Some Canadian universities do. I have graduated from both the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta, and while I cannot speak for other schools, I can attest that fraternities and sororities were present at both of those schools.
Not really: the German Universities ( which started later than other nations, in 1386 — although the oldest of all universities, Bologna, technically had a charter from Barbarossa ) had Burse formations starting in the 14th century. These later evolved into a plurality of fraternities, collectively the Studentenverbindungen.
I should guess other nations’ universities such as Paris, the great mother, Salamanca and Oxford also had such student bodies.
I attend University of Western Ontario in the late 80s-early 90s and belonged to a frat. We had a house off-campus, but only a handful of the brothers lived there.
My experience was that it was a social thing. I was also a legacy as my dad had been a member of the same frat at University of Toronto in the 50s, and I liked having that common tie.
I can’t speak for the other frats, but as ours was an historically Jewish frat (probably about 2/3 when I joined) it was more about mutual support than drinking and sports, but not to the exclusion of those activities.
Abolishing the frat system seems more like something that would (or could) help with unruly frats than with partying, drinking, and easy sex. I’m not an American, that said, so maybe I’m just not familiar with the kind of cultural expectations that those provide that end up increasing those things.
Universities seem to be there, at least in theory, for the purposes of education. I don’t see how setting up a statement of intent towards that end or another would do anything to gather necessary support. If it’s something they want to do, all it’s doing is restating the point. “We really want to achieve this, and it’s because we really want to achieve this.” Not greatly inspirational or mind-changing. The business point is taken, but at the end of the day, universities do seem to prioritise education over money - if they didn’t, everyone would pass every exam. Though that does seem to happen when it comes to college sports, the surrounding of which over there seems largely to be insane.
I just don’t see how attaching frathouse problems to the overarching issues you see with universities is useful. As you say, it’s not a perfect world, and attaching those issues seems to put frathouse problems in that same category of “Oh well, it’s an imperfect world, guess we’ll have to live with it” as everything else, and I don’t think that’s a good or reasonable idea. I don’t think there’s much of a chance we could persuade universities to do all those big things - I think there* is* a good chance they could be persuaded to keep a firmer hand on frats.
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
In a perfect world, university administrations would deal smartly and directly with frathouse problems.
[/QUOTE]
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There isn’t necessarily strict delineation between “university” and “college” here in the U.S.
It’s hard to answer the OP because they vary so much. Fraternities and sororities, as we’re discussing them here, are generally an undergraduate phenomenon. Their level of recognition by the school can vary. Some have houses that they own or rent from private owners. Others have houses owned by the school. Some are mostly social clubs. Others have a service bent. Some are co-ed. Some are dry.
I was in a frat at U of T. It was an all-round excellent experience that has left me with close friends over thirty years later.
Like any social group, ranging from Independent Order of Daughters of the Empire bridge clubs to Hell’s Angels motorcycle clubs, there is a wide range of social groups, some good and some bad, with all being no better and no worse than their members. If a frat is a good frat, look to its members. If a frat is a bad frat, look to its members. Social groups are neither good nor bad per se. They simply provide a mechanism in which people can interact with each other and develop friendships.
When many young adults go to university, they leave their families, their friends, their homes, their schools, their towns, and their social groups ranging from sports teams to churches. It seems to me that social clubs, such as fraternities, are a good thing in offering a framework in which young adults can learn to maintain a balance in their various dimensions of well-being as they move through one of life’s major transitions. In short, friendship is a very good thing, particularly for a young adult stepping out of the nest into the world for the first time.
Some may be true karasses, though. Have to see if they do the boko-maru together to know. Or see if they have a wampeter.
What is the point of college fraternities?
To help you get laid dude.
I was/am a member of phi beta kappa. So where are all of those sorority women?
My friends that were in other fraternities didn’t seem to have the same experiences as I did at university. I prefer my experience, but they prefer theirs.
Not all fraternal/sororal organizations are the same, and can’t be painted with the same brush.
Phi Beta Kappa is all about the encouragement of academic inquiry and accomplishment, and it does have some advantages later in a person’s career.
Ying tong iddle I po!
Keep up lad. LOOK OUT!
If I may diverge back on topic, I’m finding this discussion enlightening.
In New Zealand our universities do not have fraternities etc but we do have Halls of Residence which I think translates to the american college dorms.
