The Truth About Partying at Lehigh

Colleges and Universities A-Z Lehigh University
1

D2 will be attending Lehigh in the fall. As I talk to people I keep hearing that Lehigh is an excellent school, but also a party school. In general, I think that Greek life can be a positive on a college campus, with proper controls in place. D1 is in a Sorority at Penn, and it has been a very positive experience for her.

Still, I am a little concerned about what I am reading about the party culture at Lehigh. The school paper reported last year that 1. Lehigh is pressures the student tour guides to not be honest with prospects about Greek Life and to “not let anything slip.” 2. This year the school paper reported that a college student hosting a High School Student on diversity weekend believed that hosts were supposed to take their student to a frat parties and, “That is what we are supposed to do.” If the administration ever responded to these claims printed in thebrownandwhite.com, I am not aware of it. That is concerning too.

It seems to me that it would be good for everyone if the administration could respond to these claims in the school paper, and assure parents and students that they have the situation under control. Possibly they already have? I don’t know.

I am hoping someone can tell me what it is that admissions does not want to “slip” from the mouth’s of tour guides, and what is going on that college students who are hosting high schools leave their training believing that they are supposed to take the high school students to drink at frat parties. I can’t believe that the partying and alcohol is really this out of control, and that the administration is actually that out of touch, but it certainly does not sound good, and so I have to ask the question. Maybe this was just erroneous reporting?

Footnotes:
1.Student wonders whether…Greek Life is accurately portrayed to prospects?
http://thebrownandwhite.com/2015/03/25/just-accurately-greek-life-portrayed-prospects/

2.Two (high school) students visiting for Diversity Life Weekend cited for alcohol consumption http://thebrownandwhite.com/2016/04/17/d-life-weekend-2016/

2

All colleges let undergraduates, alums, and parents help in the recruiting process. Lehigh has a very detailed and extensive training program (and test) you have to go through to be allowed the honor to represent Lehigh. You need to understand you are speaking on behalf of Lehigh not yourself.

I don’t see a “college wide problem” when one students makes a mistake and brings two high students to a party. My son hosted a prospective student and he could have made a mistake while trying to entertain them. The underage students chose to consume alcohol. I am sure many high school students are consuming alcohol at there before, during or after their high school social events too.

I also don’t seem to see any “college wide problem” with the personal comments of one student tour guide who is questioned by one student reporter who is looking for a story to write on Greek life. The anonymous tour guide probably has not be given any training on how to give interviews to the press. Who knows what was said to get that exact quote from the tour guide. If you have ever been interviewed by a reporter you have to be very careful what you say. Most professional newspaper do not allow citizens to be cited as anonymous sources for quotes. Man, if I could be sourced as anonymous I would have 10 stories for my local newspaper!!! Haha.

I guess I don’t think it is important to have the leaders of Lehigh talk about them commitment to a safe environment.

The TRUTH can be found in the actions of Lehigh’s leaders… Year after year they have removed fraternity and sororities from campus for breaking rules. Which is documented in the Brown and White. I find it so sad that Lehigh is one of the only schools I know of that have the courage and commitment to school safety that they yearly anger alumni and donors by removed their houses from Lehigh’s Greek community and yet they rarely ever get the recognition they deserve for these actions.

Here is information on the Greek Accreditation Process

http://studentaffairs.lehigh.edu/content/accreditation

Here is the Excel spreadsheet of Lehigh’s Yearly Ratings of the greek houses… You can see for yourself in “back and white” the fraternities and sororities that have had problems, been warned and have been removed from Lehigh.

http://studentaffairs.lehigh.edu/sites/studentaffairs.lehigh.edu/files/offices/ofsa/docs/accreditation/2014-2015/Accreditation%20yearly%20breakdown.pdf

3

Hi @kikkydee ,

Thank you for responding to my post.

@kikkydee “I don’t see a “college wide problem” when one students makes a mistake and brings two high students to a party.”

By itself, I agree that mistakes can happen. However, the Host makes it clear that taking the admitted students drinking was not a mistake. He said that he attended the training and believed, “that’s what we were supposed to do.” I think that raises questions about the attitude of the administrative staff who are running the training. Especially when, as was true in this case, these students were at Lehigh at the invitation of the administration, and many of those high school students are under 18. That means that the potential for a serious crime to be committed is much higher than if they are 18 year old college freshmen.

@kikkydee

“I guess I don’t think it is important to have the leaders of Lehigh talk about them commitment to a safe environment.”

I am sure that they have to say something about this on a regular basis, because the “party school” put down is what other schools seem to use to try to convince prospective students and parents that they they should attend their school instead of Lehigh. I am sure that many of those parents and students then ask the Lehigh administration for a response to that assertion.

