everyone knows that you shouldn’t rape someone, just like everyone knows that you shouldn’t just stand around and watch someone get raped. But without education, it’s easy for some of us – not your son specifically, but just ordinary people in general – to look the other way when something bad is happening or convince themselves that what’s happening isn’t really rape.
I know these examples are growing tiresome now, but with Penn State, Vanderbilt, Steubenville and similar cases so recently in the media it’s hard for me to believe that all of those people are predatory sociopaths. The actual attackers may or may not have been, but the bystanders and the people who lied and helped cover it up or looked the other way probably weren’t devilspawn.
It’s not really a fraternity/Greek thing though. Looking the other way and keeping your head down is a problem in pretty much any institution. If Greek life has an identifiable problem above and beyond other college students it’s probably only because they have groups with buildings and symbols, making it easier to aggregate their issues in a way that you can’t with less-formal groups.
I apologize for not making myself clear. A system where the fraternities control the parties and the alcohol is a system where young women get raped. It doesn’t matter whether the people setting up the parties are rapists, or intend to set up a system for rapists: the rapists are raping, because they can.
Therefore, colleges that don’t want freshman women to get raped and assaulted will set up a different system, one that ends up with fewer women getting raped and assaulted. They’ll give young women a different way to meet and interact with men that doesn’t give all the power to men.
I do blame TransferGopher for not knowing about the assaults at Sigma Chi, or the other assaults at fraternities that were reported to the Aurora Center in recent years. He says he knows what goes on at fraternities at Minnesota, and we don’t. He confidently asserted that there have been no sexual assaults at Minnesota fraternities in four or five years, even though that was obviously false and could have been determined to be false with ten seconds on Google. He has no business representing himself as an expert while shoveling crap at us. And when the only thing that he says that I can check turns out to be ludicrously untrue, that makes me mistrust the things he says that I can’t check.
“Northwesty, why can’t we teach guys?”
We should teach the guys of course.
But we need to teach the girls how to protect themselves. Which is, practically speaking, much easier, much faster and much more impactful imho. But this, imho, is impeded by the hyper-vigilance from the advocate crowd about “victim-blaming.” I think the advocates and the schools should spend most of their time on the most effective measures. Rather than the measures that a less effective.
@TransferGopher
And let’s not forget that the vast majority go unreported by women who are coerced into staying silent. Imagine what we would dig up if we actually had access to the numbers of assaults and rapes both reported and unreported?
@"Cardinal Fang"
You are 100% on the money.
@northwesty Despite what you may think, rape victims aren’t just stupid or products of their own shortcomings. No one is saying that women shouldn’t be aware and have street smarts. EVERYONE should. What you are advocating will make do difference at all. If anything, we will see a rise in attempted rapes that failed. But if guys are still trying to rape, that’s still a problem. And it doesn’t matter if you arm every woman with a gun and teach them karate.
If men are still trying, that’s the problem. No sexual assault problems will ever be solved if people focus on self defense instead of targeting the perpetrator.
You know northwesty? You would have a little more credibility with me if you left out your advocate bs. 
CF, posted a great link and part of the article addressed victim blaming which is alive and doing well.
Sorry about that, but with the delays, I was having a hard time telling which posts you were referring to.