Until now I had thought frat and sorority houses were the dorms, the rooms and sleeping quarters where students lived and ate meals. They always appeared (movies) to be in grand old houses but I also imagined many were redbrick modern buildings.
Hmmm…not so. Sororities and fraternities are like clubs? But the connection is deep and lasts years? And some students don’t join them at all?
Our Halls of Residence are similar in the sense there can be intense rivalry between them. Some halls are elite - not in money terms but age, history, traditions, beautiful buildings, academic barriers etc. The are almost all co-ed. Life long friendships are made.
Usually students only spend one year in a Hall and we don’t have a strong alumni tradition (yet).
If you had asked me 6 months ago, I’d have sworn my kid would be a GDI (God Damn Independent) in college. I know I was. Turns out, based on my wife’s (her step-mom) great experience with being in a sorority, my daughter rushed and was accepted to the same one. It’s one of the oldest organizations as far as national sororities, has academic standards that all memebers must meet, supports charities and other philanthropic causes (They raised $10K for a heart disease research foundation last month) and they help freshman acclamate to college life with a great one on one mentoring program. Oh, and they party and drink like any college student is wont to do but have a policy to keep an eye out for one another so nobody becomes that sloppy fall down drunk college girl.
So while at first I was like :dubious:, now I’m more like 
about the whole idea.
There was a recent attempt to start one at Edinburgh University in Scotland.
It’s now being investigated by the police and University authorities.
This is an important point to reiterate. In the cases noted above where entire fraternity systems are suspended, I am always feeling that the punishment is being misdirected, and deliberately applied in a “passive voice” way. Much like when a corporation is punished for wrongdoing, I want to scream “the organization did not do anything, people did things!” Find the bad people, the people who are misbehaving, and punish them. Now, you might say, “well, the organization allowed the bad behavior.” Again, no, people in the organization allowed the bad behavior, etc.
So, applied to the Greek system, it’s not the system, or the individual fraternities and sororities, that are to blame - it is the individual people who are the members who are to blame.
end of rant.
And speaking of MIT my impression was that frats were a way of collecting like-minded people together. There was a mainly Catholic fraternity, a mainly Jewish one, a mainly jock one (reformed) and I suppose others had themes also.
Since I was there I believe they’ve done away with independent living in frat houses and brought everyone back to the dorms, but kept the fraternities. I don’t know how it is working out.
Ah, I see you were part of the ostensibly antisocial clique 
You’re speaking from ignorance. Most Greek letter organizations - the older ones, at least - were founded by people who were interests in classicism. As well as the letters there is generally a good deal of less publicly visible stuff that incorporates Greek traditions or philosophy.
To use one example, chapters of my fraternity maintain shrines to Athena, even though it’s an explicitly Christian organization.
No, and no - if by “colleges” you are distinguishing between institutions that grant baccaulaureate degrees and those that confer only associate degrees.
As to the latter…
The idea came from American universities but has been widely exported to Canada. My fraternity has or had 14 Canadian chapters.
Me too - and I would never have considered joining a Greek organization until I learned more about them and discovered one that suited me very well.
That tends to be a small subset of the fraternities at any given campus, though there are some fraternities (mostly Jewish) which require religious identification if not observance. There are also the black fraternities and sororities, which have a separate conference (cooperative) system and tend to have little to do with “mainstream” greek life.
By contrast, many greek organizations (like mine) are more inclusive. We actively recruited minorities because we felt that diversity was important.
There are quite a few universities where fraternities and/or sororities are not allowed to have chapter houses, and plenty more where not all greek organizations have them. They’re generally pretty expensive endeavors if you plan to build on campus since the national organizations typically require chapters to build according to certain preselected designs.
This was before we were very sensitive about such things - but I never heard anyone complaining about frats being exclusionary. And the Jewish one was hardly religious - not at MIT, where there is one small chapel for all faiths, which was hardly overcrowded.
At that time all the fraternities had houses, many of them in what was even then very pricy real estate in Boston’s Back Bay. Only a few were on campus - many predated MIT’s move to Cambridge. And I doubt any of them conformed to anyone’s design. I’ve been on campuses with more normal fraternities, so I know what the traditional ones look like. Not like ours.
There was always a struggle for the fraternities to get enough members to be viable, considering that the typical MIT student didn’t go there to party and they were much further away from campus than the dorms. When I was there fraternities were relatively popular, but they seemed to decrease over the years, and might not have been viable which led to the ruling. MIT also built more dorms which needed to be filled.