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Time To End Frats? (1 Viewer)

Buttonhook said:
I was in engineering school - so my peers were boring as hell and I've lost touch with pretty much all of them.  But my fraternity brothers?  I'll probably be playing golf with a few of them after retirement and today I was just exchanging emails with my pledge brothers. It's been 25 years since most of graduated...  How many of you (that weren't in fraternities) can say that about your college friends?
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Sorry this is an idiotic post.  I was never in a frat and have a huge circle of friends. Same with the majority of my friends.  Doing our 26th year of a 24 man golf tourney. Male bonding trips to Del Mar (annual), Cabo, Vegas.  Had a houseful over for the fight and poker after the Kentucky Derby - annual tradition. I have buddies from elementary school that we played TBall against each other, high school friends, buddies I met in a great fantasy football league and it extended from every angle. Granted, I don't have a ton of friends from college other than the guys I played baseball with.

Not against frats other than hazing.  Don't really like the inclusion by exclusion stuff, and there's lots of lifetime douchery formed in frats.  Again, by some.  Not all.

 
Judge Smails said:
Sorry this is an idiotic post.  I was never in a frat and have a huge circle of friends. Same with the majority of my friends.  Doing our 26th year of a 24 man golf tourney. Male bonding trips to Del Mar (annual), Cabo, Vegas.  Had a houseful over for the fight and poker after the Kentucky Derby - annual tradition. I have buddies from elementary school that we played TBall against each other, high school friends, buddies I met in a great fantasy football league and it extended from every angle. Granted, I don't have a ton of friends from college other than the guys I played baseball with.

Not against frats other than hazing.  Don't really like the inclusion by exclusion stuff, and there's lots of lifetime douchery formed in frats.  Again, by some.  Not all.
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Did you play college ball?

 
Yes - until I had to to work full time to support myself through school and didn't have the time to do all 3.  Granted, I never really had a college experience.  I worked the entire time.  Didn't live on campus.  Commuter school.  But my 2 daughters graduated from UC Santa Barbara and trust me they have had a huge social life there with no sorority involvement.  30 of them just got back from their annual Coachella tirp, so I think they've somehow made lasting friendships with joining a sorority.  Same with my son.  Lots of ways to meet people and form tight friendships.

 
bigbottom said:
There was also a fraternity death at your alma mater. 
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Yup :( , and I think they've cracked down on hazing in the few years since then, with a good number of frat suspensions.  Of course, I think there were still like five different suspensions just in this current semester alone, so the culture is pretty resistant to change and/or the consequences aren't severe enough.

 
Judge Smails said:
Yes - until I had to to work full time to support myself through school and didn't have the time to do all 3.  Granted, I never really had a college experience.  I worked the entire time.  Didn't live on campus.  Commuter school.  But my 2 daughters graduated from UC Santa Barbara and trust me they have had a huge social life there with no sorority involvement.  30 of them just got back from their annual Coachella tirp, so I think they've somehow made lasting friendships with joining a sorority.  Same with my son.  Lots of ways to meet people and form tight friendships.
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There's no one way to experience college. Not everyone wants to go Greek, I get that. There are many ways to meet people and make friends in college. Sororities and fraternities are just one way that's been around for quite awhile

 
James Daulton said:
Unfortunately most of these frats are made up of idiots.  You know, typical college dudes.   Except in this case they all get together and get their idiocy working towards the same goal when it comes to hazing.  The magnified idiot power can be devastating. 
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Whew, agreed.  Especially since no shenanigans take place in colleges outside of fraternities. 

 
Getting back to the topic...the issue isn't really drinking too much, normal hazing, etc. The issue is when these kids will let their future lifelong "you can't possibly understand if you're not in it" friend and brother suffer in emergency situations and/or literally die because they are too scared of getting in trouble to get these guys help. I don't think the next time this occurs, a bunch of drunk kids will think "well, those Penn State kids got prosecuted so we better call 911 or we're going to be ####ed too". So how do you fix that?

 
Lots of pent up jealousy and outdated stereotypes in this thread....pretty pathetic.

Painting all fraternities as the same is about as shortsighted as equating Harvard to Chico State.

My solution, tighter oversight on those campuses with known incidents and have the Greek system pay for it.

it would actually make it more dangerous to push the Greek systems off campus, many universities have some level of oversight in place.  An off campus process would be significantly more dangerous. 

 
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Judge Smails said:
Sorry this is an idiotic post.  I was never in a frat and have a huge circle of friends. Same with the majority of my friends.  Doing our 26th year of a 24 man golf tourney. Male bonding trips to Del Mar (annual), Cabo, Vegas.  Had a houseful over for the fight and poker after the Kentucky Derby - annual tradition. I have buddies from elementary school that we played TBall against each other, high school friends, buddies I met in a great fantasy football league and it extended from every angle. Granted, I don't have a ton of friends from college other than the guys I played baseball with.

