http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34048074
So I usually stay away from frat discussions, but I can’t help but wonder if they are getting worse.
No. Same as always. We are just talking about it. imho.
I agree with @alh.
I do think there is a difference in the amount of binge drinking on campuses in the last couple of decades and before. I was in the college class of 1975; not only was 18 the legal drinking age, but there was a lot of pot around and it was after the pill but before the epidemics of STDs and HIV. We could be pretty wild. But I never recall someone being taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning.
Of course, this does not apply just to frats.
agreed^^
the other difference is that virtually everyone these days has a camera in their purse or wallet , and proof of the type of behavior seen in that picture is easily recorded and can’t be shrugged off or disputed like it used to be.
Photographic proof always trumps rumors or gossip.
Stupid college students - beware!
An excellent point, @menloparkmom!
I am so very glad that I committed my youthful indiscretions before the advent of the camera phone and social media! B-)
The kids these days drink the hard stuff. Its easier to conceal. When I went to frat parties back in the stone age they had kegs. You have to drink a lot of beer before you get so sick you need your stomach pumped. I also never recall anyone getting alcohol poising. I know I will be bashed fro this but if we let 18-20 year olds legally purchase beer I think it will help with all these issues with kids drinking themselves to death. They are going to drink. I just think they should stay away from the hard stuff until they can handle it and this is one way of dealing with the problem. (Yes I am a liberal leaning leftist!)
I agree 100% that the drinking age for beer should be lower. I think 19. You can learn to drink much easier on beer!!!
At our campus, one frat got Romanized (all their stuff appropriated by a more powerful force and loss of identity) as a result of an underage female getting a stomach pumped after one of their parties. This was in the 1985-1987 timeframe.
More recently one of the other groups lost their house for a while, apparently due to arson. Generally I’m a live and let live kind of guy, but I recall this particular house as home to some vile people (30 years ago), so I’m working hard but with limited success to keep schadenfreude at bay.
So I dunno, there’s probably more publicity now than then. But it wasn’t great then.
It is pretty clear cut to me that these signs create a hostile environment for young women. What is amazing to me is that with all of the negative publicity that frats have had in the last few years, the Sigma Nu boys aren’t smart enough to know that this is a very bad idea. Their parents must be very proud. lol
I would love to the the University President’s email box tonight.
Raising the national drinking age, a “second prohibition” has been about as successful as the first prohibition. It has caused unsupervised, front-loaded binge drinking of harder more concealable stuff. In the 70s college parties did not have the blackout drinking of today as the norm. You could drink a pitcher at the college tavern. It wasn’t forbidden fruit. And so, collateral bad drunken-fueled behavior such as vandalism and sexual crimes were perhaps less common then they are today. All of the civilized/industrialized countries have drinking ages between 16-19 with less alcohol problems than the U.S. The states are unwilling to lower them because they are held hostage to highway funds by federal law (National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984) and no one has the courage to stand up to that counterproductive law.
I have said it 100000x frats are terrible. go off to school be yourself! meet all kinds of people …learn and grow! do not join a semi-gang/cult to get personal validation.I do not believe in banning or boycotting things. but I wish that frats disappeared organically because college students on their own realized that is not something they want to be a part of.
the sign was kind of funny or I should say would be funny if it was not a frat doing it. (to me because it is a frat I see it more as them taunting than being funny…my opinion)
Fraternities are actually getting better with time (at least over the last few decades, if you go really far back I think they get better), it’s just that we are getting more aware of what goes on and less tolerant of a “boys will be boys” attitude so it feels like they are getting worse.
Hmmmm. Although I’m generally pretty anti-Greek, I personally don’t support punishment for the fraternity by the university in this case, because those signs, in my opinion, are protected by the First Amendment. If their national wants to suspend them, that’s not state action, of course.
The concept of acquaintance rape didn’t exist prior to the late 70s and didn’t enter common culture until the late 80s. Acquaintance rape existed prior to it being named, but usually wasn’t considered really rape. I think it was probably more common in past decades than today. It definitely wasn’t less common.
I’ll weigh in here… I agree with comments suggesting that the ridiculously high drinking age contributes to binge drinking rather than moderate social drinking.
Also, I keep reading about drinks being drugged with date rape pills, and I never read about that in decades past when I went to college, so I think the prevalence of that risk is absolutely new.
Also, when there was no Internet, teens and young adults had few sources of nude photos, and now they can watch countless people having sex online if they want to, and get addicted to porn, affecting their views toward intimacy and the people around them, and affecting their desires and expectations for what they want out of an encounter. This is reinforced by certain lyrics and music videos, computer games, TV shows, etc. – on a massive scale that dwarfs any outside influence young people faced a few decades ago.
Let’s add that the age of marriage keeps going up and up every decade, with many only living together now and not marrying at all, and that is in part a reflection of the lack of “dating” culture in the sense of dating that leads to long-term relationships and marriage – much of it has been replaced with one-night stands and friends with benefits relationships, heavy on the sex and light on the love and romance.
I could go on, but I think things have changed entirely in the past 35 years making fraternities wilder and more dangerous, especially for females who go to their parties. Once upon a time fraternities might have fostered socializing that led to marriages, and now they seem to foster socializing that leads to rape of unconscious drugged sorority girls – sometimes filmed as someone mentioned – and other atrocities, including addictions and overdoses.
I have to respectfully disagree with parts of #14. I was in a sorority 36-40 years ago and truly hope fraternities today aren’t wilder and more dangerous for female party goers. During the 1970s, at some (not all) fraternities, it was acceptable to get unsuspecting women drunk and take advantage of them, sometimes while they were unconscious. Drugs were sometimes slipped into drinks. But it was never called rape because it was impossible for fraternity boys to rape sorority girls. That was just not a concept that existed. It was up to women to protect themselves. If they didn’t, they were slut shamed. If we were savvy, we knew some houses were unsafe and avoided them.
I only write this because it seems to me important not to romanticize the past, especially where abuse of women is concerned.
Listening to my parents, I am pretty sure these same behaviors existed at fraternities in their college years as well. Once my mother told me in a round about sort of way, my father didn’t belong to one of “those” fraternities.
eta: and I’m not convinced premarital sex is more common today than in any time in history. It seems possible to me the brief time where we had access to the pill, but no HIV/AIDs may have been the “wildest” in that regard.
Animal House was released in 1978.
I agree with @Hunt to the extent that charges should not be filed in court. However, for Universities to operate effectively, they have lots of rules that differ from the law. For example, giving a friend an answer during a test is not protected under free speech and is considered cheating.
In this case, the statements seem to create, in the minds of some readers of the signs, a threatening environment. In my mind, all students should be reasonably allowed to go to school without threats. For example, if the KKK student group had a house and put out signs that said it was the African American student drop off and their families should come too, I would think action should also be taken.
I think that the fraternity should have the right to put up the signs legally, but in my opinion, the University has a duty to ensure a non-threatening environment for its students, and particularly for groups of students who have experienced historical discrimination, so I think the school is right to act.
I’m very concerned that exceptions to free speech shouldn’t be expanded so much that they eat up the right. While threats are not protected speech, I don’t think the signs in question are the kind of communication that should qualify as unprotected threats.
@hunt I am unclear about whether we agree. I think the frat boys who put up this sign are legally fine, but the college may take action to ensure a non-threatening environment for students.
Does that differ from your view?