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Greeks gone wild: Can schools solve the fraternity problem?

After SAE's racist chant controversy and suspensions of at least six other fraternities in a span of three weeks, a look at how some colleges are tackling the issue

A spate of recent high-profile controversies at fraternities across the nation has left many universities wondering just how to rein in their troubled houses.

In the weeks since a cell phone video of tuxedoed Sigma Alpha Epsilon brothers from the University of Oklahoma chanting racial slurs went viral, at least six other fraternity chapters have been suspended for bad behavior ranging in severity from offensive to potentially criminal.

These recent fraternity scandals have included a secret Facebook page for posting photos of undressed women who appeared to be unconscious; a pledge book filled with racist and sexually explicit comments; accusations of hazing, drug dealing and sexual assault; and at least one death.

In almost all cases, university administrators have exacted swift and acute sanctions.

Almost immediately after the racist chant video surfaced online, SAE's national headquarters closed its Oklahoma chapter and announced a multipronged initiative to promote diversity and weed out institutional racism. The university also expelled the two members believed to have initiated the ugly chant (one has since issued a public apology), and the presidents of both institutions went public on Twitter to condemn the video and share their plans for action.

With two of its fraternity houses suspended and under investigation — one for the alleged sexist and racist pledge book and the other for allegations of drugs and sexual assault — North Carolina State University last week announced a temporary ban on alcohol at social events for more than 20 fraternities on campus.

Top administrators at Penn State are weighing “a re-evaluation of the fraternity system,” following what University President Eric Barron has called an “apparent disregard for not only the law, but also human dignity,” demonstrated by the members of Kappa Delta Rho, accused of posting “highly inappropriate and disturbing” images of naked and, in some cases, passed-out women online.

While university and fraternity leaders have earned praise for their quick, corrective actions, the frequency of the offenses on such a wide scale has prompted some schools to consider whether the Greek system has become too corrupt and unruly to save.

A long, complicated history

The relationship between Greek organizations and the universities and colleges that host them is a historically complicated one, with national umbrella organizations and their privately owned houses often erecting a literal wall between school administrators and student members, thus hampering oversight.

Still, when students are caught singing racist chants, hazing new members or worse, it’s not only the fraternities that feel the fallout — the host schools are also expected to take responsibility, and they often pay a price. The SAE video, for example, cost the University of Oklahoma at least one star freshman football recruit and sparked protests by the football team against institutionalized racism on campus.

And a school’s reputation is hardly the only thing at stake. Behavior like that exhibited by the fraternities suspended this month can put the health, safety and overall well-being of students at risk, whether they belong to a fraternity or not.

A 2013 Bloomberg News investigation found that fraternity activities have been linked to more than 60 deaths nationwide since 2005. (Among the fraternities suspended this month was the University of South Carolina chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha, after an 18-year-old member was found dead at a private house near campus.) The number of fraternity-related accidents and injuries is much higher, with many linked to binge drinking — a problem of 86 percent of fraternity house residents, according to a 2009 study published by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (PDF). Comparatively, the study found that 45 percent of nonfraternity men on campuses binge-drink.

The link between fraternities and sexual assault has also been the subject of much research. Last May, the Department of Education announced it was investigating 55 schools whose handling of sexual assault and harassment complaints potentially violated Title IX, the law banning gender discrimination at colleges and universities that receive federal funding. At least two studies, including another in the NASPA Journal, have found that fraternity members are three times more likely to commit rape than other college men.

Those who call for the end of fraternities (recent voices in that camp include writers for Newsweek and USA Today, Bill Maher and even fraternity alum Will Ferrell) or stricter university oversight point to stats and incidents like those at Oklahoma, Penn State and North Carolina as proof that bad behavior is deeply rooted in fraternity culture. Fraternity supporters, on the other hand, argue that the organizations provide essential skills for success like networking, leadership and development, and that the majority of members are upstanding young men who should not be punished for the actions of a few bad apples.

