There are no fraternities at Canadian universities. It’s simply not the case that they’re an immutable part of the higher learning experience.
Are you sure about that?
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=fraternity+canadian+university&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
The college I went to (Mizzou) had and still has a very strong and active Greek system. I lived in the dorms my first three years, and my dorm had frequent parties and social events, and we competed in intramurals and other events. In fact, it got damn annoying my junior year, so much so that I moved out so I could focus on my studies, rather than on my social life and the social life of the collective I’d been randomly assigned to.
In my time there, I also went to quite a few frat and sorority parties; quite a few frat and sorority members came to our parties. So we all basically got to experience both systems.
Does my anectode cancel yours out? Because from another perspective, you’d have to wonder why your university doesn’t abandon it’s model in favor of the one my school had – which had the best (and worst) of both systems for its students to choose from and experience.
I didn’t say that fraternities were an immutable part of the higher learning experience. What I said was that the yearning for status and exclusivity is an immutable part of the human experience. If it’s not expressed in the form of a fraternity, it will find another: some sort of club or social clique. Ban fraternities and the problems associated with them will not vanish; they will simply shift to another outlet.
Young people, at the peak of their feccundity, seem particularly subject to this drive. (As people age, it often lessens, but not always.) I’ve often theorized that the ambiguity of the line between childhood and adulthood–a lack of ritualized rites of passage-- leads to a lot of social problems in our modern society. Fraternities and gangs fulfill that deep-rooted desire.
I have to correct this. At least one Canadian university has frats and sororities: I am currently in Edmonton at the Universiy of Alberta, and these organizations’ houses surround the campus. The frats and sororities often advertise for new members, both in September and in January.
In addition, frats and sororities existed at the University of Toronto when I was a student there in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Phi Delta Theta, for example, had a beautiful old house on St. George Street; I went to a number of parties there. They certainly existed at the U of T long before I was there; my grandfather belonged to Delta Chi (IIRC) when he was a U of T student in the 1920s, and my aunt belonged to a sorority when she was a U of T student in the late 1950s.
However, I don’t know if they still exist at U of T. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did though, because as I understood it, the University severed all ties to them in the 1960s. But that did not kill them, and they did not go underground. They were now totally outside of the University’s control, but they simply continued as they always had (soliciting members through word of mouth, having parties, offering their members a place to live), but without any University support or affiliation.
But they exist at the U of A, certainly.
I would certainly argue that fraternities and sororities are an immutable part of American higher education. Being that they’ve been around since 1776, they predate practically every other collegiate tradition. (You may be familiar with the first fraternity, which sort of dropped the social aspect and became an honorary organization - Phi Beta Kappa.)
Fraternities and sororities served to support a lot of groups that were excluded from campus life, namely African Americans and Jews. When these populations started to attend predominantly White colleges in numbers, the groups sprung up. Today there are Greek organizations for Latino students, Asian students, and even gay and lesbian students. Personally I think it’s a neat social phenomenon. And before someone decries the social exclusion aspect, if you are experienced in Greek organizations you can find White guys in Black frats, gentiles in Jewish sororities, etc. Obviously some groups have a lot of work to do in this area, but I can certainly attest to the fact that many frats/sororities are actively recruiting underrepresented groups in their organizations, but let’s face it - things like dues (some houses are like $5000/year!) and being a token are big impediments.
I agree with the posters that suggest that fraternities are easy targets because of their organized nature. You will find egregious examples of hazing, binge drinking, sexual assault, vandalism, etc. in bands, sports teams, and even in informal social groups. Sure, some members behave horribly, and groupthink exists in a lot of the houses, but you’ll often find some of the most active and intelligent students in the Greek system as well.
The media plays into this quite a bit. My fraternity outlawed pledging and hazing years ago, but people watched School Daze and wanted to be pledged - even though the old guys often didn’t experience it. My frat has graduate chapters as well, which means that a lot of the people with influence and money in the organization entered as grown men with jobs, rather than rambunctious 18 year olds. Obviously that’s a source of friction.
