I believe I read that close to 20 of the NPC organizations exist at Alabama . . .
It sounds like it was alums and national organizaitions who were spearheading the continued segregation. But it’s not just Alabama issue . . .
Just having a rule doesn’t solve the issue. Likewise with regard to dry houses; does it matter if the sorority house its dry if the fraternity parties aren’t?
As for your what your daughter told you, I am sorry to hear that. Statistically, that is an extremely high number of deaths to have taken place at one school in such a short period of time. By the way, not everyone who dies in a dorm got drunk in the dorm. When was in college (a million years ago) I was involved in taking three kids to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. Two had gotten blotto drunk at fraternity parties, one at a rugby party, but all three were no longer at the parties when we bothered to get them help. None of the three “ratted out” the parties.
@DigitalDad, Another UK incident of a different sort.
I see no distinction? Universities should divest themselves from fraternities.
Let them buy off-campus houses if they like, it’s a free world. But let them create their own websites, let them use their own resources/means to advertise events. Anyone who’s eager will find them.
There are goons who aren’t in fraternities and goons that are. I was in a fraternity and never beat anyone up, neither did any of my brothers. This Nicholas Hamilton guy should be arrested and kicked out of Penn.
I don’t think we can let the Alabama chapters off the hook to this degree. We’re not talking about coming up short of parity. We’re talking about zero black members ten years ago, not even tokens. Even Ole Miss and Auburn were doing a little better. Alabama has to own that.
There is no “allowing” or “disallowing”. Anyone can join a fraternity, regardless if the students live on-campus - just as anyone can join a basket-weaving circle, and live on campus.
But as the organization, fraternities themselves are non-entities to the University - there is no reason to give them buildings, floors,… Naturally, if individual members are able to use the university’s housing lottery system and manage to get a common suite assigned, then that’s no different than any other 4 college-friends who share other common interests. And if it doesn’t work out because others have senior privilege, then such is life.
It was true that some of the sororities had no black members in 2013, but some of them did. I agree that some of the Nationals didn’t do a good job of supervising this. I think there are 18 or so of the 26 NPC member sororities at Alabama (not sure how many in 2013) I think there are 7 of the 9 Divine Nine sororities.
Even now, there aren’t a lot of black members because those women choose not to go through Rush. There are more Hispanic and Asian women who go through NPC rush and they make up most of the minority members. This year Alabama had 2500 women go through Rush in August and I think 2300 received bids.
The campuses like having the Greeks in their on-campus houses or floors of dorms. The organizations have additional rules in place that they enforce so the school doesn’t have to- alcohol or drugs in the dorm rooms, house mothers in the houses, grades are checked and rewards and restrictions given. ASU liked it so much that they ended up building a big Greek village. My daughter’s school bought an apartment complex and made it into a Greek village but the students pay rent to the university, just like dorm rooms. There are also some non-Greek students who live in extra units that don’t have Greeks occupying them (mostly pilots).
If the schools didn’t benefit, they wouldn’t have them on-campus or wouldn’t recognize the entities (like Harvard). At CU, all the frats and sororities are off campus and the housing arrangements are private. The school recognizes the sororities and they are allowed to use some school facilities for meetings (just like any student group) but most of the fraternities haven’t been recognized for 15 years. It works for both groups, one recognized, the other on its own.
I don’t think it would matter at most places if the schools didn’t recognize the groups except that it would be more wild off campus.
I had to chuckle at that, because MIT never “gives” anybody anything. Money flows in one and only one direction. Inward.
But anyway, is it your position that if, in my example, Phi Beta Epsilon were to change its name to PBEDorm, you would be OK with them in their campus-owned building, but not as Phi Beta Epsilon? And similarly, if the Burton Third Bombers were to change their name to Beta Theta Beta you would have an issue with them having their own floor?
If I am wrong, can you tell me what you do think is right?
Other than if tied to academics, such as Honors colleges, or the „French House“ (language immersion), etc. of the University itself, NO THIRD PARTY organizations get anything, no matter what name.
All students participate in whatever seniority based housing lottery, where they and friends can try to fill one suite together, choosing from whatever comes up as available in whatever desired buildings when their total priority number comes up.
If all friends happen to also share whatever mutual interests/association then good for them.
PS: You keep looking for loopholes - I have none to offer. It just happens to be my personal opinion, and it is very „absolute“. That doesn’t mean I must be right in your eyes, or anyone else’s. I just don’t see why I should need to restate it 10 different ways?
