Wow.
Thanks for sharing that article. Very eye-opening, and very sad. I had such a positive Greek experience back in the late 80’s, and my daughter is having a positive Greek experience at another school where even the social fraternities are super casual and a fun place to meet friends, engage in philanthropy, and socialize. And the dues are a few hundred a year, not 3k.
I knew that hazing was a problem at some schools, but this is beyond anything I imagined.
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You have posted previously about fraternities and hazing. You seem to be very concerned about it.
Your son is going to go away as an adult. You are going to be funding most, if not all, of his life choices for the next four years. Your son REALLY wants to be in a frat.
Your options are:
- Forbid him to do so.
- Only allow him to attend colleges without Greek Life.
- Set financial parameters: “If you join a frat, we will not contribute financially to any aspect of it other than housing and food costs.” (This worked for us. My son financed his frat life for his college duration.)
- Turn a blind eye and trust that your kid will survive his decisions, even when they are stupid, as some inevitably will be.
- Accept that there will be a lot of stuff associated with your kid’s Greek Life that you really do not want or need to know.
There is no point in you fretting about Greek Life at any school that offers it. You let your child apply to those colleges knowing that your son wants to partake in the system. If you are prepared to let your kid go away to college, you need to be prepared to deal with not knowing what your child does when you aren’t around. You have to let go and trust that they will get through it unscathed and, ideally, become the best version of themselves.
EDIT: After my son graduated, I asked him for one example of what he was made to do during hazing. He just said “you don’t want to know.” Wise words and I didn’t ask again.
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Excellent post- but there is one more option- work with your son over the next few days to find a “non-fratty” college he’s excited about. And apply there ASAP.
Young men do dumb things. But they do even dumber things when they are surrounded by other, “frontal cortex not yet developed” young men, and when their usual risk mitigation alarm has been dulled by alcohol or party drugs.
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Great idea. OP’s son can apply to colleges not as well known for Greek Life, and certainly not where he needs to buy an $8000 plane ticket to nowhere. I’m pretty sure that a lot of hazing still involves doing disgusting things with inexpensive vomit and used toilet scrubbers😆
Even non-fratty colleges have Greek Life, unless they specifically do not offer it. My S’s university isn’t particularly known for Greek life, but he found it and joined. My D attended a college with none. She learned that some of the sports teams took on that role, hosting big parties, etc…
Just to emphasize that if a student is looking for that type of experience, they will probably find something akin to it at most colleges.
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Again, agree. But one nice feature (side benefit?) of the non-fratty U’s is that in general, they take risk management/fear of lawsuits pretty seriously. The brothers likely need to follow the U’s party protocols, fire safety precautions, etc.
No guarantee… but a guardrail for sure. A U that has an entire city block of frat owned properties? Nobody from campus security is taking on that liability… private property adjacent to the U? Not their problem…
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FWIW, at my son’s college his fraternity house is off campus… and directly adjacent to campus police HQ, which is weirdly also off campus. They have a strong relationship with campus police. I know that’s likely the exception, but this thread is starting to feel kind of fraternity bashing and they aren’t all like that. At S22’s school all the fraternities - which are all located off campus - are required to do a lot of risk management. They all have mandatory anti-hazing meetings they have to attend and trainings that they must take - and these are put on by the IFC and monitored by the school, so they aren’t easy to dumb down or slide out of. This year all the greek members listened to presentations by police and the mother of a fraternity member somewhere who died due to hazing. S22’s fraternity has a risk management policy for parties, and sober brothers whose jobs are to make sure everyone is behaving safely, and they take those duties seriously.
I’m not saying hazing doesn’t occur, and that it isn’t sometimes truly awful. But for folks reading this, please know that it doesn’t have to be that way and it isn’t always that way. While I’m sure my kid’s done some stupid things with his fraternity, he’s never been subject to anything like what’s discussed above. And I’d also push back on the assertion someone made that it’s only for wealthy people - while that may be more likely true than not, again, his fraternity has several brothers who do not come from financially well off backgrounds. Their dues are relatively low, and they manage their money to the penny to try to keep costs as low as possible.
Again, I know it isn’t all roses and sunshine and rainbows and ponies. But for future readers, I wanted it to be clear that the experiences described above are not universal.
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Completely agree with @OctoberKate
I love Washington and Lee’s approach: they embrace Greek Life. Not the horrible Animal House, continually drunken stereotype! (Sad that I feel the need to say this). But: the University owns all the Greek houses, they have a zero tolerance policy towards hazing (which doesn’t mean it is nonexistent, but it is tamer), they require an adult live in each house, your financial aid, if applicable, will cover the dues (<< note that!!) Etc.
Personally, I think Universities that kick fraternities off campus as a way of dealing with problems are misguided. Because it doesn’t stop the problem, it just relocates it. I think strong oversight is a better approach.
My son’s experience of Greek Life has been strongly positive, and I would recommend it.
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Thanks for providing alternative perspectives @OctoberKate and @cinnamon1212.
Are there any resources available that can help students and families figure out if a school’s Greek scene is more like the W&L or WPI model or more like the Animal House or ridiculous hazing at the chapter at SMU? Or a way of finding out which chapters on a campus are the “good” kind and what kind is the type to give parents and pledges nightmares?