Not against frats other than hazing.  Don't really like the inclusion by exclusion stuff, and there's lots of lifetime douchery formed in frats.  Again, by some.  Not all.
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I'm not surprised that many of you have a huge group of college friends that you still hang out with and keep in touch with (FBGs are clearly are a social group), but I still say that represents a small percentage of people that went through college.  While I get the meathead persona, personally I got a lot from my fraternity experience, so did a lot of my brothers.  To completely take this away seems like a complete overreaction. 

 
Politician Spock said:
Let the frats remain, but get rid of the association that exists between them and the schools. I'm mean really, the schools can't get rid of them. If they try, the students will just form new ones in a way that doesn't make them frats. Can a school say a group of guys can't share housing costs together? Where would the line be drawn?
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So I went to Towson University, which is in Baltimore County, just north of the city. In Baltimore County, it's illegal to have 4 or more non-related people living together. So there weren't any frat houses around campus. There were still frats/sororities, but they just didn't have big houses for people to party at all the time.

https://offcampushousing.towson.edu/registration/property-manager/go/1/

 
MattFancy said:
So I went to Towson University, which is in Baltimore County, just north of the city. In Baltimore County, it's illegal to have 4 or more non-related people living together. So there weren't any frat houses around campus. There were still frats/sororities, but they just didn't have big houses for people to party at all the time.

https://offcampushousing.towson.edu/registration/property-manager/go/1/
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Government has the authority to make such laws. Colleges don't, unless the housing is college property. 

 
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James Daulton said:
So perhaps let frats be frat but do away with formal hazing.  Can you have a typical "rush" without hazing?  Or is rush different than hazing?
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Used to love Rush Week.  All the frats would have free house parties to recruit new pledges; a couple friends and I would bounce around from house to house for free beers without ever even considering a frat.  Sure, it was a warm keg of Busch Light, but it was free.  Ah, memories.

 
TripItUp said:
Lots of pent up jealousy and outdated stereotypes in this thread....pretty pathetic.

Painting all fraternities as the same is about as shortsighted as equating Harvard to Chico State.

My solution, tighter oversight on those campuses with known incidents and have the Greek system pay for it.

it would actually make it more dangerous to push the Greek systems off campus, many universities have some level of oversight in place.  An off campus process would be significantly more dangerous. 
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I think frats are pretty dooshy, but I kind of agree with this.  This was a tragedy that could have happened outside of a fraternity.  I could see a bunch of regular drunk non-frat college kids doing the same thing.  True, the frat may have been a little more worried about repercussions, but this could have happened to any drunk idiots. Person is really drunk/sick, irrational drunk "friends" think they just need to sleep it off... Person drowns in puke, etc.  There was a head injury, but it wouldn't have been any different if he had just died due to alcohol poisoning.

The problem is the 21 yo drinking age, and the college culture.  If these kids started drinking at 18, then they would have a little more experience being drunk by the time they got to college.  Also, it's kind of engrained in the college culture to drink and party.  Alcohol & college football /tailgate are joined at the hip.

 
tommyboy said:
There's no one way to experience college. Not everyone wants to go Greek, I get that. There are many ways to meet people and make friends in college. Sororities and fraternities are just one way that's been around for quite awhile
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Buttonhook said:
I'm not surprised that many of you have a huge group of college friends that you still hang out with and keep in touch with (FBGs are clearly are a social group), but I still say that represents a small percentage of people that went through college.  While I get the meathead persona, personally I got a lot from my fraternity experience, so did a lot of my brothers.  To completely take this away seems like a complete overreaction. 
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These two posts seem to be describing two completely different environments. 

I agree with tommyboy that there are many ways to meet people and make friends in college. I didn't pledge, and I have college friends I still get together with. Heck I have two friends from high school I still get together with. 

Making friends and hazing don't have to exist together, but it appears frats and hazing do. 

 
TripItUp said:
Lots of pent up jealousy and outdated stereotypes in this thread....pretty pathetic.

Painting all fraternities as the same is about as shortsighted as equating Harvard to Chico State.

My solution, tighter oversight on those campuses with known incidents and have the Greek system pay for it.

it would actually make it more dangerous to push the Greek systems off campus, many universities have some level of oversight in place.  An off campus process would be significantly more dangerous. 
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pretty sure most greek systems are off campus now? Like more than 70% IIRC, but I could be way off here.  They keep getting pushed off campus in favor of academic housing and other housing.

