<p>After a series of calamitous events, including several highly publicized sexual assaults and one accidental fall from a window, the university, which has built its reputation on its unusually strong student culture, has finally said, "Enough."
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/wesleyan-university-residential-fraternities-coed-2014-9">http://www.businessinsider.com/wesleyan-university-residential-fraternities-coed-2014-9</a></p>
<p>Smart and strategic move. But is only applies to residential fraternities. Wondering how many at Wesleyan are non-residential.</p>
<p>What about residential sororities? </p>
<p>@TatinG - there are none, only one non-residential sorority.</p>
<p>The national organizations will simply move off campus, where there will be less scrutiny. That is not always a good situation. </p>
<p>^They can exist as a non-residential association (there’s already one sorority and maybe one fraternity in that category), but living off-campus is tough to do without university permission.</p>
<p>Supply, demand, freakouts, and the resulting regulation: balance will find itself.</p>
<p>Neither of my kids schools had Greeks.
Colgate, has been buying out the houses, to exert greater control.
<a href=“daily.swarthmore.edu domain has changed”>daily.swarthmore.edu domain has changed;
<p>These fraternities are not going to go co-ed. DKE was founded in 1844 and Psi Upsilon in 1833. DKE is one of those old, established fraternities that counts five U.S. Presidents and and other prominent men in its ranks. Psi Upsilon also has two presidents and several other prominent men as alumni. They’re old boys’ clubs - and they are not going to go co-ed.</p>
<p>Nor do I think they should, necessarily. There’s nothing wrong with single-sex organizations; the problem is the culture of the organizations, but that can be changed without forcing them to release their single-sex nature.</p>
<p>They are simply going to move off campus. Many fraternities do this and the results are mixed. Universities can’t really prohibit students from joining them, because of freedom of association - they don’t want to get sued (and these national organizations sometimes have a lot of money and a lot of powerful men involved). The university has even less oversight over them, but at the same time, the university has less liability for their actions because they are not an officially recognized, sanctioned student organization.</p>
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<p>Actually, private colleges do have a right to limit certain student rights of association as a condition of matriculation and continuing enrollment up until graduation day so long as they don’t violate discriminatory/other laws. Also, freedom of association has certain limits if it conflicts with other discriminatory or other policies to facilitate a positive educational environment. </p>
<p>Oberlin College has banned fraternities/sororities on campus or their students from openly joining one on or off-campus as a condition of matriculation and continuing enrollment since the 1870’s. Penalties on the books from the bylaws I was issued was up to and including expulsion. </p>
<p>While there were students who were members of underground off-campus fraternities/sororities at my LAC, they had to keep it a secret during their time in college to avoid possible college sanctions and the strongly anti-panhellenic organization campus culture. </p>
<p>When I said they “can’t really” do it, I didn’t mean that they absolutely could not do it by law - the Constitution is about what the government can’t prohibit you from doing, not private entities. Theoretically speaking, a university could have all kinds of odd rules about fraternities.</p>
<p>What I meant was a more casual use of the term - because universities have odd relationships with fraternities. Sometimes they get a bad reputation, but they’ve also got reputations as prestigious networking opportunities and bonding experience. In some places, demand is rising for Greek systems (my graduate university added 2 new sororities to campus recently). So some universities are afraid of losing potential students if they don’t have Greek life on campus. Others simply don’t want to get sued and go through a lawsuit even if they are likely to win.</p>
<p>Oberlin attracts the kind of student, and maintains the kind of atmosphere, where they probably don’t lose out too much by banning Greek life. Wesleyan could potentially be that place, too, because their Greek community is already pretty small and their students seem to be pretty independent and liberal-minded. A place like Duke or USC, though? They won’t.</p>
<p>juillet: I think the key thing is that it is not easy for Wesleyan students to live off campus, and there are not a lot of places convenient to campus that would be easy to turn into a fraternity house. If the fraternities cannot operate on campus, then they will have a lot of trouble existing.</p>
<p>My dad was a Wesleyan Deke, and so was my next door neighbors’ kid. My dad would have been pretty upset about this, although I think he would have recognized it as an extension of the same trend that had allowed him, a middle-class Jew, to join Wesleyan DKE in the first place, at a time when the national charter barred Jews from membership. And he met my mother when she applied to be the first woman to join his law school club, and he was a leader of the faction opposing admitting her (or any other woman). He lost that battle, too, and before he died saw pretty much every institution he valued opened to women except DKE. My neighbors’ kid is apoplectic about it: it’s horribly unfair, tars everyone with the same brush, it couldn’t provide the wonderful benefits he got from it if women were present . . . He will never give money to Wesleyan again (not that he has yet, but he actually has some career traction now).</p>
<p>What a thought provoking post JHS! Let’s face it, change is hard (even for the young), and the path to “progress” is bumpy and uncertain.</p>
<p>But responding to Juliet, Wes it is an all residential LAC, with a very small Greek presence (measured by membership), so I think this transition will not be too hard – except for among the DKEs. There are really only two frats (the others are “societies” and one or more of those are co-ed already) on campus and the other frat, the Betas, are already banned for (at least) this year. Indeed, in general being Greek is not considered particularly desirable by the Wes students. However, as Juliet points out, if this were an institution like USC, it would be a WHOLE different thing.</p>
<p>@JHS
It’s a sensitive subject, but, other than those three frat buildings and a few faculty homes, any house of significant size within a block of campus is already owned by Wesleyan:<a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/reslife/ugrad_housing/woodframes.html”>http://www.wesleyan.edu/reslife/ugrad_housing/woodframes.html</a></p>
<p>It is a step in the right direction. Still too small and too late. A frontal and direct attack on misbehaving fraternities is the only solution. Tough because that describes almost all of them. </p>
<p>Does anyone know how the transition has gone at Amherst?</p>
<p>“Although the elite private college officially cut ties with fraternities and sororities in 1984, the college still allowed the groups to convene as long as their activities were held off campus. This new decision reaffirms that resolution and further prohibits “student participation in fraternities and sororities and fraternity-like and sorority-like organizations, either on or off campus” as of July 1, 2014.” More here:</p>
<p><a href=“Amherst College Officially Bans All Fraternities And Sororities”>Amherst College Officially Bans All Fraternities And Sororities;
<p>Hasn’t Amherst fraternity participation been only about 10% of men recently (there were no sororities recently), so the recent policy change affected a relatively small percentage of the students (though understandably those students would be very vocal in opposition)?</p>
<p>Back in 1984, when Amherst pushed the fraternities and sororities off campus, wasn’t participation in them more like 50%?</p>
<p>Wesleyan, and Amherst, should consider following the lead of their fellow NESCAC school, Williams, which simply abolished them over 50 years ago. When women were admitted shortly after, they had no Greek culture to worry about, nor did other students who were not “frat types.” It could require an investment of resources to take up the room and board slack, but worth it. </p>
<p>There is something to be said for the you’re all in the same boat feel at Williams, no select clubs, no frats, no merit aid, no honor programs. Just Ephs one and all. </p>
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<p>They could follow Oberlin’s example as they abolished all campus fraternities/sororities and barred students from joining as a condition of matriculation/continuing enrollment since the 1870’s. :D</p>
<p>Oberlining all fraternities is long overdue. All that is needed a spine and common sense. The spine is not common in higher education. </p>