Meanwhile, articles such as The Atlantic’s chilling 2014 investigation portray fraternities as too big to fail, and schools as powerless against their deep pockets, dedicated alumni and sophisticated insurance policies. This notion of impenetrability is bolstered by fraternities’ persistent popularity — one of the country’s oldest institutions currently boasts around 350,000 members between the ages of 18 and 21 nationwide. Still, colleges and universities across the country are findings ways to take a stand and disrupt this pattern of delinquent behavior.

Case study: A campus that banned Greek life

Nearly 100 years after the first fraternities and sororities were established at Alfred University, the small, private school in rural New York decided to end Greek life for good. The 2002 decision by Alfred’s board of trustees to abolish fraternities and sororities was prompted by the death of a junior named Benjamin Klein, whose body was found in a creek following an apparent beating from his fraternity brothers.

But even before Klein died, Greek life was at the center of many problems at Alfred, from binge drinking to bad grades. In fact, the school’s Greek system was first thrust into the national spotlight back in 1978 with the hazing-related death of a student named Chuck Stenzel. Stenzel’s mother became a vocal advocate for anti-hazing legislation, and his death and its aftermath were the focus of a book turned TV movie called “Broken Pledges.”

After another hazing incident involving the football team in 1998, the school’s then-president commissioned a study on hazing among NCAA athletes. That study was followed up by a landmark study on hazing in high schools, establishing Alfred as a national leader in hazing research and prevention. Yet Klein’s death revealed that the same symptoms plaguing Alfred in 1978 and 1998 had hardly been cured.

“When Ben Klein died, that was a critical point of saying we, the university, have attempted to use all of the best ideas to have a positive impact on the Greek life system,” said Norm Pollard, Alfred’s dean of students and a national expert on hazing. “We hired a Greek life coordinator, created benchmarks and incentives, made plans for the houses to move onto campus, and still we had another tragedy.”

The school’s board of trustees — composed entirely of Alfred alums, many of them former fraternity and sorority members — considered a variety of scenarios, including an alcohol ban, before deciding a full ban on fraternities was the only way to address the systemic problems.

“It’s not just alcohol, but hazing that’s done in secret,” Pollard said. “With everything we’d done so far it still seemed like a failed system.”

The ban was implemented gradually, allowing the houses in good standing to continue to function through the end of the year but forbidding the recruitment of new members. The organizations did not go without a fight. Pollard says he still hears from some alumni who regret the decision.

“They have such fond memories of Greek life as undergrads,” Pollard said. But for current Alfred students, the absence of fraternities and sororities is not a concern. “Our students don’t ask about Greek life, they don’t question why we don’t have it anymore,” he said. “It’s not on their radar.”

It’s certainly on Pollard’s radar. Anecdotally, he said, the school has seen problematic behavior on campus (alcohol violations, large parties, etc.) diminish with the dissolution of Greek life.

Still, Pollard views his school as the exception, not the rule. He has no doubt that banning fraternities and sororities was the right move for Alfred, but he doesn’t think all colleges and universities should abandon Greek life. In fact, he hopes they don’t.

“It’s still possible to have a great Greek life system, but you can’t allow students between 18 and 22 years old to be self-governing without supervision of adults,” Pollard said. “It can’t just be the national [fraternity] saying, ‘This is what we’re about.’ There needs to be oversight by alumni that live in the area, who can provide a mentoring relationship, and involvement by the school to ensure that policy is enforced and that they’re behaving in a way that is reflective of the fraternity’s values as well as the school’s.

“I think it’s possible, but it takes a planned, concerted effort,” he added.

An example of this kind of effort exists just 172 miles northeast of Alfred, at Colgate University.

Case study: The campus that said, ‘Give us your keys’

Like the one at Alfred, Colgate’s fraternity crackdown was motivated by tragedy. After struggling for years with binge drinking, sexual assaults and hazing at fraternities, the school reached its tipping point in 2000 with a drunk driving accident that killed four students, including one freshman. The driver, a fraternity member, crashed his car into a tree.

In 2003 the school announced its new plan: almost all students would be required to live in university-owned housing. Sororities and fraternities could remain in existence if they sold or donated their houses to the school, allowing the administration to supervise them. If they refused, the organization would no longer be recognized by the school and students would not be permitted to live in the house or participate in its activities. Doing so could result in disciplinary action, including expulsion.