 
Quez said:
I think frats are pretty dooshy, but I kind of agree with this.  This was a tragedy that could have happened outside of a fraternity.  I could see a bunch of regular drunk non-frat college kids doing the same thing.  True, the frat may have been a little more worried about repercussions, but this could have happened to any drunk idiots. Person is really drunk/sick, irrational drunk "friends" think they just need to sleep it off... Person drowns in puke, etc.  There was a head injury, but it wouldn't have been any different if he had just died due to alcohol poisoning.

The problem is the 21 yo drinking age, and the college culture.  If these kids started drinking at 18, then they would have a little more experience being drunk by the time they got to college.  Also, it's kind of engrained in the college culture to drink and party.  Alcohol & college football /tailgate are joined at the hip.
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Yep.   Fraternities are either dooshy or they aren't.  Groups of kids in the dorms are either dooshy or they aren't.  The fraternity kids just happen to have their name on their housing.  Kids are putting vodka shots up their butts, and snorting cinnamon.   Fraternity doesn't have the market cornered on stupid.

 
I joined my frat because there were people in it I liked, they were top in inter-murals sports, played good music and always cool women around.   We had football, baseball, soccer, and basketball (he was an honorary member, 7 footer from the Sudan, we were not going to pledge someone who lived a life as hard as his) players as brothers.  When you have 50 members some bad eggs are going to get it and it is up to the group to keep them in line.  

 
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Quez said:
I think frats are pretty dooshy, but I kind of agree with this.  This was a tragedy that could have happened outside of a fraternity.  I could see a bunch of regular drunk non-frat college kids doing the same thing.  True, the frat may have been a little more worried about repercussions, but this could have happened to any drunk idiots. Person is really drunk/sick, irrational drunk "friends" think they just need to sleep it off... Person drowns in puke, etc.  There was a head injury, but it wouldn't have been any different if he had just died due to alcohol poisoning.

The problem is the 21 yo drinking age, and the college culture.  If these kids started drinking at 18, then they would have a little more experience being drunk by the time they got to college.  Also, it's kind of engrained in the college culture to drink and party.  Alcohol & college football /tailgate are joined at the hip.
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Agree with this.  But frats sometimes take it to the next level with their hazing and forced drinking.  I don't remember every jamming grain alcohol down the throats of my college buddies.

 
Man times have changed.  Remember back when the elephant walk was the #1 frat hazing ritual to cite?  These millennials and their butt chugging!

 
James Daulton said:
On the heels of the Penn St. story, have the archaic hazing ways of the fraternity finally reached the end of their useful life?  Colleges have been trying to crack down on frats for decades now it seems, but as my son (a frat president) would say, "frats gonna frat."  It seems you'll always have those that need to push the edge during hazing and feel the need to continue the ridiculous, humiliating "rituals" for what?  Brotherly bonding? 

Time to end frats I say.

But keep sororities.
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FFA IS DYING!  END ALL FRATERNITIES!!!!  Man, it's going to be okay.  Why so negative?

 
FatUncleJerryBuss said:
I joined my frat because there were people in it I liked, they were top in inter-murals sports, played good music and always cool women around.   We had football, baseball, soccer, and basketball (he was an honorary member, 7 footer from the Sudan, we were not going to pledge someone who lived a life as hard as his) players as brothers.  When you have 50 members some bad eggs are going to get it and it is up to the group to keep them in line.  
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This was pretty much my experience also. We had 100 guys.  Forty years later, still an amazing tight group.  We self policed anything stupid.  The ones that don't get into trouble. National just pulled charter from our school for hazing and might let them back 2020.

 
Quez said:
I think frats are pretty dooshy, but I kind of agree with this.  This was a tragedy that could have happened outside of a fraternity.  I could see a bunch of regular drunk non-frat college kids doing the same thing.  True, the frat may have been a little more worried about repercussions, but this could have happened to any drunk idiots. Person is really drunk/sick, irrational drunk "friends" think they just need to sleep it off... Person drowns in puke, etc.  There was a head injury, but it wouldn't have been any different if he had just died due to alcohol poisoning.

The problem is the 21 yo drinking age, and the college culture.  If these kids started drinking at 18, then they would have a little more experience being drunk by the time they got to college.  Also, it's kind of engrained in the college culture to drink and party.  Alcohol & college football /tailgate are joined at the hip.
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While experience might help, I think it has more to do with maturity, I'm not sure the legal age makes a difference here. Most kids start college around 18 and most of them are drinking before then. Being an old fart, I probably don't relate to college kids much. However, by 18 I had a fair amount of drinking experience and that didn't stop me from doing stupid things while under the influence. The kids I hung out with did a lot of drinking, and dangerous stuff in general, without the influence of college life. Young people test boundaries and some end up as cautionary tales.

 
Reg Lllama of Brixton said:
Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests - we did. 

But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!
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Original: "Why do you hate America?"

 
Politician Spock said:
These two posts seem to be describing two completely different environments. 

