Post by Tom Earp on Jun 8, 2011 14:09:47 GMT -5
Los Angeles Times
Op-Ed Section
June 8, 2011
latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-allen-fraternities-20110608,0,1345290.story
War waged on college fraternities
Yale's five-year suspension of Delta Kappa
Epsilon for crude sexual chants reflects an effort to eliminate fraternities.
By Charlotte Allen
"No means yes, and yes means anal!"
That was the chant of Delta Kappa Epsilon pledges
as they marched past dorms housing freshman women
at Yale University last October. As a result, the
fraternity was recently banned from all campus activities for five years.
The hazing ritual was in poor taste, certainly.
But did the fraternity really deserve to be
suspended? Weren't the "Dekes" guilty of, at the
very worst, the kind of offensive speech
protected by the 1st Amendment (or in Yale's
case, by the university's 1975 codification of
rights of free speech and expression on its campus)?
In fact, DKE's five-year banishment from Yale,
longer than its current members will be at
school, is the latest salvo in a scorched-earth
war against college fraternities being waged by
militant feminists, PC campus administrators who
despise the openly retrograde aspects of Greek
life and, now, the Obama administration's
Education Department, which in late April
announced it had launched a full-bore
investigation of Yale over the Deke chant and
other incidents that may have created a "hostile
sexual environment" in violation of Title IX of the federal Civil Rights Act.
It's hard not to see this either as a move to
drive fraternities out of existence or to destroy
their culture. Furthermore, if the Education
Department is successful, it will effectively
impose a draconian federal speech code not just
on Yale but on all colleges and universities. All
students, not just fraternity men, will have to
watch what they say and write lest they too
become targets. The penalty for violating Title
IX is loss of federal funding, a sure incentive
for universities to crack down on any form of
expression that could trigger complaints.
The department's investigation of Yale was
triggered by an Oct. 14 article headlined "DKE
Sponsors Hate Speech on Old Campus" published in
an online magazine, Broad Recognition, edited by
Yale feminists. "Yale is not new to fraternities
acting in despicable, misogynistic ways," the
article began. It described the 18-year-old Deke
pledges, who had undoubtedly spent most of their
pre-college years cramming for the SAT so they
could get into Yale, as "a moving gang of men,
chanting in deep, throaty voices for sexual
assault." The article also attempted via a
photograph to link the pledge chant to that
favorite whipping boy of progressives, former
President George W. Bush, a Deke during his Yale
days even though Bush graduated from Yale 43 years ago.
A mostly female group of Yale alumni filed a
30-page complaint against Yale in March with the
Education Department's Office of Civil Rights.
Besides the Deke pledge incident, the complaint
listed such outrages as a 2008 episode in which
pledges of another fraternity, Zeta Psi, circled
the campus Women's Center with a poster reading
"We Love Yale Sluts." Then there was the time in
2004 that fraternity members sabotaged a Take
Back the Night Clothesline project by stealing a
"My Rapist Is Still at Duke" and similarly
captioned T-shirts off the line and wearing them
around campus. Not to mention the "Preseason
Scouting Report" email that some Yale
upperclassmen reportedly circulated in 2009
rating 53 incoming freshman women according to
how many beers it would take to want to have sex
with them. Yale's failure to respond sufficiently
severely to those escapades, according to the
complaint, created a "hostile sexual environment."
The media were quick to hop onto the
anti-fraternity bandwagon. Writer Caitlin
Flanagan reminisced, in an op-ed article for the
Wall Street Journal, that a mere glimpse of
fraternity houses as a student at the University
of Virginia had exposed her to so much "male
power at its most malevolent" that she dropped
out after only four days. Flanagan expressed hope
that the Yale complaint to the Education
Department would "shut down ... for good" all
college fraternities. In an April 22 blog entry
for the Daily Beast, Samantha Wishman called for
putting an end to the "testosterone-dominated culture" of Greek life.