By 2005 the plan was fully implemented, and at that point almost every Greek organization had turned over its house to the school. Opposition to the change led to a few lawsuits, including some by fraternities claiming that the school had persuaded them to surrender their houses using criminal coercion.

Many of the fraternity houses at Colgate had been around since the 19th century, back when the school was still all male. But prior to 2003, the fact that they were independently owned made the houses, and what went on inside them, essentially immune to the university’s oversight.

Bringing fraternities “on campus” was just the first step. Once they were under university jurisdiction, Colgate was able to implement new guidelines for the Greek organizations, starting with house leadership.

“Before, you could elect a guinea pig and no one would care,” joked Scott Brown, Colgate’s associate vice president and dean of student affairs. Now, he explained, elected student leaders are required to meet with their counterparts in other houses, alumni, university staff and Brown himself, essentially forcing them to take leadership roles seriously.

“Before, there wasn’t really any oversight, not much contact with the staff,” Brown told Yahoo News. “What they did or how they did it was up to the chapters, who didn’t have a lot of guidance. Every year you’d have a new group of students, and then replenish again with a new crop of 18- and 19-year-olds.”

The 2003 initiative, on the other hand, “brought fraternities under our oversight, got them into our folds and allowed us to figure out what works, how we can expand on that and keep these things in place so when new students come in they’re not reinventing the wheel.”

Now each chapter on campus receives individual counseling from alumni, all of whom meet quarterly as a group to talk about best practices for the overall system. Each fraternity is also assigned a faculty adviser, who Brown says usually maintains an informal relationship with the members, often stopping by the house for dinner. In the past, house presidents didn't interact, but now they are required to meet once a week, creating what Brown calls “a system view, as opposed to each individual house operating on its own.”

With its increased access, the university also implemented new rules for recruitment. Students are not eligible for recruitment until their sophomore year. New members are now automatically inducted, eliminating the “pledging” period in an effort to prevent hazing. Instead, recruits must participate in four weeks of new-member education that includes an alcohol education program, Safe Zone training for LGBT sensitivity and bystander intervention.

“When you get somewhere new, you look around to see who has power,” Brown said, explaining the importance of such training, especially for impressionable new members. “If someone does something horrible and no one does anything, they just laugh, that tells you something.”

Because “you can’t have 24-hour oversight,” Brown said, fraternity parties of 25 people must be registered with a staff member who oversees Greek social events, providing the hosts with emergency contacts and sending a campus safety official to the house to do a walkthrough before the party.

“It makes people think about what they have to do at this party, risk management,” Brown said. “Being an 18- to 21-year-old is a high-risk activity.”

Rather than create the kind of punitive environment that encourages secrecy, Brown says the goal is to offer amnesty. “If they ever find somebody in harm's way, they’re not worried about getting in trouble for getting help,” he said.

Brown measures the success of Colgate’s crackdown in time spent advising fraternity members, participation in new-member training and the creation of student-led forums on issues such as sexual climate.

He also acknowledges that the kind of intimate oversight and cozy staff-student interaction achieved at Colgate, where the undergraduate population is just shy of 3,000 and the entire Greek system consists of five fraternities and three sororities, might not be feasible at a larger school.

Still, Colgate’s overall objective — to change fraternity culture from within — does not exist in a vacuum. In fact, even the North-American Interfraternity Conference, which represents 75 national and international fraternities, is on board, although the organization’s president and CEO, Peter Smithhisler, insists “the issues that fraternities are dealing with are not exclusive to fraternity culture, they are a reflection of the larger campus culture.”

"National fraternities, local undergrads and the universities need to work together to address the root causes of that culture,” Smithhisler told Yahoo News. “We all have to be engaged as true partners in this conversation.”

Whether a symptom of fraternity or campus culture or both, Brown said national fraternity news like the Oklahoma SAE incident can provide the perfect conversation starter.

“The question is, what gets rewarded and what gets punished, and are they congruent with the organization’s values?” Brown said. With regard to the racist chant at Oklahoma, he asked, “How did those two young gentlemen know that song, and what made them feel comfortable enough to sing it in front of people, including people not in their fraternity?”