Princeton: No Freshman Rush, Stronger Anti-Hazing Policies, Re-establish Campus Pub
 

A “working group” at Princeton has issued several recommendations, including eliminating freshman fraternity and sorority rush, increasing its anti-hazing policies and efforts, and reinstating a campus pub. See:

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/a...ion=topstories

While Princeton University undergraduates express high levels of satisfaction with social and residential life, a working group of students, faculty and staff is recommending several changes to enhance this essential element of the campus experience.

. . . Its key recommendations include:
• Students should be prohibited from affiliating with a fraternity or sorority or engaging in any form of rush at any time during the freshman year, or from conducting or having responsibility for any form of rush in which freshmen participate. The penalty for violating these prohibitions should be severe enough to encourage widespread compliance, which probably means a minimum penalty of suspension.

• The University should significantly increase its commitment to enforce policies that prohibit serious forms of hazing wherever it occurs, and the University should become even more vigilant in imposing highly consequential disciplinary penalties on students found to have engaged in hazing that seriously threatened the health and well-being of any student.

• The working group concurs with the widespread and strongly held view across a broad range of campus constituencies that it would be desirable to reinstate a campus pub that would be open to all undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and staff and help to model the responsible use of alcohol. . . .

See also:

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2011/05/02/28493/

A) Can you even make that no-freshman-rush rule? Would NPC and IFC allow that?

B) I'm not sure if it will accomplish what they say they hope to accomplish. If affiliating with a GLO and then probably being funneled into a specific eating club happens, it happens. Waiting until sophomore year just means they will meet more people before it happens. Also, are people in GLOs complaining about feeling isolated from everyone else?

C) Won't this be like Spring semester recruitment, where you spend the first semester keeping up appearances and schmoozing? Instead you just spend a year doing it?

Bucknell University in Pennsylvania does not allow freshmen to join. Their student participation in Greek Life is over 50%.

Oh, okay. I was just curious, as I have never heard of this before. That being said, I am fairly new to all of this.

It's not a common thing. Several colleges do have 2nd semester rush (there's a thread somewhere) for freshmen. I only know of Bucknell requiring sophomore standing to participate in rush. There might be another one or two.

Second semester formal recruitment doesn't seem like a rare thing, from what I've read/heard. A school nearby does it, and I don't think they have much in the way of informal in the fall.

So shouldn't that also eliminate the bicker process for the selective eating clubs?

To the best of my knowledge, Colgate has a sophomore-standing policy for NPC recruitment, too.

http://www.colgate.edu/offices/campu...cruitment.html

Good point.

Dartmouth also has no rush until Sophomore year.

And it does turn into a year of schmoozing, though not so much of keeping up appearances. For sororities, there are pre rush events in the spring of freshman year, billed as "open house" type things and not as recruitment events. And fraternities also have a number of pre rush events in the spring, based on lists they've formed over the course of fall and winter.

Surely, if fraternities & sororities are not recognised by the University, then the university has no say over how they operate

I went to the official Princeton link and this is copied verbatim:

Students should be prohibited from affiliating with a fraternity or sorority or engaging in any form of rush at any time during the freshman year, or from conducting or having responsibility for any form of rush in which freshmen participate. The penalty for violating these prohibitions should be severe enough to encourage widespread compliance, which probably means a minimum penalty of suspension.

Recognition doesn't mean anything at a private school, and a minimum penalty of suspension is going to be quite the deterrent. You're right that Princeton can't tell fraternities and sororities how to operate, but they can tell their students what is and isn't acceptable and control operations by cutting off the supply of new members.

this quote just made me wonder what kind of penalty Princeton could impose, seeing as GLOs aren't allowed to use their facilities.

But then I don't know how it works up there

I believe Lafayette and Dickinson do so as well.

A "no freshmen" policy basically encourages students to go to schools closer to home to get those first few credits out of the way. It also eliminates an "upperclassman quota."

Unless hazing is out of control (and if it were, I'd think they'd give Greek Life the death penalty...so it's obviously not THAT bad) I see no reason to force student who want to go Greek out of the process. I see the leading to NPC getting involved = and maybe even a reduction in the size of Greek Life on this campus.

Good luck getting any new colonizations...