GDI

That you, Pin Head?

The "Fortune 500" old boys and girls will hate this post. They and many of America's 1% will be sending sons and daughters off to the beloved alma mater in Autumn 2015. It isn't due to pure nostalgia; there is leverage in all those Alumni Association dues and monetary donations. Not all the kiddies will choose to follow in their elders' footsteps, although juniors who do not choose the old school tie will likely enter Mum's sorority or Dad's fraternity. The beaming parents will encourage this; plenty of time to repent later. I say this because certain events have come to our attention regarding social fraternities in recent years. Bigotry, one could say, is only part of the equation We called Dad a frat rat, when we attended university with him. It was not pure resentment. I never have liked labels, but there was every good reason God Damned Independents and college administrators hated frats.

     I was very clear, upon entering the University of Colorado at 16, whether or not I wanted to join a sorority. Having been part of the military life I'd had enough of "Rank Hath Its Privileges,"even though my father was a commissioned officer. Nor did I care for the potential advantages of sorority life. I did not live in campus housing. My funding, eventually, a full-ride scholarship, reflected my passion for my studies, so study groups, other peoples' class notes, sample tests ... had no appeal.

     I did have a frat rat laboratory partner in first year Biology. He was a BMOC, a prominent athlete. I'll call him Studley. Unfortunately we shared a fetal pig in Anatomy Lab. One fine day, we were to establish and show the sex of our babies. Studley began by stabbing me with his scalpel. I thought, silently, "This guy has the makings of a Navy Doctor!" 

     The professor arrived at our table, while I was cleansing and bandaging my wound, cursing under my breath. He asked Studley the sex question, before I could stop him. (I'd already pointed out that our piglet had undescended testicles.) "Why, Sir, it is clearly a female," my buddy opined. The teacher, tweezed and displayed perhaps the largest pair of cajones ever to occur in a porcine infant. Studley reddened. I just kept silently swearing, slapping my forehead. I feared his lab grade would be my lab grade. Studley was one of a handful of fraternity men of my acquaintance and, clearly, Sir, needed every advantage he could garner.

     By contrast some of the women I knew who had entered sororities, were fine students. I associated, for the most part, with Alpha Chi Omegas, generally shunned by more elite sororities. Many of their number were female athletes. You see, the ideal woman of the early Sixties was feminine, a beauty ... marriageable. If she was intelligent or extraordinarily gifted, she hid it. She had to be more than discreet. She had to be wily, to avoid being exploited by her male counterparts. Some traditions in the throwback Greek System began in the 19th Century. I promise you they never die. The following is quoted from an Atlantic article by Caitlin Flanagan.

An 1857 letter that a Sigma Phi sent to one of his fraternity brothers suggests the new system was already hitting full stride: “I did get one of the nicest piece of ass some day or two ago.”

     There was always tremendous peer pressure to smoke, drink and screw like minks, but exclusively ... and always in a manner befitting. Talking about sex was fine, talking about sexual encounters, absolutely not. Drugs had not quite emerged in the social scene, and, if they were present at parties, their use was clandestine. We were truly the youth of Pleasantville, having narrowly escaped the 1950s high school nightmare. Universities were still governed, although in varying degrees, by the now outdated concept of in loco parentis. They were not diploma mills, they took seriously the job of molding character and, often, of protecting students from themselves. All that came to a screeching halt, just as students of my generation entered careers and/or the grind of post graduate degree programs. It looked for a time, as though, the grandeur of fraternity mansions and boola boola were doomed to extinction. Many became seedy rat traps; not all have been completely renovated. Some are downright dangerous.

     Rather than rely on my own perceptions, current or past events, I reread a detailed article from The Atlantic, published in 2014, "The Dark Power of Fraternities." The link is here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/02/the-dark-power-of-fraternities/357580/

Parents and grandparents of all socio-economic groups need to read this and reread it.

      One fact was and has remained abundantly clear. The Greek System, while it provides housing and social opportunities to the chosen, fraternities and sororities often find themselves at odds with the philosophy and mission of academia. As long ago as 1978 Dartmouth's faculty proposed to eliminate fraternities and sororities on the premise they fostered anti-intellectualism and sexism.

      Add incubating for tomorrow's bigots and elitists, and I'll give an, "Amen." Tempus fugit, it seems, albeit very slowly. A more recent report of the Dartmouth Committee on Diversity and Community leveled similar criticisms. Herein lies the rub the trustees will have to build new housing. They must consider providing more and better student events, as well as venues. Dartmouth may make the investment, but not all universities enjoy the financial health and outside investors to do so. 

     What else has kept the outmoded system in place? Can it be charitable and community service activities? As significant as the contributions may or may not be to a fraternity or sorority image, they seldom offset the negative side of the balance sheet. The concept of in loco parentis may have been all but abandoned, but the Constitutional right of Freedom of Assembly has kept social fraternities and sororities right where they are, even when they are prominently troublesome to community and university authorities. Turning them into coed institutions may work, or it may just address some issues.

    Change is once again in the air ... it may take time, but I believe we'll see an end to other than academic fraternities in our lifetimes. Meanwhile if you have a youngster headed off to college this Fall, consider the safety and security concerns in your student's housing, whether it is off or on campus. You may want to give the kids a heads up concerning their comportment, as it relates to their safety. Parents cannot just assume these kids will be the exemplary citizens we have trained them to be. They are fledging into a highly competitive environment of intricate social complexity, combined with unimaginable freedom of choice. For some it will prove to be the perfect storm.