What's your opinion of fraternity?

How are the NPC sororities going to become diversified if the minorities don’t want to join because of segregation in the past? Are the NPHC sororities and fraternities also going to be required to integrate?

There isn’t an easy fix. The NPHC houses like their traditions and the history of belonging to the same houses their parents, siblings, cousins did.

NPC sororities no long give a legacy preference (I’m sure some still do, but by rule they aren’t allow to). The purpose is to promote diversity, but that can only work if new members want to join the groups they have no connection to.

The south is still pretty segregated. Not by law but by practice.

I don’t think the U of Alabama is going to rid of the sororities, NPC or NPHC. Those organizations provide housing and meals to thousands of students every day. The school couldn’t replace that without 10+ years of lead time. And buying out all the mortgages of the sororities as they are on University land but owned by the organizations. Some of the newer houses cost $10M to build.

That may go beyond fraternities and sororities and apply to entire colleges. In some states, the public universities’ enrollments are still strongly skewed toward their historically White / Black status, even though students of any race / ethnicity can enroll in any of them (e.g. compare the enrollments of the two public universities in the Huntsville, AL area).

Segregation is also not exclusive to the South.

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The discriminatory segregation is now entrenched into the greek system itself, and simply changing a rule certainly isn’t going to fix it. Neither will denying, minimizing, and downplaying the history or its impact.

But this is a dilemma that these sororities (and their nationals) have created for themselves.

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I was in a frat my freshman year at Ohio State before I transferred to a different school. Never developed a great attachment to it, but it worked well for a lot of others. I hadn’t checked up on my old chapter until recently, and was surprised to find it’s long gone, along with about half of the frat’s other campus chapters in the country. I’m getting the sense that the whole Greek system is withering away.

Me! Unless they are co-ed, open to anyone, and are academic or service in nature.

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Today’s news at BU:

and Penn State added another one (Chi Phi Fraternity) to the list of suspensions today:

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That’s Penn State, not UPenn. Looks like that link shows that there are 10 fraternities and 2 sororities that are suspended at Penn State.

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What do you think of the Penn State fraternity and sorority chapter scorecards: https://studentaffairs.psu.edu/involvement-student-life/greek-life-penn-state/about-community/community-scorecard

Also, Penn State’s Piazza Center and the and the national scorecard:

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So, if a bunch of young people wanted to get together and party every weekend and basically just act like idiots, they could do so with pretty much impunity. But if they want to wear a shirt with two or three Greek letters on it, they have to fill out a scorecard every semester and every one of them is effectively responsible not just for the behavior of every member of their fraternity, but also for every member of every fraternity. And they have a target on their backs from all kinds of groups and people that have decided that those letters are unacceptable and need to be eliminated.

Seems like a pretty easy choice for most young people to make. Call their club something other than “fraternity” or “sorority” and don’t use Greek letters, and their lives will be a lot easier.

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It does, yet they choose to fight to keep those little Greek letters, and their houses and official status.

And they deserve the scrutiny (and accountability/punishments) when their organizations have sexual assault, hazing and deaths occurring within their ranks. Why should they operate without oversight, repercussions or consequences?

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I was in a fraternity in the 1980s, and it definitely hurt my grades. There was a good deal of drinking and social pressure to do things, that quite frankly, were pretty stupid. Several of my fraternity brothers either failed out or switched to less demanding majors.

Fast forward to current day, and my old fraternity is more a service organization than party house. I think this is due to the university administration cracking down on all fraternities, and my fraternity’s national organization changing policies. The brothers still have some fun, but they are not letting the partying ruin their education.

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I am agreeing with you. Once collective guilt becomes acceptable as a rationale for punishment of a group, then simple association with that group that is deemed guilty becomes a pre-acceptance of whatever punishment will be meted out on that group. No one is interested in an individual’s claim of “I didn’t do it” when the group is deemed guilty.

Why bother? Greek letters = bad. No Greek letters = not bad. Seems pretty simple to me.

This was a commitment from the university to Timothy Piazza’s parents - that everything would be done to ensure what happened to their son wouldn’t happen to anyone else’s child.
A law was also named after him - thanks to his parents’ advocacy, Pennsylvania and NJ now have the strongest laws protecting middle school, HS, and college students.
You’ll notice it doesn’t single out fraternities.
If you look at the sentences for Timothy Piazza’s death, you’ll see that there was NO “group sentencing”, each man was considered individually and punished in relation to what they did, or didn’t do, that led to Timothy’s horrible death.

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I know, right? If other kids are doing it, how dare anyone even suggest that fraternity members ought not be allowed to “just act like idiots . . . pretty much with impunity.”

Maybe or maybe not. These “clubs” might find it more difficult to function “pretty much with impunity” if they don’t have official status from the college, or a house (sometimes owned by the college) within which to act like idiots, or an extensive network of alumni who donate heavily and have sway over college policies and their enforcement, or D.C. lobbyists working for them, or attorneys and national organizations protecting them, or a near-monopoly on social activities at some campuses, or a traditional culture of brotherhood in which brothers protect brothers (you know, “bros before ho’s”), or reciprocal relationships with sororities that (conveniently for the fraternities) actually do enforce their policies regarding alcohol in their houses, etc.

