College takes on Greek Organizations and reactions

[Tom Earp]

What schools do you know of and their feelings about GLO's on campus?

Fill in some blanks if you will!

What are some of the changes?

[Tom Earp]

New York Times
Commentary
August 23, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/opinion/a-pledge-to-end-fraternity-hazing.html

A Pledge to End Fraternity Hazing

By DAVID J. SKORTON
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Ithaca, N.Y.

In February, a 19-year-old Cornell sophomore died in a fraternity house while participating in a hazing episode that included mock kidnapping, ritualized humiliation and coerced drinking. While the case is still in the courts, the fraternity chapter has been disbanded and those indicted in connection with the death are no longer enrolled here.

This tragedy convinced me that it was time - long past time - to remedy practices of the fraternity system that continue to foster hazing, which has persisted at Cornell, as on college campuses across the country, in violation of state law and university policy.

Yesterday, I directed student leaders of Cornell’s Greek chapters to develop a system of member recruitment and initiation that does not involve “pledging” - the performance of demeaning or dangerous acts as a condition of membership. While fraternity and sorority chapters will be invited to suggest alternatives for inducting new members, I will not approve proposals that directly or indirectly encourage hazing and other risky behavior. National fraternities and sororities should end pledging across all campuses; Cornell students can help lead the way.

Why not ban fraternities and sororities altogether, as some universities have done? Over a quarter of Cornell undergraduates (3,822 of 13,935 students) are involved in fraternities or sororities. The Greek system is part of our university’s history and culture, and we should maintain it because at its best, it can foster friendship, community service and leadership.

Hazing has been formally prohibited at Cornell since 1980 and a crime under New York State law since 1983. But it continues under the guise of pledging, often perpetuated through traditions handed down over generations. Although pledging is explained away as a period of time during which pre-initiates (“pledges”) devote themselves to learning the information necessary to become full members, in reality, it is often the vehicle for demeaning activities that cause psychological harm and physical danger.

About 2,000 alcohol-related deaths occur each year among American college students. Alcohol or drug abuse is a factor in more than a half-million injuries each year - and also in sexual and other assaults, unsafe sex, poor academic performance and many other problems.

At Cornell, high-risk drinking and drug use are two to three times more prevalent among fraternity and sorority members than elsewhere in the student population. During the last 10 years, nearly 60 percent of fraternity and sorority chapters on our campus have been found responsible for activities that are considered hazing under the Cornell code of conduct.

Why would bright young people subject themselves to dangerous humiliation? Multiple factors are at play: the need of emerging adults to separate from family, forge their own identities and be accepted in a group; obedience to authority (in this case, older students); the ineffectiveness of laws and other constraints on group behavior; and organizational traditions that perpetuate hazardous activities.

Alcohol makes it easier for members to subject recruits to physical and mental abuse without feeling remorse and to excuse bad behavior on the grounds of intoxication. It provides a social lubricant, but it impairs the judgment of those being hazed and lowers their ability to resist.

Even more distressing, although 55 percent of college students involved in clubs, teams and organizations experience hazing, the vast majority of them do not identify the events as hazing. Of those who do, 95 percent do not report the events to campus officials.

Doctors, nurses and other student-health professionals have tried to address high-risk drinking and hazing through individual counseling, a medical amnesty process that reduces barriers to calling for help in alcohol emergencies, and educational programs. But the problem has persisted.

There are signs of progress. Jim Yong Kim, president of Dartmouth, has helped organize a multi-campus approach to identifying the most effective strategies against high-risk drinking. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has established a college presidents’ advisory group to develop and share approaches to this problem.

There is a pressing need for better ways to bring students together in socially productive, enjoyable and memorable ways. At Cornell, acceptable alternatives to the pledge process must be completely free of personal degradation, disrespect or harassment in any form. One example is Sigma Phi Epsilon’s “Balanced Man Program,” which replaces the traditional pledging period with a continuing emphasis on community service and personal development.

[Tom Earp]

Cornell Chronicle
August 23, 2012
www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug11/SkortonPledging.html

Skorton bans pledging in Cornell's Greek system, saying, 'This must stop'

By Susan Kelley

Pledging as a part of fraternity and sorority membership selection will be officially abolished at <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Cornell University, President David Skorton has announced.

