With all the discussion of campus sexual assault being a hot topic these days one method being discussed to address what is considered by some to be an abusive “rape culture” prevalent in US colleges, is to have sororities instead of fraternities host college parties where alcohol is served.
The plan here is that having parties on their own turf they will be in greater control of what happens onsite and will be better able to control or contain behavior of the attendees.
I don’t see it helping much. It won’t stop frats from throwing the same amount of parties they do now, they have a lot more interest in the whole drunken party thing. The entire point is getting women drunk so they’ll be more willing to have sex with them, what purpose would the sorority house parties serve? I think women who look at frat parties and think “no way, those guys are rapey as fuck” won’t really be interested in a “safer” place to get wasted, they’ll just do something else.
I feel like turning the dial down on the whole party culture is probably a better idea, but that’s probably not going to happen any time soon.
I don’t think this is going to eliminate rape or anything, but I don’t anything wrong with it. Women throw parties all the time, and people manage to have fun and even hook up at them. It’s probably an accident of history that parties in this particular culture became so lopsided.
Not having been in in the Greek system in college I am not sure how alcohol was procured for house parties (large purchase or multiple small purchases) or what the cost was. Do any dopers know what it costs a frat (today) to procure booze for an average size house party?
I do think that getting young women to pay for alcohol for a party where young men are entertained will be an interesting social exercise.
Exactly, if you are afraid a guy might rape you if you go to his place then the solution is to not be around him at all, not inviting him to your place.
I don’t know much about frat/sorority culture, but I always had the idea that the ultimate point of a frat party wasn’t just the booze…The real goal is for the guy to take the girl up to his room.
And in almost all cases, it’s consensual.
So suppose a sorority has a wild party, and most of the girls find themselves a partner who they invite upstairs…
Society has a word for a house where lots of women have sex.
Another idea along these lines is to have women in bars buy drinks for men they might be interested in meeting. Probably has the same likelihood of becoming the new norm.
While I was not personally in a frat, I had several friends that were.
The costs for a typical party range from the high hundreds to the low thousands. Breaking $10k once a year would not be unheard of, but then your big expense is probably the band or whatever other attraction you have to go with the booze.
About 10 years ago I helped a fraternity brother draft his resume. One of his questions was how to highlight his frat position as social chair. He felt being in charge of a fairly large budget was impressive and worth highlighting, but he didn’t know how to “hide” the fact that virtually his entire $25,000/year budget was spent on alcohol.
Just out of curiosity, do fraternities account for the bulk of sexual assault charges on campuses throughout the United States? I’m not sure how helpful having the sororities host parties instead of the frats would be. First, as someone mentioned, if I was a sorority girl afraid of sexual assault I sure as hell wouldn’t be inviting those guys into our house. If I were a man, and would you look at that, I am! I’d be more than happy to go to a party hosted by a sorority if they were hosting it just for the sake of throwing a party. But if they’re uncomfortable coming to where I am for fear of being raped then I don’t think I’d be inclined to go to their party. And, again, if they’re afraid of me then why would they invite me?
Kegs were against the rules at my college’s frat parties so I was recruited to go on several runs to load an entire truck bed with cases of beer. A typical run was 500-1,000 cases even at $10 a case it was $5-10K for a party with one thrown about once a month so I’d guess they spent $40-100K a year on their parties. Of course this was the frat that most of the football team was a member of so their parties were bigger then most of the others on campus.
None of the sororities would be willing to bear the cost especially they drink for free at this point so it would be a large dues increase for them while I’m sure the guys would mostly be a fan since it would transfer not only the cost but the clean up to someone else. It’s not like it’s that much harder to take a drunk girl home then it is to take her upstairs.
If the bar bills are actually in the thousands per hosted house party I think the chances of having sororities take this up are effectively zero. It sounds like an innovative idea, but the chances of young, attractive, sought after women buying into the concept of paying to provide men with alcohol are slim to none.