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For some reason I can't seem to cut and paste or copy this article, but I think it's important, so I'm going to re-type the whole damn thing. Excuse the typos please...
"Fraternity drinking a thorny problem...
Recent deaths shine spotlight on issue...
By John Meunier
Herald-Times Staff Writer
Dangerous drinking is not unique to fraternities at Indiana University.
Hundreds of students living in dorms and apartments are arrested each year.
IU has disbanded dorm floors in the past to break up groups of students who can't be controlled.
But it is the fraternityy parties that appear to most often display the ugliest underside of the collegiate drinking culture.
Two deaths since 1998 are the starkest examples. IU's dean of students doesn't know of any similar deaths among the rest of IU's student body.
An IU sophomore getting a stomach full of Jim Beam whiskey pumped at Bloomington Hospital Sept. 17 is the latest example.
IU and the fraternity's national headquarters are investigating Pi Kappa Alpha over the hospitalization. A judicial hearing will take place next week.
While fraternities at the national and local level talk about curbing the influence of alcohol. some observers hold out little optimism for deep changes in the fraternity culture.
Jim Arnold, an administrator with the University of Oregon system who wrote his doctoral dissertation at IU on fraternity drinking, campares Greek organizations to alcoholic individuals.
"They say one thing because it is what everyone else in the world wants to hear and they continue doing what they have been doing," he said.
Arnold's dissertation followed a fraternity and its members over a four year period. He found that nearly every event in the life of the chapter was focused on alcohol.
One example was the dad's night ceremony in which pledges were paired with older members. After a night of being blindfolded, yelled at and told they were no good, the pledges' blindfolds were taken off and they were handed beers by their fraternity dads, Arnold reports.
The message: Welcome to the group, have a drink.
National and local surveys show that fraternity and sorority members -- especially those who live in their chapter houses -- drink more and drink more heavily that the student population in general
Popular expectations about what it means to be in a fraternity -- which reach into high school -- perpetuate the drinking culture.
"When you look at the expectations of these people, it's more about getting drunk and getting laid than it is about anything else," Arnold said.
Calls to several chapter presidents of IU fraternities went unreturned this week.
Ben Schmidt, an IU senior and president of the Interfraternity Council, thinks fraternity members don't have a special claim on dangerous or abusive drinking.
The real difference between fraternities and off-campus apartment parties is one of scale, not attitudes, Schmidt said.
"You've got up to 100 guys living in the same place, and when you hold a social function and there is alcohol there, it makes it hard to regulate," he said.
He thinks the real problems are caused by a minority of the members.
"When you look at your chapter's pledge class, you can immediately point out the guys who are going to get it, those who are going to take a little longer and thse who are in it for their own purposes and those are the guys who are going to cause the problems," he said.
Chapters don't do a good job of weeding the troublemakers out, Schmidt said.
Chapters need to do a better job of getting their older members to provide good role models for the younger ones.
Expecting alcohol to disappear from a fraternity or the wider campus scene is unrealistic, he said.
"Just like social life after you graduate from college, alcohol plays a big part in that," he said.
IU education professor George Kuh said there is a difference between social drinking and being part of an organization that is "lubricated by alcohol."
Fraternities have for decades been drinking clubs, he said.
"What is different today is the large numbers of students coming to college who already have binge drinking under their belt," Kuh said.
While that is true of college students in general, Kuh said, fraternities add elements to this mix.
"A big part of this is wanting to belong," he said. "We know the groupthink mentality. This is groupthink which is magnified four five and tenfold. You also have this leftover machismo as well. I can handle anything that you put forward."
No one sets out to hurt another person, but the combination of attitudes about drinking, implicit peer pressure and imparied judgements lead to a dangerous mix.
"You talk to enough undergraduates, you know Thursday night they're goint to get a buzz n," Kuh said. "Once you get that buzz on, you tend to lose your sense of proportion."
While the individual students bear responsibility for their own actions, Kuh thinks the universities need to do more.
"Learning how to use alcohol is a part of coming of age," he said. "The queston is, are we doing as good a job as we can?"
IU Dean of Students Richard McKaig believes IU is doing at least a better job.
The prototypical frat party of the past has been eliminated. It used to be commonplace for four or eight Greek chapters to gather for a party, with dozens of kegs of beer open and freely available to everyone.
There are still big parties in chapter houses. IU freshman Seth Korona died after attending a party in January at which several beer kegs and other forms of alcohol were widely available.
Nonetheless, things are better, McKaig said.
"That doesn't mean that you are taking the fifth of alcohol or six-pack of beer out of the second floor of the house," he said.
If he could change one thing abut the fraternity system, it would be to keep men from joinging chapters until the second half of their freshman or their sophomore years.
"There are some men's chapters that are not well prepared to welcome new students in the first semester," McKaig said.
But he is not in favor of elimninating the fraternity system.
"We're only looking at the fraternities through the lens of the alcohol problem," he said. "From another view, there are many, many positive aspects."
My personal thoughts and comments:
This is a good article that tries to show that alcohol is not only a Greek problem, but, as every national study I've seen shows, is bigger in the fraternity system than the rest of college.
Not that they always work within my own fraternity, but we do have a couple of good ideas. One is the "no common container" rule which bans kegs, etc. I know of one chapter that lost it's Hugh Shields Award (the highest award given to Delt Chapters) when a keg from a party off campus was brought to the Chapter house after the fact. We're real serious about this.
Second is the "Delts Talking About Alcohol" program which is NOT an anti drinking effort, but rather tries to show how to drink responsibly and the potential consequences when that responsibility is not exercized. Specially trained Delt undergraduates travel to each of our chapters yearly to teach DTAA. Every Delt attends at least once.
We need to be more careful about the people we pledge. If the IU IFC President is to be believed, chapters are pledging and initiating men who the recognize as potential problems. What sense does that make? We need to be more selective. That's particularly true given the comments about the numbers of binge drinkers we inherit from high school.
Finally, the IFC President's comment about drinking being a part of social life after college doesn't hold up as well as it would have several years ago. I think that most business professionals will tell you that the notorious "Three martini lunch" is pretty much a thing of the past. You simply don't see that much alcohol in business situations anymore. Many big companies have made their buildings non alcoholic workplaces -- including things like holiday parties. That certainly is not meant to imply that people don't stop for a drink after work -- but it is not the "badge of honor" that is used to be.
I see a lot of unfortunate truth in the article. I also see a compilation of a lot of thoughts and ideas that have been stated in many of these threads before.
So, what do we do about it?
DeltAlum
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