"We must end the current system of pledging, often perpetuated through traditions handed down over generations, because it fosters hazing and other activities based on humiliation or risky behavior that often pose psychological harm and immediate physical danger to those involved," Skorton said.

The ban will be implemented during the 2012-13 academic year, said Kent L. Hubbell, the Robert W. and Elizabeth C. Staley Dean of Students. The president has directed the student leaders of Cornell's Greek chapters to develop a system of member recruitment and initiation that does not involve pledging, as it now exists. Chapters found in violation of the new policy will face loss of recognition.

During the current academic year, Hubbell said, "we will be monitoring the pledging process very closely to be sure our expectations are fully met." Any hazing activity will continue to be vigorously prosecuted through the campus judicial and the criminal justice systems, he emphasized.

Skorton has also urged the student leaders of Cornell's Greek system to work with their national organizations to end the current system of pledging, and to deal with the problem of high-risk drinking, more generally. And he called on them to help lead a national reform effort on these issues.

Travis T. Apgar, associate dean of students for fraternity and sorority affairs, commented on Skorton's charge, saying, "We are committed to work with our students, alumni and national partners and to provide resources needed to accomplish this goal."

The Greek system plays a vital role in fostering friendship, community service, networking and leadership, Skorton said. The goal of the ban is to remove the unnecessary and dangerous activities often practiced in pledging -- and often extending to illegal hazing -- so as to preserve and enhance the positive attributes the Greek experience offers students, he said.

The Executive Committee of the Cornell Board of Trustees passed a resolution this week supporting Skorton's effort.

Hazing has been prohibited at Cornell since 1980 and has been a crime in New York state since 1983. Unfortunately, Skorton noted, those laws have yet to fully produce change in a culture that condones humiliation and bullying as the entry fee for membership. "For far too long, campuses like ours have worked to be rid of hazing practices, but those efforts have not been successful. Anything less than a complete overhaul of the pledging process to bring people into our organizations will result in more of the same. We cannot simply 'try harder,'" Skorton said. "We need a clean break with the past."

Last winter, a Cornell student died in a fraternity house after an apparent hazing incident during pledging; the case is still pending resolution in the courts, the Cornell chapter of the fraternity has been disbanded, and those indicted in connection with the incident are no longer enrolled at Cornell. During the past 10 years, nearly 60 percent of Cornell fraternity and sorority chapters have been found responsible for activities that are considered hazing under the Cornell Code of Conduct, Hubbell said.

Cornell is not alone. While 55 percent of college students involved in clubs, teams and organizations experience hazing, the vast majority of them do not identify the events as hazing. Of those who do, 95 percent do not report the events to campus officials.

"Although pledging is justified as a period of time during which pre-initiates, or 'pledges,' devote themselves to learning the information necessary to become full members, in reality, pledging is too often the vehicle for activities that are dangerous or demeaning," Skorton said. "This must stop."

Cornell's past and current efforts to end high-risk drinking and hazing have included interventions and counseling for individuals; a medical amnesty protocol that reduces barriers to calling for help in alcohol emergencies; perennial educational programs and informative websites, such as hazing.cornell.edu, which includes a confidential reporting mechanism and a blotter of hazing activities on campus; and significant changes in Cornell's Greek system aimed at reducing underage and high-risk drinking and hazing, Hubbell said. "While some good has come as a result, it has not been enough to end the practices," he said.

[Tom Earp]

News Release
Princeton University
August 23, 2011
www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S31/40/49Q43/

Princeton to ban freshman affiliation with fraternities, sororities as of fall 2012

Beginning in the fall of 2012, Princeton University will prohibit freshmen from affiliating with a fraternity or sorority or engaging in any form of "rush" at any time during the freshman year.

The decision to institute the ban is being communicated this week to all returning Princeton undergraduates by President Shirley M. Tilghman, who made the decision based on recommendations from a student-faculty-staff working group on campus social and residential life that submitted its report last spring. The decision is being communicated to all entering freshmen and their families by Vice President for Campu! s Life Cynthia Cherrey and Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan.

In addition to prohibiting freshmen from affiliating with fraternities or sororities or engaging in the recruitment/membership process known as rush, the ban will prohibit students in the other three classes from conducting or having responsibility for any form of rush in which freshmen participate. As recommended by the working group, there will be no prohibition on membership in fraternities and sororities after freshman year, although the University will continue its longstanding policy of withholding official recognition for such organizations.

