All UVa frats on suspension

Parents Forum
3601

In whatever situations a UVA frat under the announced rules would have to have 3 sober members, one of whom does stair duty. I’m just replacing frat brothers with campus police or off duty police and asking that they cover the exits as well as the stairs.

I think it’s asking a lot to give a college kid the job of persuading his somewhat inebriated frat brother not to take his “can’t walk straight drunk” date up to his room. It sounds to me like a good way to get punched. Cops are trained. Off duty cops would be fine.

3602

A cop on stair duty? These rules are silly, when you take into account the massive amount of underage drinking (a crime) that takes place at any college party.

<=Stairs [-( =(( =((

3603

I honestly don’t think they are.

I don’t know it it’s a widespread practice, but at least some towns have ordinances requiring any bar that provides entertainment and can be occupied by a certain number of people to hire someone to provide security services–a/k/a a bouncer. It’s pretty common for off-duty cops and firemen to play those roles.

I think that’s more reasonable than asking a college kid to step in and stop his frat brother from pawing a drunken female.

3604

It would have made no difference for the fictional Jackie, since she was sober.

3605

Some of your responses make me question what you think actually happens at a fraternity party or a fraternity in general…

We have these similar but slightly stricter rules at my university. Parties are awesome. People are safe. These won’t be hard to follow. If you have questions I would love to answer them. Please “@” me so I see it. Thanks!

3606

I read the concessions and really just gave a big sigh, as it is nothing, but a political solution. This is clearly a solution where the people advocating such changes do not have to live with the results, and the schools are just doing things to try and appease certain groups. Well, it seems that the placating works.

I assume the entire goal of any policy changes is to reduce actual confirmed assaults and accusations of assaults. But, there is this implicit assumption, which is not borne out by any data I have seen, that the majority or a lot of alleged assaults are caused by the fraternity environment or that they are the nexus of the problem. Some assaults are, but I get this unseemly rich kid animus vibe from middle class and lower class people who see these fraternity males preying on girls. Sure there is some of that, but given this rich kid privilege argument, the frats really only politically represent convenient targets. But, there are not only frat members on campus, so what about other guys?

Seriously, what about those other non-frat guys at other non-frat parties? Yeah, as if middle class and lower class males are not assaulting females at the same rate or even more. Dream on if you do not think so, cause you have not a clue, as there is zero data of any sort to say that frat guys are assaulting females more than other guys. This premise, even at UVA, is all made up by advocates who think that frat parties are central to the problem.

Therefore, this policy change does not affect, I bet, over 70% of the parties with alcohol in colleges. And since this policy reduces the amount and type of alcohol at frat parties then it is no mystery where the females and males who want to drink will gravitate to?

Yep, these males and females are going to gravitate toward the parities not affected by this policy (and those parities will always exist somewhere, as an enterprising system of black market parities will arise).

Thus, all this policy really does is change the location of where the real drinking will occur.

Overall, it follows then this policy will affect 0% of the amount of drinking and 0% drunk sex and alleged assaults occurring at UVA. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, I see is now considered effective policy. Get ready for the same amount or more females being assaulted based on the new definitions being used, what ever these definitions are.

Why do I say possibly more assaults will take place? Because underground parities tend to be smaller and the smaller the crowd the wilder many males and females become because they do not think people are around to see. Alas, the law of unintended consequences will strike again.

3607

@TransferGopher, I think you previously said that you’d been a sober monitor at your frat. What is the typical experience of being a sober monitor? Do you end up usually doing nothing much, or do you have to actively intervene sometimes when things seem to be getting out of hand in one way or another?

3608

Additionally, what is missing from this new UVA policy is any control on the entire other HALF of the issue. Oops, they kind of forgot about that it seems. This i s what happens when you listen to advocates who cannot think outside their own narrative. But, let’s ignore the fake narrative, and get to the reality of the other half of the situation, as guys are not having sex with themselves.

If there are lots of girls who are clueless and drinking, guess what, they will be clueless and drinking elsewhere. If females are drinking voluntarily, getting drunk and going into rooms with guys at frats, these same females will be doing the exact same behavior somewhere else on campus, off campus, in cars etc. where the booze is flowing freely and where they do not feel like they are being watched by some idiot with a “I am sober” shirt on.

And what is the point of “I am sober” shirt anyway? All the girls who filed assault accusations, from what I have read so far, all VOLUNTARILY went with the guy and were not forced into any room. The females in all the cases presented would not even care about him because they where NEVER complaining, at the time, that they were were being forced to do something they did not want, so they would not even seek out the idiot with the I am sober shirt. ALL the assault accusations came after the fact after the female went willingly.