Here at Harvard they have the house system as well, but there are plenty of clubs that operate like fraternities. Finals and eating clubs, for instance. And lots of the clubs have complicated traditions and interesting entry requirements.
There aren’t many organizations that provide the leadership opportunities and the scale of the Greek system. Most organizations have philanthropic projects on a national level, and a 20 year-old might be responsible for the chapter, district, or state project. Those stories don’t get much press, but virtually every chapter in good standing does this work.
I’m not a Greek apologist - certainly there are tons of problems in the system and they have their fair share of idiots and meatheads - but I think it’s so lazy to simply think the way to curb binge drinking, violence, etc. is banning fraternities. Again, these activities happen in many kinds of organizations - there’s definitely an image problem with Greek-letter organizations and media outlets love hazing/binge drinking stories, while fights and near-death alcohol poisoning happens in every dorm on every campus weekly. (Trust me, I worked in student affairs and campus life at five different campuses.)
I should add: my fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha (the first Black fraternity), had its fourth chapter established at the University of Toronto - in 1908. (It was moved to Huston-Tillotson College in Austin, Texas, in 1939.)
I’m just glad I don’t go to the kind of parties you seem to.
I’ve been to those huge dorm parties at Smith. It’s a madhouse. They bus guys in from Umass Amherst by the hundred.
Take the current Greek system and make it mandatory for everyone and give them the keys to the school. Hows that better?
Having “house” systems is the same as having a “Greek” system. Either can be good or bad, depending on how it’s run.
I like Greek systems better because they are optional and people can choose where to rush and whether or not to pledge. If it’s not your thing, fine. Do something else.
Here are some stats for you:
http://www.forbes.com/work/careers/2003/01/31/cx_dd_0131frat.html
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About ¼ of all chief executives on Forbes Super 500 list of America’s largest corporations were members of college fraternities
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Only about 8.5% of full-time university undergraduates are members of either a fraternity or sorority
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Fraternities have produced 48% of all US Presidents
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Fraternities have produced 42% of US Senators
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Fraternities have produced 30% of US Congressmen
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Fraternities have produced 40% of Supreme Court Justices
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Among fraternity members who are Forbes 500s CEOs:
11 are Beta Theta Pi members
9 are Sigma Alpha Epsilon members
9 are Sigma Chi members
8 are Lambda Chi Alpha members
7 are Alpha Tau Omega members
It all depends on the school. If you have a school where the culture is one of academic and athletic achievement and social status, the fraternities will tend to reflect that. If you go to a bone-head school, the fraternities will be the biggest bone-heads in the school.
Yeah, that is pretty standard stuff. The general rule is as long as a person can manage to get at least one shoe off and are on a legit piece of sleeping furniture (IOW not the pool table), they have technically “gone to bed” and cannot be fucked with. Usually no one dies. (not that I haven’t seen a lot of dangerously bone-headed lapses of judgement in my fraternity days).
That’s surprising to me, unless they are local fraternities. Most National fraternities require you to be afiliated with the school.
I also went to a University without a Greek system (Notre Dame). I only lived on campus for one semester, so I can’t speak with great authority about parties, but I don’t really remember anything other than room parties. They were allowed so long as you didn’t walk through the halls with an open container and the door stayed shut. In other words, they couldn’t get all that big since the rooms were small.
But I was never a drinker or a partier, so I can’t speak definitively.
Perhaps they were grandfathered in after the University pulled the plug. Or it could be that since Canadian schools tend to operate under different rules than American ones in some ways, so do the frats and sororities.
My fraternity was kicked off campus about 5 years before I joined (I was actually in the second pledge class once we ‘recolonized’). Once the school kicked the house off, the national headquarters immediately revoked their charter.
Some fraternities operate as a ‘local’ chapter (in that there are not franchises at other schools and they are not affiliated with a national hq). It’s possible they simply kept the letters on the house and operated that way.
Some colleges, though, have strict rules against starting ‘underground’ fraternities.
