I went to a college that had frats and sororities and they all had parties. Sexual assult can happen anywhere on campus, If a frat/sorortity have several citations, the school can shutter that one for a year. This is what happened at my college. Not all frat/Sororities are bad, and it is always the bad apples that threaten to take down the whole system. Networking after college with their fellow greek alummi can get them great jobs. Also, at my college if a frat/sor. had multiple citations, they could be shuttered for a year as punishment.

Even-though I was not any part of Greek life? I have witnessed lots of conversations among female students who loved seducing frat boys. It wasn't necessarily the attention from the boys that appeal to them, it was the competition between other female students was the driving force. Profs was the collection of the pearl. Whom ever collected more, it meant, she was sexier then other girls. Most unfortunate part of this self mutilations, some of the girls did not even remember how many they slept with. So when it comes to accountability? Lets not quickly judge the frat boys of such violations, they are also the victim of seduction and game playing by female students. Lets hold them both accountable and educate them all. About the diversity? I am glad college finally noticed the inequality in campus. Looks like we are all learning and educating ourselves!

The purpose of going to college is to expand one's knowledge and experience. When you join a Greek house you agree to limit your friends and activities and tend to hang around with like-minded people. The Greek system is inconsistent with the purpose of higher education.

The Greek system is one of many options available to students as they attend college and hopefully become young, responsible adults. In fact, there are over 200 clubs and organizations listed on Lafayette's website.

Is the Greek system right for everyone? Of course not. Just as other clubs and organizations are not right for everyone. Learning to live with others of differing minds and opinions is part of growing up.

I guarantee there are many that are as closed-minded as you suggest the Greeks are. I also find it very interesting that the Liberal response to what they don't like is to attempt to cut it off, and that the famous "Liberal Open-mindedness" only applies to what Liberals support.

When you live in a dormitory you are put together randomly with lots of different people. To live in a frat you have to "rush." And then the frat chooses whom it wants, who merits being selected to live with them. There are service fraternities and there are honors fraternities and then there are living fraternities. There are fraternities where the main focus is beer and there are fraternities where the main focus is learning. It seems to me that living in a dorm is like living in an integrated neighborhood while living in a fraternity or sorority is like living in a segregated neighborhood. You go to class and to sports and to Skillman, etc. and then you come "home" to like-minded residents. Diversity is not the goal of a frat; homogeneity is.

What you've outlined happens for the first few weeks of the first semester (and happens whether or not the Greeks exist). By then friendships and social circles already have already formed and you're spending time with like-minded residents who have similar interests to yours. To move among circles is no easier or harder with the Greek system in place.

If you don't like the Greeks, just say so. But honestly your argument here just doesn't hold up and appears based on some utopian view of college life.

Actually my argument is based on my own experience of Greek houses, which may be different from yours, i.b. Fraternities were places more focused on drinking beer than on food for thought. And they were filled with sexual predators. I think that colleges today have reigned in much of the bad behavior--especially the drinking. But academic studies such as this are instructive and harrowing: http://www.amazon.com/Fraternity-Gang-Rape-Brotherhood-Privilege/dp/0814740383/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319658049&sr=1-1

I remember this book. One of the focal points in it was the Duke lacrosse team - which was cleared of all charges shortly after it was published. I never saw the author acknowledge that, but then again I wasn't looking for it either.

I won't sit here though and say bad things don't happen on college campuses, because they do. They happen in fraternities, sororities, sports teams, and cheerleading squads, regular dorms, inside and outside the Greek system. In fact, I'd say the book didn't go far enough in looking at these problems.

One solution - all crimes committed on college campuses are required to be reported to the local police, and any college not compliant will suffer severe consequences, including significant jail time with no parole for the senior administrators. We have not only horrific crimes but also administrations who are complicit in the cover-ups so they can continue to recruit. The fish rots from the head.....

By the way, I was never in a fraternity and could care less about them. I just like a complete airing of all the facts instead of things being slanted, that way people can make decisions from a point of strength. And I can't stand cover-ups.

I would have been pleased to read an opinion that disagreed with my own comments about fraternities on the Lafayette campus, and in general. Instead I was told by one reader that I did not know what I was talking about. I am "wrong, uninformed, and short-sighted." I am told that "Fraternities select people of quality who share their fundamental beliefs." (I wonder who are those students at Lafayette College who are not of "quality.")
Anyway, the Lafayette student newspaper, published today, reports on the 18 month study of the Greek system at Lafayette College conducted by students, faculty, and administrators. The report is very troubling and makes clear why, after 150 years, the college is taking a close look at these houses. The male students who live in fraternities, according to the report, "are more likely to report alcohol-related violence, unwanted sexual experiences and academic disruption... When almost one third of fraternity members report drinking almost every day, it is unlikely they are fulfilling their potential either in or out of the classroom."

