Robert Reich thinks college fraternities should be abolished. I do too.
There are exceptions but for the most part fraternities are elitist, exclusive, and privileged. They have nothing to do with higher education. And they’re periodically mired in scandal involving hazing (such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison frat’s degrading hazing); racism (the video of Sigma Alpha Epsilon members calling for the lynching of African-Americans); sexual assault (the University of Maryland frat brothers’ pro-rape emails, and allegations of drug dealing and sexual assault in a North Carolina State frat); degradation of women (Penn State fraternity’s secret Facebook page for sharing photos of nude passed out women); destructive drunkenness (University of Michigan frat brothers destroying a ski resort in a drunken rage). The list goes on, and this is just in the last few months.
They’re bro-culture systematized and glorified, so naturally they promote brutality and sexism.
Some say “boys will be boys” and if they’re not in a fraternity they’ll do all this somewhere else. Rubbish. A much-cited 2007 study shows fraternity members are 300% more likely to commit rape than non-affiliated students (this was the third study confirming the same data.)
What I’m saying. Boys don’t have to be like that, they’re not inherently like that, but shunt them into an organization built around bro-culture, and you get the expected result.
Some say I’m disregarding freedom of association, and that college students have a right to hang out with whomever they wish. Well, yes, but most fraternities depend on university recognition for direct subsidies such as land or buildings and indirect benefits such as tolerance of underage drinking.
Tssssss. Of course college students have a right to hang out with anyone they want to, but they don’t need designated buildings or screening processes or rituals. Fraternities are way more than a way to hang out with anyone you want to – and also less, since they exclude all but a handful of people.
A pox on them.
Get rid of the semi-professional sports and the fraternities. College is a place for learning, not getting tramatic brain injuries, cirrhosis of the liver, being indoctrinated in classism and racism, or getting raped while drunk.
I think a lot of the problem is that historically colleges in the US are where the elite send their kids as a sort of late day-care, to learn how to be dominant drunkards, abusers, and bullies, as a preparation for their future careers as executives, managers, politicians, and whatnot. It’s a more populist version of the British “gentlemen’s clubs” where the sprigs of high society like Bertie Wooster can hang out. After all, if you’re going to be a CEO you don’t actually have to know anything much except how to keep the peons in their proper place.
Notice also that the majority of the rest of the world manages to have tertiary education sans fraternities and sororities (which in my limited understanding, are just fraternities for female students).
There have been a couple of fraternities that got completely banned from their campuses. You can’t eliminate them completely (since they can organize and meet up off campus), but you can strip them of their ability to recruit on campus, advertise for events, and so forth.
@Marcus Ranum
I’d push some of them over into the “full professional category”, requiring that they pay college athletes at least minimum wage for their work (and allow them to unionize and demand more pay), plus requiring that they get paid for using their image in video games and the like. Why not just make them official minor leagues, and let the kids attend college as well if they want to?
Frats are pretty much non-existent in Canada. Mind you, at my undergrad school the Engineering students did their best to institute the same sort of culture (though I don’t think it was quite as toxic as what I have been hearing about frats recently).
My daughters very liberal arts school solved the problem very neatly. There could be no organization on campus that “self selected” membership. All had to be open to anyone who wanted to join. No national fraternity/sorority would charter a chapter and local versions quickly died when overwhelmed by members of the opposite gender. No bro culture was able to take hold.