Do Fraternities Deserve Their Bad Reputations?

Editor's Note: This is a different viewpoint about the way fraternities are looked at. This article makes the point that fraternities are not about hazing, but about being against dissent and affirmative action because of their so called "discriminatory nature". While I strongly disagree with this complaint that the feminists are making, the article is interesting. (Evan Hackler)

(Fox News) (5/12/2004)
Wednesday, May 12, 2004

By Wendy McElroy, Fox News

How much of what you believe is based on fact, and how much has been
manufactured?

For decades, society has been undergoing a powerful campaign known as
political correctness, which seeks to control the definition and
presentation of concepts, including "marriage" and "the family." The
purpose is to encourage allegedly proper ideas and behavior, by law if
necessary, and to discourage improper ones.

A recent news story left me questioning how deeply the ideas in my own
mind have been socially engineered.

The news item was on college fraternities — or "frat boys" — and their
relationship to violence against women. The Frat Boy. He's the drunken
party-animal who date rapes when he isn't playing childish pranks or
hazing. He's the lowbrow, sports-sated rich kid who is rude to women and
minorities. I know this … even though the fraternity members I've met do
not resemble that image.

How do I know this? I've imbibed that image through a flood of TV shows
and movies. I know fraternity houses are part of the "rape culture" on
campus because feminist studies, such as the much-cited 1996 "Fraternities
and Collegiate Rape Culture," reveal that fact. But how much of the image
is real, and how much is a caricature based on a rejection of the
traditional male?

Scant decades ago, fraternities were among the most prestigious student
organizations on campus. Many of today's respected leaders were fraternity
brothers, and fraternities can point to a long history of raising funds
for charities and of alumni money for universities.

Feminist awareness may have exposed a dark side to fraternities and a need
for change. But it is difficult to divorce their critique from their more
general attempt to redefine campus politics according to a new feminist
vision. Such feminist visions, and their underlying research, are
notorious for being politically driven and methodologically flawed.

The news story that sparked my speculation was forwarded by a male friend
at the University of New Hampshire: The front-page story in UNH's student
paper on April 30 revolved around that campus' recent Take Back the Night
march. (Take Back the Night is an international event meant to unify
"women, men, and children in an awareness of violence against women,
children and families.")

The focus of the article was feminist outrage at the participation in TBTN
of fraternities and sororities, the latter of which are also targets of PC
caricature. In essence, the Feminist Action League led a protest against
the involvement of Greek organizations in UNH's TBTN, with members
carrying banners addressed to the fraternities. Two of them read, "We
Don't Negotiate With Terrorists" and "Feminists Against Frats."

The UNH conflict has a back story, including a three-year-old accusation
of rape that was never filed as a charge, vandalization of the frat house,
and a subsequent civil lawsuit that was settled out of court.

Perhaps this partially explains why FAL decried the presence of all men —
and even of sorority women — at the TBTN march. Nevertheless, the presence
of non-disruptive fraternities (and the news story reported no incidents)
could have been viewed as a feminist victory, since they are the very men
from whom feminists most strenuously demand an acknowledgement of sexual
violence on campus.

It would not be an isolated victory. Many fraternities seem eager to
reform their tarnished image. In February, for example, the
Interfraternity Council at Penn State voted to designate all IFC
fraternity houses as "rape-free" zones and require members to receive
training about sexual assault.

The conflict at UHN may be extreme, but it reflects a tension that exists
to some degree on most campuses across North America.

The root tension may not be resolvable. The Women's and Gender Studies
Program at Kenyon College in Ohio states, "Male bonding in groups like
fraternities that promote traditional views of masculinity furthers the
risk of sexual violence."

How can the foregoing be resolved with the self-descriptions of many
fraternities? The mission statement for members of Alpha Phi Alpha at
Texas Lutheran University is typical: "... to prepare them [members] for
the greatest usefulness in the causes of humanity, freedom and dignity of
the individual; to encourage the highest and noblest form of manhood; and
to aid down-trodden humanity in its efforts to achieve higher social,
economic and intellectual status."

A possible explanation is that both images are true and no stereotype of a
"frat boy" exists. Another explanation is that the frat boy controversy is
part of an ongoing ideological war on campuses.

Former Dartmouth Review Editor Steven Menashi has written of the
controversy, "even though fraternities have been around for two centuries,
it's only recently that colleges have launched a concerted effort to
destroy them. In the last decade, anti-Greek initiatives have emerged at
Dartmouth, Bates, Trinity, Bowdoin, Hamilton, and Bucknell — to name only
a few."

Menashi concludes that a main reason fraternities are under attack is that
they "have become a sanctuary for campus heterodoxy." For example,
fraternities tend to be critical of affirmative action and so-called
diversity policies. Thus, "the war on fraternities isn't about ending
drinking or bad behavior, it's about ending dissent."

Is Menashi correct? I don't know. But I am increasingly uncomfortable with
the automatic snicker that accompanies the mention of "frat boys." And I
wonder at the vicious image I carry in my mind of an entire category of
people.

Posted By: Hadey Salem