Fall of the frat house: Students target Greek life amid America’s racial reckoning

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by ForrestGrump

So did the Delts have a "come to Jesus moment" regarding issues of institutional racism, diversity and matters of social justice, or did they simply cut and run out of embarrassment and a belief that the hammer was about to drop? Or perhaps both were at play?

Here's a situation where I really think the whole paradigm of group punishment, i.e., suspending or expelling an organization for the acts of individuals, misses the mark. Organizations should be able to safely partner with schools, conduct their own investigations, and cooperate with the University as necessary without the possibility of some group action dangling over their heads even if we act completely appropriately.

If the University takes a position that it's going to abolish rape culture by expelling organizations with students accused of rape, there are perverse incentives created and organizations were more likely to button up and not cooperate than they would be to come forward.

In my own anecdotal experience, as chapter adviser, evolved to that at least where my student conduct office was concerned, they were to be treated as an adversary and not a partner. That's not how things should work, but that's how things work. I don't feel like we could trust them to deal fairly with the organization even when it completely cooperated.

At least where these students are concerned, I hope the school is able to hold guilty individuals liable for their bad acts. But organizations need to have the opportunity to police themselves and work with the school as partners rather than adversaries.

In addition, there is an active Abolish Greek Life movement on campus that seems to have really taken off in recent months following the BLM protests, amid concerns that Greek life is simply not compatible with greater social justice issues.

And ultimately, that movement is going to fail if it continues to alienate others who are willing and able to be allies but fail their strict orthodoxy tests.

[JonInKC]

In the 90s, my Mom saw an article in a small town newspaper entitled "Unity Club Votes to Disband". I sent it to Jay Leno. This thread reminded me of that.

[Sciencewoman]

What's bothering me the most is that instead of "being the change you want to see" and showing some perseverance in being change agents within their organizations, most of the students speaking to the media are just advocating for abolishment. If you want to be a change agent, I'm your champion...I'll teach you what I know, I'll support you when you've latched onto a worthy initiative, and I'll listen to your frustrations. If you want to be a "quitter" after a few weeks or a couple years in a GLO, then I'm afraid I have to say there are a lot of older sisters and brothers who have seen and experienced a lot more than you have, who know much more about our histories, and there's much more to be gained by sticking around, listening, engaging, and lending your voice than there is by casting aspersions and walking out the door.

[knight_shadow]

It's very interesting to read posts about being agents of change to help move organizations into the future when a month or two ago, there were discussions of some of these changes rendering organizations unrecognizable and useless.

Perhaps these members don't truly feel they *can* be heard, and if that's the case, why would they care about the optics on their way out?

[33girl]

The problem is that the changes being made (eliminating preferential treatment for legacies, revising rituals) don’t always translate to a day to day change in treatment of members of groups who may have felt left out. It is more performative than anything else. You can’t legislate feelings.

Some of these chapters that are terminating themselves out of existence are probably the ones that buck the negative stereotypes the most and need to stay around the most.

[*winter*]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Some of these chapters that are terminating themselves out of existence are probably the ones that buck the negative stereotypes the most and need to stay around the most.

This!!!

[Sister Havana]

”Mass wave” of disaffiliation from Sigma Nu amid calls to abolish Greek life

This is at Northwestern University.

[Cheerio]

Originally Posted by Sister Havana

”Mass wave” of disaffiliation from Sigma Nu amid calls to abolish Greek life

This is at Northwestern University.

I say go back to the days of initiating after grades have been determined. It gives women more time to know their new sisters, and understand the important history of the sorority system as well as the strengths and purposes of their personal group.

[carnation]

Yes! How did that end up being called hazing?

[ASTalumna06]

Originally Posted by carnation

Yes! How did that end up being called hazing?

Was that considered hazing, or was the idea to prevent hazing with a shorter new member period?

I don't really understand the logic behind the latter, but that's what I always understood to be the reasoning. But maybe not?

[OhSoDetermined]

This wave to leave and abolish greek life is not the push with NPHC organizations. I think the focus or brotherhood/sisterhood + service = the expectation that you have the responsibility to do even more during trying times. The option to just walk away and think someone else will handle it, will fight to solve the injustice, really isn’t a option. It’s time to get your hands dirty. So that is my observation, what else is the organization offering to make the members “feel” relevant. Why is this component missing? What is the message from the national body that is then communicated to the local undergraduate chapters? Do the alumni/alumnae associations have a connection with these local chapters to speak to how the creed, motto, etc connects to true action during these times.

[PersistentDST]

I have been thinking about this since the summer and of course, I’m coming from an outsiders perspective.

For those members who are disappointed in their national leadership and a lack of response about racism and justice, I wonder if they are barking up the wrong tree to begin with.

Sure, I’ve seen individuals (and some chapters) from IFC and NPC support social justice initiatives and I think that’s great. My alma mater has had a ton of racist instances in the news over the past month and the NPC ladies have been active and supportive. But are the national organizations, who haven’t historically been anywhere near the forefront combatting racism or fighting for social justice, equip to make those type of changes on a larger scale? Is it realistic to expect that to suddenly happen after (in some cases) well over 100 years of existence? How many members would want to buy in? How many PNM’s care about that when they participate in recruitment?

I wonder if some members are being realistic with those type of expectations when they join? Maybe they need to get the brotherhood/sisterhood, philanthropy and leadership experiences from their fraternity/sorority and fill the social action void with other organizations on campus.

With the news this week, frankly, I can imagine it would be rough for some chapters to make changes, because they can’t stop some of their members from being actively racist. If you can’t agree on that, it’s hard to move forward.

[33girl]

Considering most NPC members are told not to discuss politics during rush - which of course is a privileged outlook to begin with - I’m not sure how you get from there to the kinds of reforms some students want.

Something that I think would help would be if sororities bagged their national philanthropies and each chapter chose their own to work with. It would help the town/gown relationships if students were supporting a local cause, and most likely would create more buy in from the members if the philanthropy was chosen for a reason. And yes, I know you can have more than one, but that’s not always feasible programming wise.

[PhilTau]

According to Wikipedia, AU has about 8500 undergraduates and is about 51 percent white. Most importantly, it is a top five feeder school to the U.S. Foreign Service, Congressional staff, and other governmental agencies.

It also has a substantial number of undergraduates already working for various government agencies in some capacity or are involved in some type of work/study with a federal agency. So I would expect recruiting for fraternities to be extremely difficult. I would caution us from drawing too many assumptions regarding the motives or reasons behind the AU undergraduates' decision to close their chapter.

For what it's worth, when I was with the government, I knew dozens of AU and George Mason graduates and not one was a member of a fraternity or sorority.

[33girl]

AU has had sororities since the 1930s and fraternities I would assume for even longer. They’ve had ample time to adjust their programming to work around the fact that a large amount of the students have highly demanding jobs and recruit accordingly. So no, I really doubt that “the students are too busy for Greek life” is a factor.