My own memory of fraternities as places of uninhibited illegal and irresponsible drinking, where women are vulnerable to abuse and rape, and where students maintain adequate academic grades by keeping files of others' term papers and through other forms of cheating, seems not to have changed. "People of quality," indeed. "Bringing together like-minded people in pursuit of a higher cause," indeed. The study outlines the truth: social fraternities are about getting wasted, getting women wasted, and then trying to rape them. One reader above, incredulously blames the victims--accusing women of coming to fraternities to seduce men, er... boys.
Apparently it is not I who does not know the facts. They speak for themselves. And now the college is looking closely at them, too.

Oh, dear me, Jonathan....I've usually looked to you as a voice of reason, but you're testing that now. Certainly, the fraternities you describe do exist, but there really are fraternities that consist of like-minded individuals who are more concerned with getting educated and community service. All the behaviors mentioned also exist in dorms and off-campus living. Yes, even the concientious fraternities have files of term papers and last year's finals....sometimes it's an advantage to being an organization.

Everything you say, anonymously, gruntled, is of course, correct. But please note that I initially wrote that there are service fraternities and honor fraternities--but that I was writing (and I mention this immediately above) about "social" fraternities. The fact that bad behavior occurs elsewhere neither condones it nor does it change the reports findings that this is much worse in fraternities than anywhere else on campus or around it.

It is a convention of journalistic professionalism to include an author's name with his or her writing--to make a person accountable for what they write and to discourage, for example, the kind anonymous name calling and insulting that you see targeted against me above. Journalists tell me that people who don't sign their names to their opinions are cowards.

First, saying that you don't know what you're talking about, are wrong, uninformed, and short-sighted is not a personal insult. It is a statement backed by justification. Please don't take it personally. Just measure the truth of it by the accuracy of the information provided.

To clarify, I did not mention service or honors fraternities. Speaking strictly of social Greek organizations, they do more service hours/money donated nationally than all other non-social-Greek college students combined. The report describes the philanthropic contribution of Lafayette Greeks with words like impressive and disproportionate.

Greeks slightly outperform non-Greeks academically. This report does not report GPA performance. It finds fault in areas like a lack of participation in honors or scholarship programs. It discounts the time involved in running these orgs and assumes a cost/benefit decision is not being made on the merits.

More importantly, a very comprehensive study called UniLOA demonstrates decisively that they achieve greater learning outcomes across in terms of personal development. The COMPASS data is not remotely of that quality.

The report itself is highly flawed and misleading. It does not adequately represent a balanced perspective. It represents one very opinionated perspective and shaped evidence to back that position. The actual raw data collected does not support the conclusions.

You quoted "more likely to report alcohol-related violence, unwanted sexual experiences and academic disruption... When almost one third of fraternity members report drinking almost every day, it is unlikely they are fulfilling their potential either in or out of the classroom."

In fact the data supports none of those statements. If you will dig beyond the executive summary, I think you will find the raw data tells a different story.

Let's start with "unwanted sexual experiences." The actual data classifies forcible rape in the same category as a person who voluntarily kissed someone they didn't start the night planning to kiss. No reasonable person would add those numbers together and call them "unwanted sexual contact." No reasonable person would say that having had one drink makes it an alcohol-related sexual experience, or that should be added together with rape. This report does precisely those that. It does not mean for the fact that Greeks were explained these definitions in ways that non-Greeks were not, or that Greeks are statistically more prone to honestly report data like this. No one marginalizes rape, but that is not what is going on here.

How about academic disruption? What does that mean exactly? Or alcohol-related violence? When you define terms in ways that would not be immediately obvious to a reader, explain those definitions to only one part of the sample, and not the other, what value would you place in those statistics?

Finally, let me address this quality issue and misaligned philosophy in general.

The school makes a qualitative judgement on who they admit. How is that okay for them and not for a private organization with a different mission?

No student org of any kind anywhere is part of the university where they operate. They are an association of students formed for any purpose they choose that does not violate the law, and who register with the university solely out of convenience in a mutual exchange of services.

In no way whatsoever do they exist to advance the mission of any university. They do in fact advance that mission substantially, but only as a side effect of their true purposes. All too often in recent years we have seen administrations try to co opt Greeks by defining for them a purpose subordinate to the admin's job description. No where in their relationship contract is that power granted to the University. These are fully independent autonomous sovereign corporations - wholly owned subsidiaries of national corporations.

They exist for varied purposes, be that advancing aspects of religion or philosophy within the world. They have precious few resources to spend. They select people who agree with their internal philosophy and who are the best quality candidates to advance that mission. They must have the sovereign right to do so.

I'm sorry you had a negative experience with Greeks in your day, but that is not the reality behind closed doors.