I don’t know of any resources other than what you’d guess - talking to folks at the schools, looking at the school specific instagram feeds for the fraternities, etc.
And it’s clearly not like there’s one specific fraternity that is always good or always bad, nationwide. My son’s house is NOT a place he’d be comfortable being on some other campuses. It’s clearly more campus specific. So I think this is a school - by - school kind of thing. I mean, I’d hazard a guess that you get more of the more “tame” fraternities at the more “nerdy” schools, just because the cohort of students would lean that way, but that’s a guess with no real evidence. (Or perhaps it’s schools that start with a W in their name? See W&L and WPI above and, to add to it, I went to W&M and was in a sorority that was very very tame… KIDDING!)
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However, if a specific chapter fails to fulfill the requirements of the oversight, derecognition and pushing the chapter off campus is the next step. If the university is private, it has more leeway to restrict students from joining derecognized chapters.
Sometimes, disciplinary records are available, so they may indicate which chapters are “worse” (or at least did something against the rules that was obvious or scandalous enough to get caught). Chapters which have been derecognized at colleges where others are recognized student groups can be assumed to have broken the rules too many times.
However, colleges do vary on what the rules are and how strictly they are enforced, so the absence of a disciplinary record does not necessarily mean that the chapter is “good”.
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Timely, as rush starts this week at W&L.
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Very true, I was unclear. I meant schools that kick ALL the fraternities off campus, not one fraternity in response to an infraction.
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Wow. Just wow.
I posted this question because yes, I am concerned. And yes, I may have a few posts on CC related to fraternities and hazing. It is something that I consider to be a danger to these bright-eyed young people starting something new, far from all that is familiar. Our son has grown up in a small New England town and although we have traveled and tried to expose him to the world, he has largely been insulated. As a friend of ours said when we visited him out in LA, “He thinks he’s worldly, but I worry some about him in LA. We have a market for organ selling out here.” He was only half kidding.
And I do have frank conversations with my son (thanks). And while yes, he is excited to go to a big school with sports culture, tailgating and Greek Life, he too has apprehensions about the dark side of it. He is a thoughtful person and I do not think he would allow anyone to do those things to him but even dropping out of pledgeship would be hard on him and possibly label him as “no fun” (when he’s anything but.)
I’m frankly surprised at some of the responses here— “are you sure you’ve got the story straight?” Yes. “How can anyone be so stupid?” Way to victim blame. “I don’t think smashing Rolexes is that bad!” Really? It goes against everything I’ve tried to teach my son for the last 18 years and turns it on its head. Even if they took that $8000 from my friend’s son and gave it to charity, it would be wrong but at least then it would do some good. But destruction for destruction’s sake while saying your organization is committed to philanthropy? Bull****.
So, I guess I won’t post my concerns on CC anymore, since so many of you have discounted them. Understood.
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I don’t understand your post. Most of us have been highly supportive of your way of thinking; and many of us are encouraging you to find a few “last minute” colleges for your son to apply to where most of the social life runs independently of the frats (or where the frats are tiny or marginalized or non-existent).
I think many of us have been where you are. I have not heard of the Rolex business, but the hazing things I have heard about are mostly stomach churning. So I am not disputing your account- just saying that it is not part of what I have heard from parents (and some students) about what goes on.
However, I AM encouraging you to explore further than rush and hazing. That’s the tip of the iceberg. It’s the daily stuff (and weekly parties) that are the concern, based on both my own kid and the other things that I’ve heard.
So nobody is telling you to stop posting. However, if frats are a concern, there’s a whole group of colleges you could explore where that style of living and socializing isn’t part of the scene. It won’t eliminate the entire alcohol/drugs/stupid behavior nexus, but it sure seems to cut it back.
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Ok, I went straight to the horse’s mouth: my son the SMU frat boy. Although he graduated in 2017, I doubt that much has changed in the past 8 years.
He had heard of the Rolex story, but believes it is apocryphal. (I.e. a scary rumor but that it never happened).
I asked specifically “were you financially hazed – did you have to buy things?” His reply: Not that much, just party supplies and food sometimes
He was in one of the bigger, more popular fraternities, and financial hazing was not a thing.
People can absolutely have concerns about fraternities. But I think it’s important to separate out what’s true and what’s not.
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While I agree with others that in the end @lollylolly son will be there without supervision and they’ll do what they’re going to do - they did say their friend’s son experiences this - so why would you cast doubt on it ?
Someone they know said - this happened to their child !! That’s not 4th hand.
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I heard from my friend who heard from his son.
That brings to mind a quote from SpongeBob, “Why, once I met this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy’s cousin…”
Or, from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off;: “My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it’s pretty serious.”
Or, from REO Speedwagon’s “Take It On The Run:” “Heard it from a friend who / Heard it from a friend who / Heard it from another you been messin’ around”
Just because you heard something fourth-hand does not make it true. 
I find it far more likely that the kid blew through $10K on something non-frat related but was forced to concoct a story when the AMEX bill came in.
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Ok, deleted!