In her letter to returning students, Tilghman said that "the decision to prohibit freshman year affiliation and recruitment is driven primarily by a conviction that social and residential life at Princeton should continue to revolve around the residential colleges, the eating clubs, and the shared experience of essentially all undergraduates living and dining on campus."

She said she decided to defer implementation of the ban for a year to allow a committee of students, faculty and staff to develop procedures for administering the prohibition. This committee will be appointed early this fall and will be asked to "consult widely with interested students; think carefully about precisely how the prohibition should be described and enforced, and about the penalties that would be imposed for infractions; and to bring forward its recommendations by early in the spring semester."

Tilghman also said that deferring implementation for a year will provide time for the University to make progress on other ideas that the working group proposed for creating connections between freshmen and students in the other three classes, and for improving social life on campus and in the residential colleges. She announced specifically that she had accepted the working group's recommendation that the University select a location and begin the process of seeking approvals to reinstitute a campus pub. The most recent on-campus pub closed in 1983.

The recommendations of the working group were discussed last spring at several campus forums and in comments submitted to the group's website. Tilghman discussed the proposed ban on freshman year engagement with the trustees in May and again in July, and noted in her letter to students that the trustees are strongly supportive of the recommendation "and, if necessary, would be sympathetic to taking even stronger steps.! "

In their letter to entering freshmen, Cherrey and Deignan pointed out that for most of Princeton’s history, membership in fraternities and sororities was prohibited. These organizations began to reemerge at Princeton in the 1980s, although unlike at many other campuses, none of the fraternities or sororities at Princeton has houses. All Princeton freshmen and sophomores live on campus in residential colleges, as do some juniors and seniors, while most juniors and seniors take their meals at off-campus independent eating clubs while continuing to live in University housing.

"Because Princeton social life revolves around the residential colleges and the clubs and because of concerns that we have had about aspects of fraternities and sororities, the University does not recognize fraternity and sorority chapters," they wrote. "We have found that they can contribute to a sense of social exclusivity and privilege and socioeconomic stratification among students. In some cases they place an excessive emphasis on alcohol and engage in activities that encourage excessive and high-risk drinking. A major concern is that they select their members early in freshman year, when students are most vulnerable to pressures from peers to drink, and before they have had a full opportunity to explore a variety of interests and develop a diverse set of friendships. We hope students coming to Princeton will want to expand their circle of acquaintances and experiences, not prematurely narrow them."

In her letter to returning students, Tilghman acknowledged that "this decision will be disappointing to some who have advocated an expanded role for Greek life at Princeton. I respect their views, and while some students have had difficult and disappointing experiences with fraternities and sororities, I know that others have valued their experiences."

Approximately 15 percent of Princeton undergraduates participate in four sororities and about a dozen fraternities.

[Tom Earp]

The Daily Gamecock
University of South Carolina
August 23, 2011
www.dailygamecock.com/news/item/1751-breaking-usc-says-bid-day-could-happen-this-week

USC says bid day could happen this week
Hundreds pack Russell House theatre for university forum

By Josh Dawsey

USC officials said fraternities might be able to offer bids as early as Wednesday during a packed Russell House forum that brought hundreds of frustrated USC students and dozens of questions for USC officials - some thinly veiled as stinging criticisms.

That decision won’t be finalized until USC officials meet with alumni groups and national organizations today, said Anna Edwards, USC’s director of student services.

“I think in my heart, there will be a bid day this week,” said Keith Ellis, USC’s associate director of Greek Life.
But Ellis also highlighted arrests, hospitalizations and strippers in a detailed three-page time line that implicated six fraternities and showed a rush week that spiraled way out of control.

Yet over and over, students pointed out this reality: Only a third of USC Interfraternity Council groups had been implicated for breaking the rules. Consider Beta Theta Pi.

The newest fraternity on campus had invited USC officials to every event, and national leaders were in Columbia to ensure no rules were broken.

All that didn’t matter when the order came from USC to halt fraternity recruitment late Thursday, and Beta Theta Pi’s 30 potential new members - along with hundreds of others who wanted to join organizations not accused of wrongdoing - weren’t allowed to join.

