A student at my alma mater Case Western wrote a very thoughtful letter to the editor of the paper on this in 2016.
http://observer.case.edu/gurian-greek/
While a large percentage (usually about 1/3 of the 5000 undergrad students) of CWRU students are greek, as a whole it is a much smaller group of students to work with than the larger schools mentioned in this discussion, CWRU had membership reveiws for several fraternities, with one eventually also having charter revoked by nationals in 2016 (though looks like they're set to come back in 2020). From the alum rumor mill this (and an increase in required programming by the GLO) seem to be keeping things in line.
Like everyone else I don't know what the answer is. College kids are going to binge drink. I live near Ohio State and have heard rumors about fraternities or just a group of members going "underground" and off campus to live like they used to. I'm sure most of this is just an expression of frustration, but if the desire to belong to greek institutions exists, students will find a way to do it, so is it better to have it regulated?
I think about the OSU tradition of jumping into mirror lake before the Michigan game. The university did everything it could to try to stop it or try to separate themselves from liability but students still participated and one lost his life in 2015. After that, even with USG saying they wanted to end it, the Univeristy basically had to drain mirror lake and has been redeveloping the entire site for three years with no certainty that once it's reopened students won't go back to jumping in it in late November.
The threat of or actual closing probably still needs to be on the table as a stick in case the carrots don't work, but I don't know if a middle ground exists.
Hybrid Mode
