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[] Has this parent overstepped his bounds? Won't his son learn more by
handling the situation himself?
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The parent isn't overstepping his bounds as being naturally curious. The parent is risking damaging his relationship with his son by holding the power to cut off the son's tuition to compell his son's obedience. Control seems to be the issue.
The son definitely has the opportunity to learn more if he deals with the situation himself. Whether he does learn anything is another matter.
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[] Do students and their parents have an accurate understanding of the risks
and benefits of fraternity life? Do they know the right questions to ask?
How can college administrators better inform them?
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Do college administrators warn parents about the dangers of Sports participation? Possible hazing, lowering of grades, physical exhaustion etc? Or the possible long term consequences to health such as repetitive stress damage to knees, backs and other joints in the body, especially from contact sports? Many are the people who carry some lifelong injury from college play.
The same thing applies to Greek Organizations. What would they warn? That some bad things might result? And that some good things might result? But that it would all depend on the experience of the individual student?
If they knew of a specific and certain problem that would cause sometype of injury to a student they would take action.
In the absence of that the only thing that they could so was put out a pamphlet such as a truthful FAQ.
[/quote]
[] Do university administrators have any responsibility to ask fraternity
leaders the kinds of questions this parent asked? If administrators don't
ask such questions (and verify the answers) are they helping fraternities
mislead prospective members and families?
[/quote]
Yes the University should maintain such a relationship with Greek Organizations that such questions would be known.
However these questions aren't asked or answered in a vacuum. They will be influenced by the type of relationship that the Administration with its Greek Organization.
There seems to be three basic categories of University involvement in Greek Life:
(1.) Active promotion. where the University extends a lot of support and resources similar to what they woul do for other active clubs, organizations, or ports teams.
(2.) Passive neutrality, where the administration gives token support and only comes on the scene as a disciplinarian.
(3.) And active hostility where the administrative climate has become such that administrators actively seek to find fault in Greek Organizations and tend to punish by immediate removal of recognition.
All three categories of university would ask those questions in a different way and might expect very different answers because of their relationship with their fraternites and sororities.
If Universities want to be more sure of Greek practices they will have to look to the quality of their relationship with those organizations, from the organizations' points of view.
In the case of this parent and his son, not only did he not trut his son to make the right decisions while involved in the process of pledging, he didn't trust his son to stop pledging because he asked him. He forced him through the threat of stopping tuition payments.
Would the lack of trust in such a relationship inspire the son to deception?
As a metaphor we should apply this situation back to the relationship between a University and its Greek Organizations. It might teach an object lesson.
Quote:
[] Can this exchange of correspondence be used in training or orientation
exercises on your campus? If so, how?
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Not the way the letter stands by itself. You would have to seperate out the issues. Although the letters themselves come across as a teaching document, not a series of candid and spontaneous emails. Even if these emails were actually written this way, most intellegent college students would find them to seem contrived.
Send us your thoughts about any or all of these questions by Monday April
21. If we have enough responses we'll publish them next week. Our address:
gpavela@umd.edu.