If you’re unimpressed by the potential damage to the drinkers, consider the effect on others. From the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s summary of the 1999 Harvard study:
"About three out of four students responding to the study reported experiencing at least one adverse consequence of another student’s drinking during the school year. At colleges with a high binge drinking rates:
71% had sleep or study interrupted
23% had a serious argument
57% had to take care of an intoxicated student
16% had property damaged
36% had been insulted or humiliated
11% had been pushed, hit or assaulted
23% had experienced an unwanted sexual encounter
1% had been the victim of a sexual advance, assault or “date rape”"
Including our current President and renowned partier, George W. Bush (Delta Kappa Epsilon, Yale). :dubious:
Perhaps this is where we differ: Canadian fraternities were never “on campus.” They existed outside of the campus: the U of T could no more take away Phi Delta Theta’s right to exist than Joe Q. Homeowner’s, who lived on St. George Street, right next to the PDThs.
No fraternities at the U of T were “on campus.” Neither are they at the U of Alberta. Any university body who tried to take away their buildings would be faced with the same torts as those who attempted to remove private property rights from anybody.
Hey, a fellow Crimson! Which house are you? I was in Quincy during the school’s brief experiment with semi-random house selection. The houses still retained some of their old clique attributes, but they were fading (Adams - artist; Kirkland - jock; Quincy - Asian pre-med; Currier - high lottery number). To be honest, I didn’t even know there were any frats, though I knew about the Finals.
None… I’m a grad student.
I’ve done some work with the folks at Adams. It still has an “arty” feel to it, maybe because the masters and staff kind of fit that role.
I don’t know if there are frats and sororities on the campus officially, but one of my cohortmates was an Alpha. There is a citywide chapter based at MIT and Harvard students can join through that chapter, as can Tufts and BC students.
A few of things here.
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All of those figures have little or nothing to do with the discussion at hand, which is whether or not Greek organizations should be “banned” (what form that would take, I’m not sure). Binge drinking is hardly the sole province of folks who join fraternities and sororities.
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These figures sound to me like the natural consequence of being housed in close quarters with a bunch of other college-aged kids. I lived in the dorms for two years on a dry campus. You better believe I experienced each and every one of the things listed (except the unwanted sexual encounters). College kids are generally living away from home for the first time with no authority figure guiding their actions or providing consequences – at best, you’ve got an RA or house mother/father. That’s it. People in that situation can and will act up – disrupting others’ sleep, being obnoxious, needing care when they take it too far. Again, not the sole province of people in Greek orgs.
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Finally, I still take issue with how binge drinking is defined. For men, it’s 5 drinks in a row. For women, 4 drinks in a row. Some reported “binge drinking” 3 times in a two-week period. So that means, if I go out on Friday and Saturday nights one weekend, and just Saturday the next, and have (shocker!) 4 whole drinks on each outing, I am a binge drinker and moreover, I am a frequent binge drinker. I say that’s ridiculous.
You know, your eyes look a little bloodshot. 
I brought up stats on drinking in response to Debaser, who was arguing that “Greeks” make campus life safer, in part by controlling drinking. The figures I quoted included this: “A 1998 report from the School of Public Health at Harvard indicated that four out of five fraternity and sorority members identify themselves as binge drinkers.” You decided to question the definition of binge drinking, so you share the blame if this discussion has gotten a bit off the track of whether or not fraternities should be banned.
If over two-thirds of students cite their sleep or study being interrupted by others who’ve been drinking, that’s a problem that’s not being adequately addressed, “dry” college or not.
The definition cited is a bit arbitrary, but I think many would agree that drinking to get drunk qualifies as binge drinking. And as we all know, people are notorious for underestimating their consumption when dealing with authority figures (“Honest, officer, I just had two beers.”).
I doubt the Harvard study is overestimating the problem. And fraternities/sororities are a big part of it, thanks to their reputation as party (read: drinking) facilitators. As I said before, I don’t think bans are a good idea (except in egregious cases such as presented in the OP, where it has to be known that if you screw up badly enough to kill someone, all bets are off). If colleges are too lazy or inept to provide proper oversight, it’s going to fall to the legal system to inflict enough pain to get meaningful changes made.
Damn. Busted!
Good points all.