TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041690/0416120.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.1 KB | 132 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 64

Waging War on the Greeks


Fraternities and sororities are being forced to clean up their
acts

By SUSAN TIFFT -- With reporting by Katherine L. Mihok/New York


    Greek fraternities, those longtime social standbys of
college life, are under siege. At the moment, their battlements
are being assaulted by critics who want them to admit women to
their all-male precincts. But that is just part of their
problem. Fed up with hazing deaths, boozy parties, vandalism,
rape, sexual harassment and acts of racial and ethnic
intolerance, many schools are cracking down on fraternities and
sororities -- or simply abolishing them. "They haven't kept pace
with the times," says Stan Levy, vice chancellor of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The attitudes of
the Greeks are of an era that has long passed."

    That reluctance to change has been traumatic for the
fraternities at Vermont's Middlebury College. In January the
school's trustees declared single-sex social organizations to
be "antithetical to the mission of the college," and ordered
Greek-letter groups to go coed or face elimination. Two
fraternities now admit females. Last week, facing a final
deadline, three pleaded for more time to persuade their
national organizations to revoke century-old prohibitions
against women. "The college is taking away a valuable option,"
laments Richard Cochran, 21, president of Chi Psi and a
proponent of single-sex clubs. "Fraternities can be good in an
all-male setting."

    Many faculty members and college administrators disagree,
and are making the going rough for fraternities and sororities.
Last fall the faculty at Bucknell University voted to abolish
all such clubs, blaming them for promoting "racism, sexism,
elitism and anti-intellectualism." Bowdoin and Wesleyan are
pressuring their fraternities to go coed or face possible
sanctions.

    Tufts requires its fraternities to sign an annual statement
promising that they will conduct a "dry" rush and purchase a
certain amount of insurance. Washington and Lee University in
Lexington, Va., is reinstituting live-in house directors --
adults who will supervise meals, serve as counselors and ensure
that students do not abuse the property. Dozens of other
schools are imposing restrictions on alcohol use and enforcing
rigorous antihazing policies.

    Some administrators see a cyclical pattern in the movement
to rein in fraternities and sororities. "There is a need for
college presidents to get hold of their institutions again,"
says Dale Nitzschke, president of Marshall University. "The
pendulum in the '60s and '70s was swinging away from in loco
parentis. Now we're moving more to the middle." Many of today's
students actually seem to yearn for a firmer hand. Says
Samantha Gladish, 21, president of the Panhellenic Council at
Bucknell: "We need someone to guide and help us."

    Paradoxically, these restrictive measures come at a time
when Greek life is enjoying a nationwide renaissance.
Fraternity membership has mushroomed to 400,000 from a low
point of 149,000 in the long-haired '70s; sororities have shown
a similar resurgence. Even at Yale, fraternities, once
moribund, resurfaced soon after Connecticut raised the drinking
age to 21. Sororities have come back to Stanford after a
40-year hiatus. Harvard continues to outlaw fraternities, as
it has since the turn of the century, but students have banded
together unofficially in at least three such groups.

    However, at many institutions -- particularly small,
residential, liberal arts colleges -- such organizations are
increasingly seen as being out of step with the larger goals
of the school. "Our colleges and universities are holding to
one philosophy, and Greek life is holding to another," explains
Marshall's Nitzschke. In particular, the current push by many
colleges and universities to recruit students of diverse ethnic
backgrounds rubs up against the Greek tradition of exclusion.
Although national bylaws no longer prohibit blacks, Jews and
other minorities from becoming members, local chapters often
perpetuate the biases of an earlier era. "Black students have
told me there are some fraternities they just can't get into,"
says Lad Sessions, a philosophy professor at Washington and
Lee.

    Colleges are also worried about legal liability if students
are hurt while participating in activities of fraternities or
sororities they officially recognize. When Rutgers freshman
James Callahan died two years ago after chugging Kamikazes --
a nerve-numbing mixture of vodka, triple sec and lime juice --
during a fraternity party, his family sued the school. Two
months ago, Pennsylvania's York College suspended its Sigma Pi
chapter after an intoxicated 20-year-old student fell off the
roof of an apartment building during an off-campus fraternity
party and died.

    Many students adamantly defend Greek life, rejecting the
notion that it is all beery parties and Animal House antics.
"I don't believe we're sexist and racist, or at least not any
worse than society at large," says David Skena, 19, student
body president at Bucknell and a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon.
Like-minded undergraduates stress the positive side of Greek
affiliation -- the strong friendships, the charity work, the
leadership opportunities.

    Yet even some vigorous defenders of that tradition see that
the changes imposed upon them may ultimately ensure their
survival. When Sigma Epsilon pledged 16 women this spring to
comply with Middlebury's coed policy, many male members were
skeptical. Not now. "It's almost a rebirth, a new identity,"
says Sig Ep vice president John DeMatte, 22, excitedly. "We're
getting a gender-awareness lesson every day." Michael Gordon,
vice chancellor at Indiana University Bloomington, predicts
that similar metamorphoses will occur elsewhere."We are heading
toward a whole new understanding of what a fraternity is," he
says. "First they were seen as literary gatherings, then
drinking clubs. What they will be in the future is
living-learning centers."