More Negative in Chicago Tribune

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Chicago Tribune
September 24, 2003

Universities say party's over for `Animal House' fraternities
Universities no longer look the other way when fraternities perpetuate
image of drinking, rowdiness

By Robert Becker Tribune higher education reporter

By the time the flask of Southern Comfort had settled on the bottom of the
Shedd Aquarium's Beluga whale tank, the fate of Northwestern University's
chapter of Kappa Sigma fraternity was all but sealed.

Less than three weeks after the June 4 incident, the Kappa Sigs--already on
probation for an alcohol incident that landed a pledge in the hospital--got
the boot from Northwestern, banned from the university until 2007.

The severity of the sanctions shocked some Kappa Sigs, who said the
allegations of vandalism, animal endangerment and excessive rowdiness were
exaggerated.

"The damages all came--including the extra cleanup for the vomit--to $300,
which we paid," said Bryan Tolles, a Northwestern junior and fraternity
member.

As Northwestern students return to class Wednesday , students interested in
Greek life will discover--as have their counterparts across the country--a
university and fraternity system increasingly intolerant of the boorishness
popularized by movies like "Animal House" or MTV's "Fraternity Life."

In the last five years Northwestern, in conjunction with national
fraternity organizations and the university's interfraternity council, has
suspended five frats from the Evanston campus.

"The fraternities that embody that kind of negative behavior are not going
to survive," said Jeremy Esposito, president of the interfraternity council.

Meanwhile, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, four
fraternities have been removed from campus over the last 10 years, and
others have been sanctioned, according to officials there.

While national discipline figures for frats are not available, officials
say universities and fraternities are working to send an unambiguous
message to students.

"There's the elimination of the gray area," said Peter Smithhisler, vice
president for community relations at the North-American Interfraternity
Conference in Indianapolis. "We're at a point in the continuum of
fraternity life where we're not going to tolerate it."

Legal liability remains a big factor in the crackdown on rowdy behavior.
The much-publicized death of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology
freshman, who drank himself to death at a 1997 Phi Gamma Delta fraternity
initiation, resulted in a lawsuit and a $4.75 million settlement.

"If your campus has a death related to alcohol or hazing, you're going to
get sued," said Kevin Kruger, executive director of the National
Association of Student Personnel Administrators. "The whole climate has
changed."

Death at Bradley

Despite tough talk from administrators, some members of Greek organizations
do not seem to be listening. Fraternities around the country continue to
garner sour headlines, for everything from hazing to racially offensive
photos to alcohol abuse.

On Sept. 14 a Bradley University student from Roselle died after drinking
alcohol for several hours to celebrate the end of the Greek system's fall
rush.

Robert Schmalz, 22, a member of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, started
drinking Saturday with his roommates and continued or started again Sunday
morning before attending a ceremony to welcome the new pledge class.
Friends took Schmalz home and later discovered that he had stopped breathing.

Bradley officials said it is not clear that any rules governing
fraternities were violated, but they are reviewing all the circumstance
surrounding Schmalz's death.

Fraternities occupy a unique position in American higher education,
simultaneously synonymous with social and political prominence--48 percent
of U.S. presidents have been fraternity members--and with acts of drunken
indiscretion.

Over the last two decades, membership has declined from a peak of 400,000
in the 1980s to around 350,000 now.

Along the way the organizations have had to battle the stereotypes
springing from movies like "Animal House."

"All those things the movie glorified, we're still dealing with,"
Smithhisler said.

School officials and education experts say the Greek system serves an
important function on most campuses.

Terrence Hogan, dean of students at Ohio University in Athens, said his
campus has had "our share of behavioral problems" with frats.

But Hogan added that fraternities provide a place for students to connect
to the campus of 20,000 students. "They're a place where students find
their place," Hogan said.

Even exclusive private schools like Northwestern and top-tier public
campuses like the U. of I. say fraternities are important to the fabric of
the university community.

"The community here is very complimentary to the overall undergraduate
experience," said Kyle Pendleton, associate director of university
residential life for fraternity and sorority life at Northwestern, where
about 37 percent of the undergraduates participate in fraternities and
sororities. "Scholarly achievement and academic performance are stressed."

But some schools--even those with 150 years of history with the Greek
system--have concluded that the trouble outweighs the benefits.

Officials at Bowdoin College, an elite private school in Maine, had taken
up the Greek issue several times but never acted.

But after a visiting student fell off a roof and died in 1996, the
university seriously focused on the role of fraternities at the school.

Craig Bradley, dean of student affairs, said the school found that the
Greek system had fragmented the student body.

"They weren't interacting with the rest of the student body," Bradley said.
"There was a certain disengagement from the rest of the community."

Bowdoin phased frats out over three years, and by 2000 the last fraternity
member had graduated.

Fraternity members such as Northwestern's Tolles defend the Greek system,
arguing that its value stems from the friendships that are forged.

Tolles, a junior economics major from Ft. Myers, Fla., said he did not
enroll at Northwestern with the intention of joining a fraternity. But as
he got to know people during the fall--Northwestern does not allow students
to pledge until winter--he decided fraternity life would be "a nice thing,
kind of cool."

He said he has not been disappointed. "It's more than a place to go and
hang out," said Tolles of Kappa Sigma. "It's more of a network of friends."

Flask flap

Tolles said the Kappa Sigs' spring formal at the aquarium was nothing out
of the ordinary. There was "a fair amount of drinking," he said.

During the formal a whiskey flask fell out of a fraternity member's pocket
and into the whale tank, Tolles said. One of the whales retrieved the
bottle and gave it to a trainer, he said.

Tolles said he never "in a million years" would have envisioned the flap
generated by the whiskey flask in the whale tank.

Tolles said the fact the Northwestern President Henry Bienen sits on the
aquarium's board may have hastened the fraternity's demise.

Tolles said he got the sense that the university or interfraternity council
did not want to hear the Kappa Sigs' side of the story.

"It wasn't a day in court by any stretch of the imagination," Tolles said.
"It was, `Come and watch what our decision already was and what we were
told what our decision had to be.'"

With his fraternity banned until 2007, Tolles said he and his Kappa Sig
brothers hope to stay in touch. But he has taken the ban "personally."

"I work so hard to make this university a better place for students, but it
backfires," Tolles said.

Copyright (c) 2003, Chicago Tribune