And if they do call themselves “clubs” and seek status from a college, they may find themselves subject to all sorts of rules, regulations, restrictions, and scrutiny.

It’s not a matter “collective guilt” or holding a group “guilty” of the acts of individuals, it is about holding organizations liable for their failure to maintain a safe environment.

It is analogous to a legal concept called “premises liability” which roughly means that the person or entity which owns and/or controls a premises is liable for unsafe conditions therein. In other words, they are accountable for unsafe conditions of which they were aware or reasonably should have been aware. Why shouldn’t a similar logic be applied to fraternity houses?

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It’s not like fraternities and sororities start over as clubs every year. They have structure, by-laws, property (real or personal), record books, pictures, year books. They have established bank accounts.

When my sorority starts a new chapter, all the chapters from around the country donate things to the chapter to get started - pins for the president, gavels, books to keep the records. Plus we support the chapter with getting started by sending experience grads (usually newly out of college) to help them set up and organize and plan events.

Sure, if people only want to drink on weekends they can just rent a house and do that. No need for a badge or gavel or record books. The next year, a new group of freshman can do that too. In thirty years when they want to know what happened to Joe, they’ll have to find him on their own as there will be no books and records.

But it can be done if that’s what you want, just 4 friends for drinking.

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I think you will capture the meaning of my post more effectively if you quote the whole post rather than just pieces of it out of context. Words do matter.

This thread started with a poster asking whether their son should join a fraternity. While I had a very positive experience in a fraternity when I was in college, the overt hostility towards fraternities and sororities now make them not worth the risk. I am strongly discouraging my children from joining Greek organizations when they go to college. Why be part of something that puts a target on your back the day you join?

I thought I was agreeing with you that it is no longer a good idea to join a fraternity. Although this thread has morphed into a discussion of how fraternities and their members deserve to be punished and the fraternities eliminated. While I know group punishment can be emotionally satisfying, collective guilt has an unpleasant history and I reflexively reject it as an enforcement mechanism.

Why does it have to be just 4? And who needs all the other stuff like pins and gavels? Just get together with friends and have fun. If you think about it, a bunch of friends could create a virtual fraternity pretty easily, without all the overhead or brain damage of complying with dozens of university regulations and being a target for a whole bunch of people who hate you despite not knowing you. The biggest difference between a fraternity/sorority and any other group of friends is not all the ceremony and ritual, but the fact that Greek organizations are constantly replenishing themselves by recruiting new, younger members.

A group of friends doesn’t need Greek letters to do that.

If that’s all you want, do it. I have a friend who claims to have had that experience in college with her roommate and a few other friends. Great.

What she doesn’t have is 50 friends who experienced it all together and continue to be friends 30-40 years later, who were organized to do philanthropic activities during and after college, who liked the formal leadership roles while in college.

Really for me the sorority was not about drinking and partying. I could have done that with a group of 4 friends/roommates like I did the first year in college. I have no idea where any of those roommate/dormmates are today. We exchanged Christmas cards for a while but then lost touch. Same happened with the sorority sisters too, but somehow we always come back together. I also have met many other people through alumni activities after college.

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Thanks, but I stand by the quotes. Also, there is a handy feature with which anyone can check the quotes for themselves. Click the small downward arrow at the top of the quote boxes which shows the reader your entire post within my post. There is also an up arrow which will scroll the to entire quote in context.

I don’t agree that fraternity brothers are being victimized or targeted by attempts to regulate the safety of their fraternity houses.

I don’t believe I’ve ever said that “it is no longer a good idea to join a fraternity.” But if I did say that, please quote me so we can be on the same page. Likewise, I don’t believe I ever advocated for any concept of “group punishment” or “collective guilt.” Rather, I advocated for organizational responsibility, and I explained the distinction immediately above.

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I know what you are saying. I had a tremendous experience with my fraternity, and remain close with many of them to this day. We had a memorial service a few months ago for one of my brothers and almost 100 members of my fraternity showed up. There are 50 guys from my fraternity that I could call and ask for $5,000 and they would stroke the check without hesitation, and that check would be a lot for some of them. It is hard to explain that kind of relationship to someone that wasn’t in a fraternity or sorority.

That said, it is a different world today, and there is just too much heat on Greek organizations to operate the way they have in the past. I take an “adapt or die” approach to most things in life, and I think some changes, like going co-ed, are probably a good idea, but I don’t think a change like that would be enough to keep away the wolves. The people who want Greek organizations eliminated are not interested in a negotiation, and the hostility has reached the point of being histrionic. Nothing will satisfy them short of figurative heads on spikes.

I think the risk has gotten too big for members of Greek organizations in the current environment to justify membership in them the way they are currently structured. Adapt or die.

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