Discussion for article #234820
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ban them. Just that it shouldn’t stop there.
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I want Frats AND sororities banned from campuses! They BOTH need to GO!
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We banned frats at U.C.Irvine in 1970. I know, I was on the student Senate that voted to hold and then validate the results of the student elections. A few years later, the climate had changed and frats were voted in.
It is the unfortunate thing about Student government, that there is no persistence of vision because you are only around about 4 years to persist.
The pro frat forces are organized, well-funded and relentless about pursuing their goal long term.
Banning needs to be done at an administrative level.
For starters.
Of course, this doesn’t get into the phenomenon in which fraternities get much more attention for much less horrible racism than sororities have been displaying for decades.
I wasn’t cat calling you, I said “was that your bike? The one over there two blocks down. It wasn’t chained up so I twisted a tree branch around the frame so it would be more difficult to steal, but that isn’t a perfect anti-theft device by any means. Hurry up and get back to it quick because we’ve had a number of recent petty crimes in this area probably being committed by drug users or local teens.” Of course I was drinking so it came out weird. My bad
I don’t see the point in banning them, but I don’t see why these particular gangs should be allowed to build on campus and receive special treatment by schools. Get them out of there.
Join your little club if you want, but it shouldn’t be affiliated in any official way with a university. Frats haven’t really changed in 100 years, and they haven’t really changed since I went through the pledge system back in my own college days.
Sure, it was nice to have a place to crash or hold a party, and I enjoyed the booze, but even my 18-yr old self knew the naked pics of the brothers’ drunk dates and the vague stories of high-school girls not being allowed to leave were something I didn’t want anything to do with.
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You know, you might consider the fact that there are, in fact, colleges in this country that have no frats. You might then look to those schools to find out whether banning institutions dedicated to exclusion, conformity of thought, action and social interaction and the normalization of negative behaviors actually makes these problems better.
I went to a small school in the 1980s, admittedly at a semi-liberal (on some things and at some times) ostensibly Christian school historically dedicated to interracial education, and I can tell you that all of this stuff–the sexism, the racism, the rapiness, the general dickishness, were dramatically better then than on just about any campus I’ve seen that has frats today.
Because when there are no frats, there aren’t any competitors to the faculty and administration in setting the tone and defining the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Yes, we had cheating scandals and sexual assault and SDR&R, but we didn’t have any seething incubators of open defiance to the norms the school was attempting to cultivate.
And, as an added benefit to the school, there are also no life-long competitors for the dollars of its fanatically loyal alumni.
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I’d be all in favor of state universities building the additional dorms they’d need to house all the homeless frat fucks. Good luck running that by all those Republican governors and state legislatures, who aren’t all that opposed to boys being boys on the first place.
Additionally, calling to ban all frats is painting with a ridiculously broad brush. There were a couple at the university I went to that were honestly dedicated to the furtherance of academic pursuits and generally being helpful. If you needed a quick walkthrough of a specific type of math problem, or perhaps some old tests to gauge how well you knew the material, etc. they were a great place to stop by.
I don’t know that anyone ever said banning frats was a magic cure all. The question is simply, “Do they do more harm than good?” I think the answer is clearly, yes. Therefore, they ought to go. Does that mean all bad behavior will vanish? Of course not, but I will wager a large sum of money that the incidence of drunkenness, racist behavvior and sexual assault will decline. Why not do the experiment and see?
Just so we’re clear: you are advocating eliminating a certain kind of social frat/sorority. Certainly you don’t mean the academic/service ones…?
I think they should ban all frats and replace them with fraternities.
ignore the contrived secrets, handshakes and ceremonies… any gathering of individuals into a fellowship can be good or evil.
My southern Missouri frat was the first to pledge a black man to their ranks, and we had a history of racial diversity. Two, actually, one was my pledge son, the other was my roommate. We also had St. Louis Jews, small town Methodists and Arabian Arabs in our membership, along with gays and straights, scholars and not-so-scholars, hippies and rednecks. We were quite diverse, to say the least.
Phi Kappa Sigma is an exception to the rules, true, but proof that not all frats are founded on privilege and prejudice.
Some are, and they prove it every day, we’ve seen it devolve lately and i blame Rush (the Lump), Bleck (say it like a dry heave) Fox and Fiends, and all the rest of wingnut media for giving all these impressionable, malleable young roosters the excuse to be buffoons.
Frats, like any other organization, are the sum of their parts, you can’t just generally condemn all of them because so many are misguided. The brotherhood I knew was real, and the friendships I made were profound.
Let’s not fall into reductive thinking and throw the baby out with the bathwater. Banning all fraternities? No. Monitoring and education. Yes.
Charge 'em with moral turpitude.
That should keep 'em busy for a few years.
I have no problem with fraternities and sororities, you understand. It’s just that they have no business on college and university campuses. Social clubs like these are generally not in pursuit of intellectual enrichment or opportunities for community service. They are exclusive habitats for the like minded who march in lockstep and militantly exclude others.
And who will perform this policing, and at whose expense?
“Banning frats” is just another example of a more recently stressed “groupthink”.
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