Back in 2014, I wrote an article that stated universities around the country should shut fraternities down because they were bastions of sexual assault, hazed pledges and were often involved in cheating scandals. I opened the article with details about the death of a 19-year-old female Rutgers sophomore who died from acute alcohol poisoning after attending “a small gathering” at Delta Kappa Epsilon.
I had only been writing on my website for three months and the article got about 30,000 views in the first week. It had touched a nerve, yet many of the people who reached out to me were members of Greek life from around the country who were furious with me. As a result, I decided to pay special attention to fraternity stories.
Two months later, I wrote about “Rape Haven” at Princeton and shared news reports of other sexual assaults and alcohol deaths on other campuses that had happened just that fall. It was not written well, but I was angry that campus officials weren’t doing enough and politicians weren’t jumping all over the issue.
In the fall of 2015, a Rutgers football captain was arrested for allegedly assaulting “a woman he was romantically involved with by picking her up and slamming her down on a concrete surface.” I wrote about that case and other horrific incidents around the country involving college football players and how their universities didn’t do enough to address it. I concluded the article with how Professor William Dowling explained schools typically handled scandals:
1) college officials express shock
2) an investigative committee is established
3) a version of the following statement is issued: “the scandal does not truly represent this esteemed university”
4) there is an announcement that “nothing like this will ever happen again”
A month later, the woman who had bruises on her from the alleged assault dropped the charges so the case was dismissed. The football player was reinstated to the team and was taken in the third round of the NFL draft the following spring. While this football story has nothing to do with fraternities, it does have everything to do with university scandals and their lack of holding privileged males accountable when serious allegations of violence against women arise.
In May of 2017, I went after the fraternities again, this time following the death of a 19-year-old sophomore at Penn State who was from Hunterdon County. I offered up the beginning of a plan for universities to dismantle fraternities:
- Do not let them use any university facilities for their purposes. They cannot hold meetings or events on campus.
- Do not let them advertise any events on campus billboards and encourage the student newspapers to reject advertisements from the fraternities.
- Engage in a constant, blistering, fact-filled education campaign where students and their parents are told about the problems of fraternities and the high rates of cheating, drunkenness, drug abuse, hazing, rape and death. This should be conducted by college officials and students. Social norming ads should be aired on college TV and radio. Put up warning billboards that are similar to anti-smoking ads.
I stand by this, but it is obvious that the strong fact-filled education campaign should be ubiquitous on social media.
I stopped writing about these stories because it felt like another version of school shootings. It would make the news, parents would be sad, some students would be outraged, universities would launch an investigation and then eventually, almost everyone would move on and the status quo would be restored. I’ve added a fifth step to Dowling’s description of the college playbook for handling scandals: 5) they count on people forgetting.
Now, here we are again, nine and a half years after I last wrote about it. Because of what happened at Cornell. Once again, this has touched a nerve. This feels bigger, and yet, I fear that after the outrage and investigations, this will ultimately just result in people forgetting.
I hope this isn’t the case. And I know most of you feel the same way.
I still think a good plan incorporates some version of all three aspects of my 2017 plan. But I’ll add a fourth:
4) Fraternity houses, both on-campus and off, should be regularly patrolled the same way police deal with documented high-risk locations: noise, intoxication, medical emergencies, hazing, assaults, and large parties. Those in danger get medical transport, those who commit crimes get arrested and those who obstruct aid or conceal emergencies are held accountable.
There is a path here. I do think that if the outrage of this moment is properly harnessed and enough pressure is put upon college presidents and elected officials, some movement might actually take place. Call your state senators. Call your congressmen. Call your governor. Email campus officials. Protest in front of their offices. Don’t let up. Dismantle the fraternities.
I don’t want to revisit this after some terrible incident at Yale or Emory or USC in 2035.
Illustration generated with AI.