Therefore, the “I am sober” guy would not have been any use for anything re after-the-fact accusations.

And these guys are not new. I knew many a frats that employed that 3 to 10 person sober system, and supposedly those schools, according to advocates, have the same assault problem as UVA.

Effect of new policy - nothing (see post 3606) - but it sure makes people feel good. Perfect example of symbolism over substance.

3609

Well, he could not step anyway unless the school teaches the sober guy mind reading.

How would the sober person know that the female does not want to pawed? That would require the assumption that women are passive, sexless beings who do not initiate and many times want the pawing. Definitely not the case.

And exactly how does the sober guy know that the female is being pawed against her wishes? He cannot know.

And if the female is pawing the guy, is that different? It would be if there is double-standard that drunk females can paw guys without penalty, but guys cannot paw drunk girls? Anyway, odds are they are both intoxicated, which seems to be borne out by most assault accusations.

As my eldest DS says the culture on his campus is the females actually drink more than the guys, plus they start earlier in the evening, and are touching guys liberally and initiating physical contact by midnight. No sober guy is going to get in the middle of that unless he wants a good stiff punch from both the male and the female.

3610

The sober guys could administer a breathalyzer test on anybody who wants to go upstairs. I don’t know if I’m being facetious with that suggestion or not.

3611

I agree with the posters who are saying that these regulations are just going to move the parties further from the Universities eyes. When my S was in college he served one year as his fraternities Risk Manager. It was a position that was required by his fraternity’s national organization. When he ran for the position he decided he wanted to take it really seriously. In doing so he made sure that at each official event run by his frat he had one or two ‘sober brothers’. There are always sober pledges in the spring because they serve as sober drivers but they are not brothers yet so on top of them he had sober brothers to make sure all was well at the parties. Admittedly they were not focused on sexual assault but more on making sure that no one drank so much that they would get hurt or end up with alcohol poisoning. The fraternity was very important to my son and he was concerned that not taking this position seriously would result in an infraction that would end up shutting down his fraternity. He says it wasn’t easy filling the slots for people volunteering to be sober but he got it done. The problem with the new regulations and why I think it is going to push these events to the non official houses is that who is going to want to take on the responsibility of missing something? So you are the sober “stair” brother and a brother who has been drinking takes his girlfriend upstairs. (NOTE: They go upstairs all the time) But this time the sex advances to something the girl doesn’t like but she doesn’t say no because she had been drinking and it happened so fast, so therefore it is still sexual assault for argument sake, can the stair guy get sued for not doing his job?? Or the keg guy, does he stand there and card everyone? Does he get to go to a class to help him identify fake IDs? Does he get sued for serving a minor that had a fake ID? The risk isn’t worth it so they will move the parties to places where these regulations are not in place. So it does not change end up changing anything.

As a parent I was proud of what my son wanted to do but scared for the year he held that position because I felt it came with so much risk exposure for him personally. I guess time will tell how this attempt at accountability plays out. Will the fraternities actually find brothers to take on this enormous personal risk.

3612

“How would the sober person know that the female does not want to pawed? That would require the assumption that women are passive, sexless beings who do not initiate and many times want the pawing. Definitely not the case”

As you’ve said before, we all know that you’re such an animal that once you get going you’re pretty much unstoppable, kind of like how you can’t stop a dog who is in the mood and sees a female dog without using physical force to physically prevent the act, but men who are a bit more civilized than you can hear the word “no” and respect you.

3613

As a practical matter, I suppose the stair monitor could stop a non-fraternity member from going upstairs, which might make a difference in some situations. I don’t think there is much he could do about a member taking someone upstairs, other than try to convince him not to do it if the female seems drunk.

3614

That’s not going to happen. According to my son these girls are chug-a-lugging Burnetts and definitely not passive so my guess is there are not many sober people at these parties. I’m hard pressed to imagine a newbie-pledge-sober patrol to tell a drunk older brother and a Burnett’s soaked co-ed to take a chill pill. Not exactly like these guys are throwing these girls over their shoulder and dragging them off to the cave. Better to close off the upstairs entirely in the frat houses on party nights but even if the frats do that people will easily break the rules if they want to. Although while this thread is “dedicated” to frats, I’m not convinced that all the attention needs or should be on the frats. The issue is not frat-centric.

3615

If the woman seems incapacitated, he could talk to her briefly. Then if she was incoherent, he could “Dude, this doesn’t look right,” to the brother.
He could do the same if it was the brother who was incoherent.

3616

“going into a room with a guy” is not always voluntary. In some cases, you ask where the bathrooms are and are led upstairs, and someone is talking to you, and one thing leads to another and you are asked to talk somewhere quiet. I mentioned before, the college situation where all dorm rooms are bedrooms and you do not have a “staging area” and same thing with a frat house - the “staging area” is full of people and the only place to actually have a conversation is in someone’s bedroom.