Additionally, I am a Lehigh parent now. We were very impressed with everything about Lehigh. However, if a parent asks me whether the partying is any worse than any other school or not, or asks what steps what Lehigh takes to ensure that students are safe, I honestly do not know what to say. How do you answer that? I don’t have any facts about that. Maybe it isn’t, but I am honestly not sure. If I recommend Lehigh to a parent and they say that their student who does not drink alcohol, and what to know whether that student would still fit in a Lehigh, how should I respond? I am hoping to get some information about how to answer questions like these honestly, in a positive way, and without having to omit anything.

I did noticed that there was an article a year ago that said that Lehigh was considering bringing Juniors back on campus because, ““We think this change will move much of the social life back onto campus, where the environment will be safer, better controlled, and where the social scene will be more inclusive,” the report states.” Do you know whether a final decision has been made about whether this is happening?

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/bethlehem/index.ssf/2015/07/lehigh_university_may_move_the.html

Also, I also noticed these Greek Life statistics released by Lehigh. It is interesting to me that the Sororities have significantly higher grades every year than the Fraternities do. Do you know whether Lehigh also releases that data for each individual fraternity and sorority? That would be helpful for students interested in Greek life. I am also interested in whether the gpa’s of the Greek organizations are above or below the average Lehigh student. Do you know whether they publish an overall average to compare this data to?

http://studentaffairs.lehigh.edu/sites/studentaffairs.lehigh.edu/files/offices/ofsa/docs/trendanalysis/Statistics%20Trend%20Report%20Spring%202016_0.pdf

4

Here is the page of the Greek Accreditation Reports. Looks like 2015-2016 hasn’t been completed yet.

http://studentaffairs.lehigh.edu/node/2781

Click each individual sorority or fraternity and you will be able to see most of the information you are looking for. Feel free to contact Greek life and just ask them. It is summer. They really do love talking to parents.

Okay, your next concern:

“However, if a parent asks me whether the partying is any worse than any other school or not, or asks what steps what Lehigh takes to ensure that students are safe, I honestly do not know what to say”

You remind me of me! I spent the whole summer before my son went to Lehigh reading old Brown and Whites. I don’t think I stopped until my son’s sophomore year. I think it was pretty relieved when I stopped reading them. Haha. If you are nervous about this I would seriously contact Lehigh’s police department. I have visited with them when I have visited campus. Their website enables you to click on their crime log. You can compare it to other schools if you feel the need.

https://police.lehigh.edu/content/contact-us

Also, here is the government website that enable you to easily compare crime statistics between colleges.

http://ope.ed.gov/campussafety/#/

One thing I would say about Lehigh’s safety. Since the school’s campus and most of the students living off campus are in such small concentrated area the police force has a pretty easy job of cruising around the campus and keeping an eye on everyone.

I thought it was pretty sweet - in 2015 the Friends of Lehigh donated money for an additional horse for Bethlehem’s mounted unit. Talk about finding creative ways to patrol! Lehigh is chuck full of engineers. If there is a problem they will find creative ways to fix it.

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/bethlehem/index.ssf/2015/09/bethlehems_mounted_unit_get_ne.html

My son made many off handed remark, over the years, about Lehigh keeping an eye on them. It always made me smile inside.

5

Hi @Much2learn!

I’m the parent of a Lehigh rising Senior D in the College of Business and Economics who is also an active sorority member. A big welcome to your D, to the Lehigh Class of 2020!

In response to your questions about campus culture, party school atmosphere, Greek life and Administration involvement…In the spring of 2014, then President Alice Gast and Provost Patrick Farrell put together a CORE (Commission On Residential Environment) Group and tasked them with evaluating and recommending improvements to student living and how the residential environment relates to education and social life at Lehigh. The Commission took one whole year to study these issues, meeting with various on and off campus groups as well as Residential Life Offices at both peer and “aspirational” Universities to find out what was/wasn’t working for them as well as measure Lehigh policies against those at other schools. The result was the CORE Report, delivered to the Board of Trustees on June 4th, 2015. In July of last year it was released to the general Lehigh community. Not all the recommendations were viewed favorably by the students. The Brown & White did a good job reporting on student reactions.

From the Executive Summary:

The recommendation to change the on campus living requirement from 2 years to 3 (the “bring the Juniors back to campus” idea that you read about in the Brown & White) came from this report.