The idea that Yale, among the most politically
correct campuses in America, maintains a "hostile
sexual environment" is ludicrous, especially in
light of its handling of the Deke case. Yale
College's dean, Mary Miller, who had earlier
urged the permanent banishment of the Dekes,
headed a committee that released a report in
January stating that campus organizations (read
"fraternities") and their members should be held
responsible for hazing activities deemed
offensive "to third parties." And sure enough,
Yale College's disciplinary board found that the
pledge chant had violated campus regulations
forbidding the "intimidation" of other students
even though none of the pledges had gotten
anywhere near a live freshman woman. A brand-new
set of Education Department rules mandating that
colleges and universities lower their standards
of proof in disciplinary proceedings involving
allegations of sexual harassment makes more such
judgments likely in the future.
Fraternities have never had an entirely easy
relationship with the universities that house
them. Even during their apex of popularity during
the mid- 20th century, Greek societies were
occasionally, and undoubtedly justifiably, thrown
off campus for excessive drinking, brutal hazing
rituals, licentious parties and "Animal House"
antics. Starting in the late 1960s, however, many
college administrators began a wholesale campaign
against fraternity life itself. Some campuses
abolished the Greek houses outright; others
required them to admit women, denied them
official recognition or barred fraternity
brothers from sharing living quarters.
Fraternities were deemed too white, too
exclusionary, too sexist and too anti-intellectual.
Most significantly, fraternities were irritants.
They were and still are refuges from the
oppressive political correctness that has come to
dominate institutions of higher learning.
Fraternities are places where male students don't
have to apologize for being men, with their
"throaty voices" and testosterone, and can laugh
freely at the latest pronunciamentos from the Women's Center.
Perhaps the feminists will get their wish, and
universities, with the help of the Education
Department, will make Greek life a thing of the
past. But those who cheer this effort along
should remember that when it becomes a near-crime
to utter a silly or boorish chant on a college
campus, everyone's freedom of speech and association is at risk.
Charlotte Allen is a contributing editor to the
Manhattan Institute's Minding the Campus website.
Her husband belonged to a fraternity at Yale, although not Delta Kappa Epsilon.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
About normal for an Ivy School who has noses in the air!
Op-Ed Section
June 8, 2011
latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-allen-fraternities-20110608,0,1345290.story
War waged on college fraternities
Yale's five-year suspension of Delta Kappa
Epsilon for crude sexual chants reflects an effort to eliminate fraternities.
By Charlotte Allen
"No means yes, and yes means anal!"
That was the chant of Delta Kappa Epsilon pledges
as they marched past dorms housing freshman women
at Yale University last October. As a result, the
fraternity was recently banned from all campus activities for five years.
The hazing ritual was in poor taste, certainly.
But did the fraternity really deserve to be
suspended? Weren't the "Dekes" guilty of, at the
very worst, the kind of offensive speech
protected by the 1st Amendment (or in Yale's
case, by the university's 1975 codification of
rights of free speech and expression on its campus)?
In fact, DKE's five-year banishment from Yale,
longer than its current members will be at
school, is the latest salvo in a scorched-earth
war against college fraternities being waged by
militant feminists, PC campus administrators who
despise the openly retrograde aspects of Greek
life and, now, the Obama administration's
Education Department, which in late April
announced it had launched a full-bore
investigation of Yale over the Deke chant and
other incidents that may have created a "hostile
sexual environment" in violation of Title IX of the federal Civil Rights Act.
It's hard not to see this either as a move to
drive fraternities out of existence or to destroy
their culture. Furthermore, if the Education
Department is successful, it will effectively
impose a draconian federal speech code not just
on Yale but on all colleges and universities. All
students, not just fraternity men, will have to
watch what they say and write lest they too
become targets. The penalty for violating Title
IX is loss of federal funding, a sure incentive
for universities to crack down on any form of
expression that could trigger complaints.