Or like my situation, where someone was nice enough to walk me home and pushed his way into my room.

If you go to someone’s house for a party, and you put your coat on their bed in their bedroom, does that mean you are asking for it? A lot of kids have that kind of experience, and I have been to frat parties on the more formal side where coats were left in a bedroom on a bed.

I do know there were serial drinkers in my sorority who lost track of who they slept with, but I also know that most of them didn’t expect to be gang banged because they were drunk. There’s a line between being “easy” and being a victim of a loss of common decency (yes there is debate over what actually happened to “Jackie”).

As for measures that limit parties on campus driving activities off-campus, yes they likely will, but I know when I went to school, there was a stigma attached to “off-campus parties” in effect leaving yourself to the city police instead of the campus police. Like, people had their cars stolen, purses stolen, etc. at off-campus parties, so most people would not go off-campus.

But, I can imagine if there are people who live within 20 miles of the university (I have a friend who grew up in Charlottesville), they would think nothing about off-campus parties. Very few people at my college grew up in the city that the college was in. Many UVA people are from Virginia (68%, a LOT). Only 41% of UVA students live on campus.

http://www.virginia.edu/Facts/Glance_Enrollment.html

You could also view this in the context of diversity: UVA is remarkably non-diverse compared to the state of Virginia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Virginia

(20% African-Americans in the state, 6% African-Americans at UVA)

3617

@rhandco‌ The Virginia students come from all over the state. It is a large state, so many students are from towns 100-240 miles from Charlottesville. Most kids go to schools within 200 miles of their home so even in many of the NE privates, there will be lots of students from the general area (and many of the states are smaller so it does not take much to cross state lines to go to school). As your link indicates, UVa does have many OOS and international students as well.

Most students living off campus are going to be living fairly close to Grounds, in the nearby fraternties and sororities and numerous private apartments-not 20 miles away

3618

After seeing this thread, my DS commented that adults who advocate these activist “student sex cop” intervention policies are living in lala land. Theses females are doing everything they can to get into the guys’ rooms and will do everything to go around that student sex cop. This seems lost on so many here.

And he states the problem arises when some females literally get in over their heads AFTER they are in the rooms, all because of the lower inhibition caused by alcohol on BOTH the males and females.

Several, he thinks close to half, of the alleged cases at his school are cases, where in several scenarios, he and others saw and heard the girl chasing the guy, not the guy chasing the girl. And it turned out that it is the girls’ friends turning against the accuser because the plan was to get laid that night, but then one of the female says rape after she gets sober. However, she initially got drunk in order to get laid. They even have term for it, SR Syndrome (sex remorse syndrome).

My DS also makes a great point - in case people are failing to notice, there is no epidemic of alleged sober female rape on college campuses. And there is no epidemic of sober guys raping drunk females. The overwhelming majority of the cases he has seen are after a party where BOTH the male and female are intoxicated. Yes, he understands that a drunk female cannot legally consent, but a drunk male cannot understand much or consent either, so what is point? If they are drinking, all the crime labeling and redefining of rape in the world will not stop the activity.

As I sated before, following laws is for the sober, not the intoxicated, so advocates really are doing nothing with these policies if females and males are both drinking; advocates are just increasing crime stats, but not decreasing the crime.

Therefore, the logical deduction is: if the consumption of alcohol of males and females by body weight is allowed to stay the same on a college campus, e.g., UVA, then the amount of alleged assaults will remain the same (or increase with the redefining of rape). However, all that will be changed is the scene of the incidents.

I agree with my DS - lots of lala land living and narrative-making, but a completely different reality is obviously being lived on the college campus and he sees it every weekend.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that my DS’s school does not have frats, yet advocates say his school has the exact same problems as UVA.

3619

What are we blaming them for again? Low AA enrollment? UVA undergraduate enrollment is 61% white (the state is 64% white as of 2013). It looks fairly diverse to me for a state flagship University,and low AA enrollment is a complicated issue, one we can’t simply blame on white folks.

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51000.html

Edit: updated the % white for the state to not include Hispanic or Latino

3620

Re "them’ refers to whites.

…because obviously the poster knows that there is less rape per capita in the black student community.

This the narrative-making stuff I am talking about - a completely made up implicit stat. And students are reading this as examples of logical thinking. Yikes!

Would it not be interesting if a well-constructed study shows there is more rape among black females by black males? I do not have clue the number, but I darn sure would not think that the black males are learning and taking their cues from white males and have their own culture thing going on.