I agree with tommyboy that there are many ways to meet people and make friends in college. I didn't pledge, and I have college friends I still get together with. Heck I have two friends from high school I still get together with. 

Making friends and hazing don't have to exist together, but it appears frats and hazing do. 
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Hazing simply doesn't happen in all fraternities.  Lots of posters in here already stated that they weren't hazed and/or forced to drink.  This is no different than taking a story about a bad cop and painting all cops as bad, and allowing yourself to judge a mass group of people based on a few attention-grabbing media stories.

 
Politician Spock said:
These two posts seem to be describing two completely different environments. 

I agree with tommyboy that there are many ways to meet people and make friends in college. I didn't pledge, and I have college friends I still get together with. Heck I have two friends from high school I still get together with. 

Making friends and hazing don't have to exist together, but it appears frats and hazing do. 
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You know just because you are in frat doesn't mean you don't know anyone else?  Right?   I have high school and college friends too, some that.........wait, grab your seat, were in other frats, and hold on tight, that were GID's.   I know that is unbelievable.  There are groups within a frat too that hang out.   The older we got, my frat click/group preferred hanging at bars instead of the frat house and would just have fun with whoever happened to be at the bar that night. 

 
invented the popped collar?  OH #### YOU!

I think it's clear, ol angry Daulton got bipped, and didn't get into the fraternity he tried sooooo hard to pledge.

 
MarvinTScamper said:
invented the popped collar?  OH #### YOU!

I think it's clear, ol angry Daulton got bipped, and didn't get into the fraternity he tried sooooo hard to pledge.
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Have I come across as angry?  I thought I was being pretty congenial.

And it's a known fact that frat douchebags invented the neon polos with popped colars  What better way to ensnare drunk sorority chicks.

 
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James Daulton said:
Have I come across as angry?  I thought I was being pretty congenial.

And it's a known fact that frat douchebags invented the neon polos with popped colars  What better way to ensnare drunk sorority chicks.
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that was tongue in cheek.   Sorry.

and it's very well known that popped collars were mainly a tennis thing, then a preppie thing....which comes from PREP schools, which don't have fraternities.

 
MarvinTScamper said:
that was tongue in cheek.   Sorry.

and it's very well known that popped collars were mainly a tennis thing, then a preppie thing....which comes from PREP schools, which don't have fraternities.
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Perhaps so, but it was the frats that brought popped collars into the mainstream.  Come on, I know you popped a few in your youth...

 
James Daulton said:
Perhaps so, but it was the frats that brought popped collars into the mainstream.  Come on, I know you popped a few in your youth...
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nope.   was after my time....or it never took with me.  Sure, I was in college about the time Polo brand stuff was popular, but as a pseudo broke kid from North Dakota, I had very little of it, and never popped collars.  Pinch-rolled some pants (no safety pins) but that was about the extent of my preppiness.

 
James Daulton said:
Have I come across as angry?  I thought I was being pretty congenial.

And it's a known fact that frat douchebags invented the neon polos with popped colars  What better way to ensnare drunk sorority chicks.
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If neon polos with popped collars helps bang sorority chicks, I'm gonna wear neon polos with popped collars.

just saying...

 
MarvinTScamper said:
nope.   was after my time....or it never took with me.  Sure, I was in college about the time Polo brand stuff was popular, but as a pseudo broke kid from North Dakota, I had very little of it, and never popped collars.  Pinch-rolled some pants (no safety pins) but that was about the extent of my preppiness.
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:bag:

 
I have 2 kids currently in college.  One in a fraternity, one not (by choice).  They are both happy with their choices and supportive of each others choice.  Neither have been hazed and both have found ways to take on philanthropic, volunteer and leadership positions within varying organizations.  Both participate in athletic and academic clubs/events.  Both do very well academically.  One is more of a "playa", the other is more "monogamous" (based entirely on their personality, not their choice of greek life).  Point being, there are different "right choices" for different people.

tldr... Look at me!  I have great kids!

 
Nail the violators (people, chapters) to the wall.  No need to eliminate the system.

Money talks louder than anything.  The national headquarters for each fraternity will come down hard on chapters if their liability policies go through the roof.  The system will disband on its own if fraternities cannot afford insurance.

 
Keerock said:
I have 2 kids currently in college.  One in a fraternity, one not (by choice).  They are both happy with their choices and supportive of each others choice.  Neither have been hazed and both have found ways to take on philanthropic, volunteer and leadership positions within varying organizations.  Both participate in athletic and academic clubs/events.  Both do very well academically.  One is more of a "playa", the other is more "monogamous" (based entirely on their personality, not their choice of greek life).  Point being, there are different "right choices" for different people.

tldr... Look at me!  I have great kids!
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So.... you're not in favor of ending farts? 

 
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