Here is a link the Publications & Reports page and from there you can find the link to the report in it’s entirety. It’s 148 pages long but worth the read as it gives a good overview of the current issues on campus and a number of long and short term ideas to facilitate change. I believe a couple of the short term ideas were implemented this year and President Simon has promised more details on the long term changes this fall.

http://www.lehigh.edu/~inprv/communications/pubsreports.html#core (for some reason I couldn’t link directly to the report - when I did a copy/paste an extra space was inserted that broke it but you’ll be able to find the link on that page)

Anyway, find a couple of uninterrupted hours, pull up the report, pour yourself a big glass of something to drink and start reading. After you’ve finished, come back here and let’s discuss. And if you have any questions about Lehigh you would rather ask outside of the forum, please feel free to PM me.

6

I am also interested in the impact of Greek life on academic achievement. For example, Penn publishes this data:

Penn GPA
3.504 Greek Female Average
3.434 Non-Greek Female Average

Penn GPA
3.391 Greek Male Average

3.397 Non-Greek Male Average

Sorority women at Penn had a gpa a bit above their non-greek women, and fraternity men had a gpa that was essentially similar to non-greek men.

Does Lehigh publish something like that?
I did see that they publish gpa’s for greek organizations, but I did not see a non-greek comparison group.

7

@Much2learn - I’m not sure Lehigh publishes a comparison between Greeks and Non Greeks. They do publish a Grade Report for the Greek chapters every semester:

http://studentaffairs.lehigh.edu/sites/studentaffairs.lehigh.edu/files/offices/ofsa/docs/Scholarship/Grade%20Report%20Spring%202016.pdf

In addition, there’s a wealth of information on the Fraternity & Sorority Affairs Reports and Statistics Page:
http://studentaffairs.lehigh.edu/content/reports-statisticsd

ETA: You might want to direct your question to the OFSA - I’ll bet someone there could give you the answer…

8

@syralum

The reported data suggest to me that Lehigh Sororities do reasonably well at maintaining member grades. After a bit more investigating, it sounds like there is a bit more than just education going on during Sorority pledging, but that, in most cases, it is not too severe. I am encouraged about that.

9

@Much2learn - Well good, I’m glad :slight_smile: There is at least one Sorority, I think it’s AXO that is quite proud of their cumulative GPA and is pretty straight forward, during recruitment, that top grades are very important to them.

So what did you think about the CORE Report?

10

@SyrAlum “So what did you think about the CORE Report?”

I think all of the recommendations are very positive. They have clearly put a lot of time and effort into the report, and understand what needs to be done to get to the next level. Those changes will make the experience more attractive for students and prospects.

However, change is difficult, and I have no doubt that there will be a lot of people telling them why they either can’t or should not do what needs to be done. It will take focused leadership to accomplish it. I hope they have that.

11

@SyrAlum @Much2learn : In regard to the discussion of Greek GPAs vs non-Greek GPAs, do you have an opinion as to whether members of Greek organizations tend to have what would be perceived as less difficult majors compared to the overall student body? Or would members of Greek organizations have a distribution of majors that is fairly representative of the student body as a whole?

12

I feel sorry for Lehigh and all colleges - and college kids. People are considered adults at age 18 for almost all aspects of the law, except the drinking age. This law puts students and the colleges in a precarious position.

Once the drinking age changed to 18, colleges had to take on a parental role in trying to keep kids from drinking until junior or senior year.

Colleges are fighting an uphill battle, as partying has been going on in fraternities and on college campuses forever. (Think Animal House at Dartmouth.) I don’t condone breaking the law, and warn my kids about the risks of under-age drinking all the time, but it is awfully hard to control thousands of “adults” on a college campus.

FYI - I have personally know high school kids who have played beer pong during overnight visits (like Lehigh’s Diversity Weekend) at other colleges (Wash U in St Louis was one - not known as a party school). Those kids and colleges just didn’t get caught. It is NOT a good idea for the college student hosts to do this, but I think their heart is probably in the right place, as they want their visitors to have fun. The hosts definitely need more training on what is fun and legal for their HS visitors.

I honestly don’t understand why Lehigh gets ranked as a bigger party school than others. But, I do know that once a college gets a label like that in published magazines, it is hard to shake. Princeton Review says almost the same things about colleges year after year.

Disclosure: I visited Lehigh with my sons on three occasions and was impressed. No one ended up at Lehigh, but it was a top choice, and one son was accepted. That is why I found this topic compelling. Also, it is a universal issue on almost all college campuses.

13

Lehigh ranks as party school because of how the students choose to answer the survey. My son went to Lehigh and the kids love this whole “Work hard. Party hard.” reputation. I just don’t take much stock in the accuracy of this self reporting.

http://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings/ranking-methodology

"We tallied the rankings lists in the current edition, The Best 380 Colleges (published August 2015), based on the data from our surveys of 136,000 students at the 380 schools in the book.