Robert--Post 1: The study discovers that sororities members OUTPERFORM the general student body in GPA. Since "Greeks" as a whole UNDERperform, it must the be the fraternities that are responsible for this low Greek academic performance.
Post 2: You want readers to trust your analysis of the data over that of a broad spectrum of the Lafayette community. And you refuse to admit that violence against women is a serious problem on campus--and connected to fraternities. Speak to the victims before you attempt to sweep this problem under the table. I know them.
Post 3: Exactly what I said. Fraternities choose people who think like they do. So living in a fraternity is akin to living in a segregated neighborhood. College should be a time of broadening one's exposure to different kinds of people and different points of view. One has plenty of life to live after college with those human beings one considers "quality." BTW, yes--Lafayette is selective academically but it seeks diversity in its student body for a reason. We learn more from exposure to different people. People with whom we already agree may be fun to be with but they have little to teach us. Fraternities are for fun and, according to the data, fun at the expense of Lafayette's higher purpose.

I don't disagree fraternities have not done as well as they could. However, the actual numbers are extremely close. I do want to see improvement. I agree with the recommendations of support and incentives to achieve the desired outcomes. Again though, the academic duty of these orgs is merely to do no harm. The school is seeking to hold them to a higher standard and punish them when they don't meet it. That's not the right answer.

The more interesting concern is pledge grades. The problem with that number is that it is compared to the all-men's rather than by classification or at least by the all-soph-men's GPA. The All-Men's is unevenly weighted to upper classmen, who statistically perform higher. Make it an apples to apples comparison and I'm all ears.

Violence against women (and men) is a serious problem everywhere. I do not deny, condone, or seek to cover it up. It should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

However, what you're seeing is a tactic successfully employed by MADD. When the behavior improves on the scale you've been using, just change the definitions. We're no longer talking about sexual assault or violence, we're talking about a new term with a deceptive definition called "unwanted sexual contact."

If you look at the stats in the report, Greek versus non-Greek women report a 10% greater incidence, versus men report a 15% greater incidence. Does that make sense in the argument you're making about fraternities?

I don't know what "unwanted sexual contact" means--nor do I have any idea how Greek sexual contact may or may not differ from dorm sexual contact. Nor do I know how an unsolicited kiss--an "innocent" one--got factored into the report. I also have no idea what pledges are expected to do in rushing a fraternity nor do I know to what degree this has a negative impact on the academic, social, and service dimensions of life at Lafayette. Is there, in fact, a reasonable defense of the whole idea of pledging? Do churches rush/pledge? Does Rotary or Kiwanis? Does City Council? What does it mean to pledge and how has pledging changed over the years, if it has changed?

I do appreciate that sincere legitimate question.

Fraternities are based on their own set of philosophical principles. They exist solely to recruit and train young men to spend the rest of their lives spreading belief in those principles to the rest of the world in order to create a more perfect society. Some fraternities are more specifically based on certain religious teachings and some on classical philosophies (hence the Greek letters).

Rush is a very short period in which an org selects the best candidates to carry on that work. Their is little time to explore or evaluate their character, potential, or inner most personal beliefs in order to determine if they fit our mission/beliefs.

Pledgeship is that evaluation process, and it is done while educating them on the philosophy and ingraining in them lifelong dedication to our mission.

It is effectively a part to full-time job in addition to school. They are required to attend study sessions, and they must make their grades in order to be initiated.

While not called pledging, you wouldn't have a lot of trouble understating a probationary employee in a training program, or a soldier in basic training. While the techniques vary, the practice is very common to any org that invests resources in a valued member.

On your diversity argument, I think you are taking it too far. Absolutes are never good.

A church is full of Christians. They share a narrow set of beliefs, but that doesn't mean they aren't a very diverse group of people who disagree in potentially every other way.

I believe all students by virtue of being at the school are exposed to the diversity you are espousing. You cannot force a student to associate or disassociate with others beyond that. The relatively friendless kid hiding in his room is worse off than the one engaged through the Greek system with hundreds of other students. To the extent they associate with those of shared beliefs, there are benefits too. I believe students take comfort in the warm embrace of a group of shared ideals, and that this comfort gives them the strength to overcome greater challenges.

Churches are places where people of shared beliefs come together to be educated on, fellowship in, and personally develop through their shared faith. That is exactly what a fraternity is. It may also be a lot of fun, but that is NOT the purpose. It is a bonus that any group of friends will do when given the chance. I know you don't understand this, but fraternities are a whole heck of a lot of work also, and I don't mean getting ready for parties. I hope that fraternities stay fun, but it is very much hard work too. And it is entirely about something more important than yourself. That is what students are at school seeking.

I'm sorry, I've mentioned the UniLOA study twice. It is a massive national study with several years of tracking. It consistently shows Social Greeks out performing non-Greeks in all areas of learning outcomes/personal development. It has specific numbers for members of social fraternities. Those categories are: critical thinking; self-awareness; communications; diversity; citizenship; leadership & membership; and, relationships. The study looks at athletes, veteran status, non-traditional students, gender, and many other categories.

Please take a look. I think you will find it instructive: http://www.measuringbehaviors.com/NationalNormPublicRelease2010.pdf