They have one post on their instagram page, which is disavowing that GroupMe post.
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Why not? Is there no limit to “boys will be boys?” Plenty of precedent of frats being disciplined by public universities (and/or their national organizations) for antisemitic parties/actions/behavior.
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I was thinking more about the individual, not the frat.
No.
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You are presuming that is the culture. In my experience, it is not. Does it happen? (obviously) yes. Does it happen everywhere, at every house, with every member of the house? No.
I don’t think any parent is okay with what went on that night, for any of the students. Also not okay with Girls Gone wild on spring break, with climbing the outside of building when drunk, storming the field after football wins (for which the schools can be fined and thus cost the parents more). Since I didn’t experience this, I was fine with my daughters joining a sorority and I paid for it. I hoped they would make lifelong friends like I did, have a structure for studying, participate in school activities like homecoming, and have fun.
I have a good friend who was my roommate in the house. She (F1) is friends with another woman (F2) from my pledge class and I ask how they had become such good friends when they appeared to have little in common. F1 said that she found F2 distraught one night about failing a class and not knowing how to bring up her grade. F1 said “I’ll study with you, I’ll sit with you” and they did, night after night in the dining room. F1 didn’t know anything about the course but she went through the material with F2. THAT’s the kind of friendship I hoped my daughters would find. Just kindness.
F1 was a party animal in college and I dont think F2 ever had a drink while in school.
And 50 years later we’re all still friends.
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Interesting Substack written by one of the first women to join a fraternity at Stanford.
“What happens when young men are taught that belonging requires submission to power? When they are encouraged to override someone’s boundaries, or their own, in the name of brotherhood and dignity? When the ability to endure or inflict humiliation becomes a measure of loyalty?
Um… What does that teach them about consent?
Right.
What might happen if we taught them something else?”
…………………….
Do you think there is a profound lesson here about masculinity, leadership, and community? I do.
So much of what we call traditional masculinity seems actually like a performance of power - power theatre. You’ve got old inherited scripts about dominance, toughness, and the right to command. Young men are initiated into these scripts by other men who were initiated into them before, often without anyone stopping to ask whether the traditions actually create the kind of relationships they actually want.
………………..
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What if more young men were invited into this kind of experiment to include, connect, and support instead of exclude, dominate, and abuse?
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What iff instead of asking pledges to prove their loyalty through obedience and humiliation, we asked them to practice respect, emotional courage, and the ability to honor someone’s “no” without feeling diminished?
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What if the measure of a brother was not how much abuse he could endure, or how much power he could exercise over someone else, but how trustworthy he could become?
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What if the point of fraternity was actually fraternity?
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Netflix has already release a documentary on this.
This poor Cornell sorority girl, calling for a frat ban, is having a tough time dealing with being misled growing up. [1]
Many girls today are raised on the premise that if they work hard and get educated, they can escape the age-old system of being objectified by men. I believed it. I worked my way to the top of male-dominated organizations in high school and wrote one of my Cornell admission essays about the misogyny I endured along the way. Cornell was supposed to be a haven where I would be seen for my mind instead of my gender. Instead, I have found a sexist, degrading culture, and fraternities are to blame…
When social systems concentrate power and control in the hands of men, existing gender inequalities can become more dangerous…
The result is a social structure in which sororities gather women, sort them, and deliver them to the men who host them…
In my own chapter, the pressure is constant. Every weekend, there is a push to dress cute and talk to brothers at their parties so that we can stay in good relations with them…
Cornell must do more than suspend parties temporarily; it must ban the system that gives men such disproportionate power over campus social life.
She was brought up to believe that her agency is contained to knocking down the wall of a “male-dominated” profession, but hasn’t yet generalized that and realized the agency she and her sisters have. They have all of the power here. Stop feeding the beast, and the beast dies.
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Or, stay with me here, the people who actually have power decide not to allow beasts in the kingdom to begin with. That way the prey, excuse me ‘food’, isn’t responsible for killing the predator.
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Harvard tried that and the off campus fraternities and sororities sued. They were winning and Harvard gave in and agreed to reinstate all the things they have taken away (that the members could be president of a club, captains of teams, get a recommendation for grad school or scholarships or honors like Rhodes Scholar). Harvard didn’t have clean hands as it allows Final clubs and Hasty Pudding. Harvard Greeks have done some great things; I know of a Rhodes scholar and an astronaut.
Other schools have off campus frats and sororities. The schools can prohibit them from meeting on campus and not consider them student groups, but that doesn’t stop the parties, the members wearing sweatshirts with the letters, individual students posting notice of the parties on campus bulletin boards, attending football games as a group. All the school can do is investigate under Title IX or another school regulation and discipline them as they would any other student that lives off campus. IMO schools lose more control over the organizations by not recognizing them as student groups.
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Private schools can prohibit their students from joining them. Amherst derecognized fraternities and sororities in 1984, but some completely off campus chapters continued until 2014, when Amherst prohibited students from joining them.
Princeton prohibits frosh from joining the off campus fraternities and sororities.
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It’s always the woman’s fault
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As long as the prohibition on joining is clearly stated in the student handbook.
But what’s the penalty if they do it anyway? I think the schools that maintain a good relationship with the off campus groups do better at making rules and having the Greeks comply. Many schools have Rush either in the spring of freshman year or sophomore year, but if the school isn’t involved with the Greeks, then the school can’t really enforce the rules. I think if they are reasonable, like Amherst seems to be, the Greeks will comply. If they don’t, like frats at U of Colorado for 20 years, the frats do whatever they want. The sororities at CU are recognized as student groups even though house are off campus, and the school works with them on things like Rush.
Harvard tried to ban them entirely. The greeks didn’t even have housing off campus but just a meeting room. Harvard made unreasonable rules and the greeks wouldln’t cooperate.
For starters, the penalty can be disciplinary proceedings, removal from campus leadership positions, withholding of recommendations and graduation honors.
The Amherst rule is that students cannot participate in fraternities or sororities:
https://www.amherst.edu/about/president-college-leadership/trustees/statements/node/546181
So there is also a significant portion of men who feel the same way about virgins–36%. So I guess we must conclude that this is the way that men have designed society to incentivize female hypersexuality (or in your words “hyper sexuality” if that is different, I imagine it could be?)
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Seems so performative. Why pass a resolution with no concrete recommendations?
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