I hope that over time their role would become less dominant in the social scene because they are no longer a quasi part of a College and no longer in everyone’s face all the time, so that fewer feel the NEED to HAVE to participate out of fear of missing out, and underclassmen/women feel pressured to subjugate themselves to whatever excesses.
Instead they would exist elsewhere in town for whoever seeks them out.
I’m not trying to “look for loopholes”. I see a continuum with perhaps service academy dorms on one end, and Animal House on the other. I wanted to understand where you draw the line, and I appreciate your candor and willingness to lay down a bright line rather than being all wishy-washy about it.
I will say that such a line will break the MIT housing model, where students are in living groups of ~50 people for all four years. Some of these are fraternities or other independent living groups, and some are subsections of dorms. Is that a good thing? I can say the administration would hate it, the faculty would hate it, the parents would hate it and most of all, the students would hate it. Maybe that makes it a good thing.
The closest thing I can compare it to is Hogwarts. One stays with one’s living group for the duration (in most cases). There is a sorting-hat like process, called Rush/Orientation Week. The living groups have their own personalities, but there is considerable overlap and the membership are not clones of each other. Griffindor epitomizes bravery, but “a Slytherin …was probably the bravest man I ever knew.”
Yes - for sure at ACC & SEC schools. Many of the boys from high schools in my city funnel into fraternities that already have members from those high schools. There’s one at a large SEC school that is even nicknamed after my daughter’s high school.
Others have answered, but in a nutshell it is the perception of how popular a sorority is - could be based on looks, or family connections or relationships with popular fraternities or even GPA. Girls hear through the grapevine and also consult the ridiculous online sorority rating sites - so the know, long before they arrive on campus or enroll in the recruitment process.
The best matches are made when the girls keep an open mind about all organizations and don’t get caught up in being in the “prettiest” sorority. Some girls feel mortally wounded when they are dropped (which is quite often a numbers game and nothing personal), and would rather leave the process than consider another organization that would be happy to have them.
Nothing will be broken, because if the college’s model is that the same dorm/wing/quad is shared by the “class of” throughout their 4 years, then this concept does not all require fraternities to exist!?
If the college’s athletes for a certain sport always share the same floor, then this might actually be beneficial, as they might share the same schedule, similar challenges, time-constraints, equipment storage, etc.
If one building is designate the “French” house, where people stay for 4 years and the building “operates” in the French language and otherwise depends French studies/culture, then let it be.
None of this requires the involvement of third-party/external organizations. You are attempting to tie together two different concepts for which there is no actual interdependency.
But now we’re right back to what is wrong with Phi Beta Epsilon. Is it just that they call themselves a fraternity? And it would be perfectly OK if they called themselves a dorm?
Something that I have observed at my alma mater is that social life does not like a vacuum. Back when I attended and the drinking age was 18, the residential colleges were the center of social life, including weekend parties. I think there was 1 fraternity on campus. While students partied too much on occasion and had to go to the infirmary, the environment was still controlled since this was all on campus facilities. While I am sure there was also sexual predation, the fact that you were surrounded by people that you live with probably prevented a lot of incidents because people looked out for each other.
The social group that I was part of was diverse in race, social economic backgrounds and gender. I would say the dozen or so close friends that I still vacation with each year are as tight as any fraternity based group. When the drinking age was raised to 21, on campus parties were limited to senior functions and Greek houses proliferated and filled this vacuum, to me an unfortunate unintended consequence of raising the drinking age affecting all campuses. While regulation/rules of Greek houses, especially frats, leave a lot to be desired for some house on some campuses, the question is if these were eliminated, what would now fill the vacuum? Fact is colleges are full of young people who feel “immortal”, are sexually curious and are now not under adult supervision under great peer pressures to “fit in”. There will always be a small population of aggressive, morally questionable at best, predators at worst on every campus. Is it better to recognize this and try to put some guard rails around this, or let it go underground?
According to 2013 Inside Higher Ed (linked above), there were no black members in 2013:
the first black Alabama student to pledge a traditionally white Panhellenic sorority did so in 2003 – and no one has followed suit since.
So, one single black pledge in 2003, and zero black pledges for the next 10 years, until the school forced them to accept a few black pledges (and some still didn’t!). A decade worth of pledges in close to 20 NPC sororities, that has to be well over 20,000 pledges, right? And of these approx. 20,000+ pledges not a single black pledge at a university with 12% black students. Surely that goes well beyond "nationals didn’t do a good job of supervising this,” doesn’t it?
Why would they? Why would black students want to pledge sororities which were segregated less than a decade ago?