Punishing an entire set of organizations for the sins of a few just isn’t right, Beta Theta Pi recruitment chair Dann Publicover told agreeing Greek students who wanted answers four days after an unprecedented crackdown.

“I’m not going to let our fraternity be thrown under the bus,” Publicover, a third-year elementary education student, said. “We did 100-percent dry recruitment, and you were invited to every single event ... Why not let judicials handle this and let this be a judicial thing?”

Publicover’s exchange seemed to sum up a debate that has stirred for days and bubbled over in clear view Monday afternoon. USC officials have maintained fraternity recruitment failed to meet both national and university standards. They say students weren’t safe, fraternity leaders weren’t honest and real solutions weren’t proposed after days of urgent pleas.

But fraternity members, who trickled to the microphone one by one and often stood waiting, didn’t always agree. Several of the questions referenced a four-page statement, approved by a majority of fraternity presidents, that called for an internal university audit into the Office of Greek Life and a mediation meeting with the board of trustees.

A sampling of the questions: Why did university officials decide to punish all fraternities when only six fraternities were caught drinking? Why have university officials made public statements attacking Greek leaders? Why don’t USC officials offer more positive support to fraternities on campus? Was this year’s rush really worse than every other year? And why aren’t USC officials also considering the positive aspects of Greek Life?

“There’s no trust between us,” said Rhett Postal, Sigma Nu’s president.

USC officials were sympathetic to some of the criticisms. Others - like why USC had suddenly cracked down so hard - didn’t receive much room for negotiation from Ellis, who came to the university two months ago.

“Alcohol at recruitment is not going to be tolerated,” Ellis said. “I’m here now, and I’m expecting we’re going to follow thevalues and rules that are set in place for us.”

Ellis said 51 of USC’s 115 alcohol hospitalizations came from Greek students last year. That’s almost 45 percent of all hospitalizations in USC’s student body, and only 20 to 25 percent of the student body is affiliated with Greek organizations.

[greeky]

Princeton, that great temple of learning rules that some people cannot choose what clubs/groups/fraternities they join. So much for the Freedom of Association.

Bring on the lawyers.

[Tom Earp]

On a further note:

New York Times Blog
Motherlode: Adventures in Parenting
August 29, 2011
parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/should-parents-ban-fraternities/

Should Parents Ban Fraternities?

By LISA BELKIN

Much of the conversation here over the past few days about gender roles on campus has included mentions of fraternities and sororities. It is not coincidence, many of you said, that all the incidents I described in my Sunday Styles article [see below], about why young women have moved past stereotypes in the classroom but not in relationships, involved Greek life.

As it happens, there has been a lot of talk of fraternities and sororities on campuses themselves over the past week or two, as well.

In mid-August, fraternities at the University of Southern California were reminded by the administration that last year’s ban on pre-rush parties, those taking place before recruitment officially starts, still stands. That ban was put in place in response to incidents like “a misogynistic e-mail sent on the Kappa Sigma fraternity Listserv and photos of a suspended Kappa Sigma appearing to have sex on a U.S.C. rooftop spread virally,” wrote Rachel Bracker, a student reporter, in The Daily Trojan newspaper. There was also the matter of eight students being “taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning.”

At Princeton last Tuesday, the school’s president, Shirley M. Tilghman, announced that, effective next year, freshmen will no longer be permitted to join a fraternity or sorority, nor will they be allowed to participate in “rush” activities during freshman year. Explaining the ban, university administrators said in an announcement on the university’s Web site that while the groups have just a small presence on campus (about 15 percent of Princeton undergraduates participate in four sororities and about a dozen fraternities), they have a negative effect:

We have found that they can contribute to a sense of social exclusivity and privilege and socioeconomic stratification among students. In some cases, they place an excessive emphasis on alcohol and engage in activities that encourage excessive and high-risk drinking. A major concern is that they select their members early in freshman year, when students are most vulnerable to pressures from peers to drink, and before they have had a full opportunity to explore a variety of interests and develop a diverse set of friendships. We hope students coming to Princeton will want to expand their circle of acquaintances and experiences, not prematurely narrow them.

