“• Two weeks ago, Penn State University released a detailed report of hazing incidents required under a new law named for Tim Piazza, a fraternity pledge killed by hazing and neglect in 2017. Between 2013 and 2018, according to this document (.pdf), Penn State investigated 31 hazing reports at its 20 campuses. Most of those instances involved fraternities and sororities on its main campus. Nearly half of those events happened after Piazza’s death. Violations ranged from dumb (members made pledges run their errands) to dangerous (lots of reports of forced and excessive underage drinking).”
Sad that even after all this there are so many new incidents of alcohol-related hazing at Penn State according to their own report (which I suspect under-represents the number of actual incidents). If the administrators truly want to stop it, why not have a strict zero tolerance policy? Any incident automatically results in the lifetime ban of that frat or sorority and expulsion of any of the student officers involved. No exceptions. No second chances. If more than 3 such incidents a year occur on a campus in a year, suspend the entire greek system on that campus for at least a year. Let’s see the value of peer pressure asserted positively. If the obsession with alcohol-hazing is so strong at a given frat that they are willing to risk that, it’s obvious that’s an organization that shouldn’t exist. If a student is so obsessed with the need to impose hazing on others that they would risk that, then he/she is a sociopath who should have no place in the campus community.
@brantly I have heard that reason before. Yet many colleges have phased out greek life entirely and none of them that I know of sustained a long-term decline as a result of their alumni revolts. Now most of them brag about it. I’ve gone on maybe 30 college tours now between my kids and the majority of those schools don’t have greek life and every single one who doesn’t make a big deal about it on the tour and try to out do each other in taking credit for how long ago they banned it. Others who do have it make a big deal of downplaying it, how it’s “not like” other schools greek systems and “less” this or that – they all seem ashamed of it. BTW, many of those schools have some of the highest endowments per student in the country and continue to do extremely well in fund-raising. So they must be doing something right.
Beyond that, if raising money is an excuse to facilitate something dangerous to the students, such institutions shouldn’t be in the business of education. It’s pretty simple. Doing the right thing for the students should outweigh any short term fundraising pain. If they are a legitimately decent school academically, they will eventually do fine on the basis of their educational merit. If they aren’t, then stop pretending to be a college. Besides, donation that come on the condition that schools facilitate hazing (not drinking but hazing) should be like accepting drug cartel money – there should be a line and that crosses it.
Notice I didn’t say bad all greek systems or drinking, btw. Not all haze.
If the fraternities are popular enough, they will become unaffiliated off-campus groups, like most of the fraternities at University of Colorado Boulder. Because Penn State is a public school, it cannot prohibit students from joining them, unlike private schools.
Perhaps Penn State may want to disassociate itself from the poorly behaved fraternities. But that will not necessarily make them go away.
Zero tolerance seems to have the unintended consequence of incentivizing cover-ups, particularly in the Greek system. The pressure to conform to the group, to protect the group, is already huge and knowing that if you take an underage drunk to the ER you’d bring down a whole chapter ? Just won’t happen.
Most campuses have an amnesty policy for rendering any kind of aid. Penn State’s greek oversight work is making some small difference, so we’ll see if the effort to create a national trend of accountability will catch on. It still seems to me like frats and sororities are such an antiquated idea; can’t fathom how they’ve continued. God give the Piazzas comfort in their work.
the University of Colorado imposed restrictions on fraternities after the death of a pledge in about 2005. The frats became unaffiliated with the university and are no longer considered student groups. As of this year there are 3 new fraternities who are complying with university rules and will become student groups. The existing fraternities don’t seem interested in going back to university control.
I don’t think there are any other major public universities that don’t have Greek life
Harvard has made it impossible for Greek houses to exist even outside university control by withholding services for Harvard students who join single sexed groups. Harvard is being sued by several student groups. The students are free to join these single sexed groups, but then they can’t then hold leadership positions on campus or get letters of recommendation for grad schools, scholarships, fellowships, etc. It is fine, by the way, to join the KKK but not the Knights of Columbus.
CU currently lists 12 fraternities that are recognized or affiliated. But there are around 20 fraternities that are not recognized or affiliated with CU, presumably the ones that disaffiliated after 2005.
@10s4life Fellow Bruin here… In my day at least, UCLA’s Greek system actually felt like the basis for all the stereotypes. I recall as a Freshman attending rush. One frat had hired prostitutes to do a show where anyone could put folded money in their mouth, lie down on the ground and the women would collect it using a particular body part. Another gave a tour where they showed off the room upstairs with a bunch of mattresses where you were supposed to take the girls once they were drunk enough. And of course most of it was about drinking. Not a single pitch about community service. They did talk about their alumni networking strength though. Back then the Greeks controlled student government as well. Not sure if that’s still true…
“CU currently lists 12 fraternities that are recognized or affiliated.”
These aren’t social fraternities (IFC) with houses and drinking like the one at Penn State that is the subject of this thread. The three new ones are IFC frats but I doubt they will have houses because most of the rules imposed by CU were about the houses and drinking alcohol at those houses. I think the three new houses will operate separately from the 15 or so frats that aren’t recognized by CU.
One benefit of being a student recognized group is that they can use/rent rooms on campus for meetings if they don’t have a house for meetings.
Note that there is a “CU IFC” (4 fraternities, CU affiliated) and “Colorado IFC” (19 fraternities, not affiliated), as well as a MCGC (3 fraternities, CU affiliated) and NPHC (5 fraternities, CU affiliated). There are also 2 fraternities that were expelled from the “Colorado IFC”. So that makes 12 affiliated, 21 unaffiliated.
Since when were social fraternities required to be IFC and have houses and drinking?
It is kind of nonstop, gross and national attention should be directed to this topic…this is a single search without any effort. All within the past few weeks(many more out there). Many reference Penn State and perhaps that tragedy will be viewed as a turning point in history like the Sandusky case has turned out to be.
@bester1 I totally agree. Why is this tolerated? These frat boys turn out to be the bullies in the workplace. My BIL is a psychologist. He has so many patients who come because of workplace bullying by bosses who are very similar to these frat kids. 50 year old men bullying 23 year olds in the workplace. The young professionals get PTSD from it, but they feel like they have to take it to succeed in the industry they’re in.