The department's investigation of Yale was
triggered by an Oct. 14 article headlined "DKE
Sponsors Hate Speech on Old Campus" published in
an online magazine, Broad Recognition, edited by
Yale feminists. "Yale is not new to fraternities
acting in despicable, misogynistic ways," the
article began. It described the 18-year-old Deke
pledges, who had undoubtedly spent most of their
pre-college years cramming for the SAT so they
could get into Yale, as "a moving gang of men,
chanting in deep, throaty voices for sexual
assault." The article also attempted via a
photograph to link the pledge chant to that
favorite whipping boy of progressives, former
President George W. Bush, a Deke during his Yale
days even though Bush graduated from Yale 43 years ago.
A mostly female group of Yale alumni filed a
30-page complaint against Yale in March with the
Education Department's Office of Civil Rights.
Besides the Deke pledge incident, the complaint
listed such outrages as a 2008 episode in which
pledges of another fraternity, Zeta Psi, circled
the campus Women's Center with a poster reading
"We Love Yale Sluts." Then there was the time in
2004 that fraternity members sabotaged a Take
Back the Night Clothesline project by stealing a
"My Rapist Is Still at Duke" and similarly
captioned T-shirts off the line and wearing them
around campus. Not to mention the "Preseason
Scouting Report" email that some Yale
upperclassmen reportedly circulated in 2009
rating 53 incoming freshman women according to
how many beers it would take to want to have sex
with them. Yale's failure to respond sufficiently
severely to those escapades, according to the
complaint, created a "hostile sexual environment."
The media were quick to hop onto the
anti-fraternity bandwagon. Writer Caitlin
Flanagan reminisced, in an op-ed article for the
Wall Street Journal, that a mere glimpse of
fraternity houses as a student at the University
of Virginia had exposed her to so much "male
power at its most malevolent" that she dropped
out after only four days. Flanagan expressed hope
that the Yale complaint to the Education
Department would "shut down ... for good" all
college fraternities. In an April 22 blog entry
for the Daily Beast, Samantha Wishman called for
putting an end to the "testosterone-dominated culture" of Greek life.
The idea that Yale, among the most politically
correct campuses in America, maintains a "hostile
sexual environment" is ludicrous, especially in
light of its handling of the Deke case. Yale
College's dean, Mary Miller, who had earlier
urged the permanent banishment of the Dekes,
headed a committee that released a report in
January stating that campus organizations (read
"fraternities") and their members should be held
responsible for hazing activities deemed
offensive "to third parties." And sure enough,
Yale College's disciplinary board found that the
pledge chant had violated campus regulations
forbidding the "intimidation" of other students
even though none of the pledges had gotten
anywhere near a live freshman woman. A brand-new
set of Education Department rules mandating that
colleges and universities lower their standards
of proof in disciplinary proceedings involving
allegations of sexual harassment makes more such
judgments likely in the future.
Fraternities have never had an entirely easy
relationship with the universities that house
them. Even during their apex of popularity during
the mid- 20th century, Greek societies were
occasionally, and undoubtedly justifiably, thrown
off campus for excessive drinking, brutal hazing
rituals, licentious parties and "Animal House"
antics. Starting in the late 1960s, however, many
college administrators began a wholesale campaign
against fraternity life itself. Some campuses
abolished the Greek houses outright; others
required them to admit women, denied them
official recognition or barred fraternity
brothers from sharing living quarters.
Fraternities were deemed too white, too
exclusionary, too sexist and too anti-intellectual.
Most significantly, fraternities were irritants.
They were and still are refuges from the
oppressive political correctness that has come to
dominate institutions of higher learning.
Fraternities are places where male students don't
have to apologize for being men, with their
"throaty voices" and testosterone, and can laugh
freely at the latest pronunciamentos from the Women's Center.
Perhaps the feminists will get their wish, and
universities, with the help of the Education
Department, will make Greek life a thing of the
past. But those who cheer this effort along
should remember that when it becomes a near-crime
to utter a silly or boorish chant on a college
campus, everyone's freedom of speech and association is at risk.
Charlotte Allen is a contributing editor to the
Manhattan Institute's Minding the Campus website.
Her husband belonged to a fraternity at Yale, although not Delta Kappa Epsilon.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
About normal for an Ivy School who has noses in the air!