That same day, Cornell’s president, David J. Skorton, used an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times to pledge to end fraternity hazing on campus. His announcement came a few months after a 19-year-old sophomore at the school died in a fraternity house “while participating in a hazing episode that included mock kidnapping, ritualized humiliation and coerced drinking.” This convinced him, he wrote:

… that it was time ­ long past time ­ to remedy practices of the fraternity system that continue to foster hazing, which has persisted at Cornell, as on college campuses across the country, in violation of state law and university policy.

Yesterday, I directed student leaders of Cornell’s Greek chapters to develop a system of member recruitment and initiation that does not involve “pledging” ­ the performance of demeaning or dangerous acts as a condition of membership. While fraternity and sorority chapters will be invited to suggest alternatives for inducting new members, I will not approve proposals that directly or indirectly encourage hazing and other risky behavior. National fraternities and sororities should end pledging across all campuses; Cornell students can help lead the way.

He goes on to ask “Why not ban fraternities and sororities altogether, as some universities have done?” Good question. He goes on to answer that there is good in the system, in that it “can foster friendship, community service and leadership.”

Since this is a parenting column, I have a related question: What is a parent’s role here? Odds are, parents are paying at least some part of the membership fees for these fraternities and the tuition that enables participation in the first place. If a parent is philosophically opposed to these groups because they subdivide a campus and codify the rights of 20-somethings to pass judgment on each other, should that parent forbid a child to join? What if the concern is more personal and less global? As Dr. Skorton points out, “At Cornell, high-risk drinking and drug use are two to three times more prevalent among fraternity and sorority members than elsewhere in the student population.” I ask as a parent who holds both of these kinds of objections to fraternities, and yet whose son is also a member. Like Dr. Skorton, I reason that there is “good in the system,” particularly the friendships he has forged ­ but some days I worry that that’s just rationalization, and not good enough.

Can parents just say no to Greek life? Would you?

Copyright 2011 The New York Times Company.

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New York Times
August 28, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/fashion/after-class-skimpy-equality-motherlode.html

After Class, Skimpy Equality

By LISA BELKIN

AT Duke University last fall, members of the Sigma Nu fraternity e-mailed 300 of their female classmates about an off-campus Halloween party. “Hey Ladies,” the invitation leered, complete with a misspelling, “Whether your dressing up as a slutty nurse, a slutty doctor, a slutty schoolgirl or just a total slut, we invite you...”

Yes, there was outrage: in the form of fliers plastered around the Duke campus reprinting the offending e-mail and asking, “Is this why you came to Duke?” And there was official indignation: The recently formed Greek Women’s Initiative will be tackling the subject of gender relations.

But a less-noted fact remains: hundreds of Duke women went to that Halloween party and many dressed as they had been asked.

As parents around the country send their children to campuses for the start of another academic year, what are we to make of the fact that lessons of equality, respect and self-worth have been heard when it comes to the classroom, but lost somewhere on the way to the clubs? Why has the pendulum swung back to a feeling that sexualization of women is fun and funny rather than insulting and uncomfortable? Why are so many women O.K. with that? Odds are that the women dancing at that Duke party had mothers who attended more than one Take Back the Night march in their college days. What has changed?

I’ve been puzzling over this since last year, when I returned to Princeton University to teach, more than two decades after I had graduated. The women I met were outspoken, self-confident and unapologetic about running rings around their male cohorts in the classroom. That was a marked change from my day, when there were nearly two men to one woman on campus, and we felt a little like guests in the boys’ club treehouse.

I wasn’t surprised by the progress, though. The male-female ratio is essentially equal now, and the message of female achievement comes from the top: the university’s president is just one of many powerful women on campus.

What stunned me was what was happening outside class, where women seemed not to have budged in decades. In social settings and in relationships, men set the pace, made the rules and acted as they had in the days when women were still “less than.” It might as well have been the 1950s, but with skimpier clothing, fewer inhibitions and better birth control.

Initiations at my former Princeton eating club now include women dancing in their underwear and a sick room, complete with an on-call emergency medical technician for those who can’t handle the drinks that fuel that dancing.

And it is not just at Princeton and Duke where you can find gender relationships that would not be described as evolved. At the University of Southern California, a viral e-mail sent by a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity described women as “targets” who “aren’t actual people like us men,” then set out the guidelines men should use in rating their conquests. (The fraternity itself expressed outrage, distancing itself from the member.)