Our student survey has 80 questions in four sections. We ask students about: 1) their school’s academics/administration, 2) life at their college, 3) their fellow students and 4) themselves. Students answer by selecting one of five answer choices that range across a grid or scale. The answer choice headers might range from “Excellent” to “Awful” or “Extremely” to “Not at All”: some are percentages with ranges from “0–20%” to “81–100%.” This answer choice five-point scale—which is called a Likert scale—is the most commonly used measurement for this type of survey research: a consensus-based assessment.

We give each college a score for its students’ answers to each survey question. Similar to a GPA, it is a metric that provides us with a numerical base to compare student opinions from college to college—apples to apples, as it were."

“Schools by Type
Party Schools

Stone-Cold Sober Schools
Both lists are based on students’ answers to survey questions concerning: the use of alcohol and drugs at their school, the number of hours they study each day outside of class time and the popularity of fraternities/sororities at their school.
Schools on the “Party Schools” list are those at which surveyed students’ answers indicated a combination of low personal daily study hours (outside of class), high usages of alcohol and drugs on campus and high popularity on campus for frats/sororities
Schools on the “Stone-Cold Sober Schools” list are those at which surveyed students’ answers indicated a combination of high personal daily study hours (outside of class), low usages of alcohol and drugs on campus and low popularity on campus for frats/sororities.”

14

The 2015-2016 Greek accreditation reports are online and available now. And, as for the Core Report – it was completed prior to John Simon’s arrival as the new Lehigh president. I’ve seen absolutely no indication that the new administration is implementing the recommendations – most notably, the “three years on campus” requirement. And, Lehigh is now experimenting – with significant controls – moving the party scene back on the “Hill” where the fraternities are located. The Brown & White has chronicled these test cases – which makes alums like me chuckle (all the party action was on the Hill in the good 'ole days).

15

@higheredmom So your saying moving the parties back on the hill is a good thing right???!?! (Going go be a frosh this august)

16

Moving the parties back on the Hill is a good thing insofar as it permits regulated, controlled parties operated under University requirements as opposed to the current free-for-all of unregulated off-campus parties (often unsafe in terms of occupancy, local crime and disorder and town/gown relations).

17

This could be helpful data:

Lehigh Spring 2015 Sororities

Avg gpa Avg gpa

Current Pledge Pledge
Mbrs. Mbrs. Impact

3.52 3.38 (0.13) Alpha Chi Omega
3.49 3.37 (0.12) Alpha Gamma Delta
3.40 3.32 (0.08) Alpha Phi
3.40 3.23 (0.17) Alpha Omicron Pi
3.38 3.31 (0.07) Pi Beta Phi

3.24 3.34 0.10 Kappa Alpha Theta
3.29 3.13 (0.16) Zeta Tau Alpha
3.34 2.96 (0.38) Gamma Phi Beta
3.21 3.26 0.05 Kappa Delta

3.36 3.25 (0.11) Average

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SPRING 2015 GPA Data for Fraternities

Avg. Avg. Pledge

Mbr Pldge Impact

3.23 3.20 (0.02) Alpha Tau Omega
3.17 3.12 (0.05) Sigma Chi

3.13 2.78 (0.35) Delta Upsilon

3.12 2.78 (0.34) Phi Delta Theta
3.11 3.00 (0.12) Pi Kappa Alpha

3.11 2.69 (0.42) Phi Sigma Kappa
3.10 2.95 (0.15) Kappa Sigma
3.08 3.10 0.02 Chi Phi
3.04 3.03 (0.01) Psi Upsilon
3.04 2.76 (0.27) Sigma Phi Epsilon

2.97 2.62 (0.35) Theta Xi

2.96 2.44 (0.53) Delta Chi

2.94 2.83 (0.11) Phi Kappa Theta
2.89 2.60 (0.29) Theta Chi

2.81 2.64 (0.18) Kappa Alpha
2.80 2.91 0.11 Chi Psi

19

The truth about partying at Lehigh? Well the truth is this. Lehigh has a reputation as a frat heavy party school where there is alot of drinking. That reputation is well known and well deserved. What is not well known however is how startingly severe the drug problem has become and how it has infiltrated not just its Greek system but also its D1 athletics programs. This situation has led directly to Lehigh’s precipitous drop in the rankings. The school has taken no meaningful action against this. Sure, they’ve served up a few frats and sororities and given them the boot and upped its policing ON CAMPUS which has only increased the drug and alcohol use OFF CAMPUS where it has shifted to a gang infested slum of East Bethlehem. The situation is now more dangerous than ever.

20

@LePops No drop in rankings can be attributed to drug use or partying. If you are referring to US News, there is no metric for that. Furthermore, no sorority or fraternity has been given the “boot” for what you allege. Instead, the truth lies in the accreditation reports (going back to 2007-2008) which are available for anyone to review at http://studentaffairs.lehigh.edu/content/accreditation.