In two years Phi Kappa Psi and Old House CC have been kicked off campus. Last week Sigma Alpha Epsilon dissolved. Is this a trend?
As more and more selective houses lose their sanction, it is apparent that the University is trying to diminish the greek system in order to raise its academic image. Duke is obviously not the first to follow this pattern; in the past 20 years, colleges and universities have disbanded individual fraternities and entire greek communities alike. Ironically, though, most of the schools that have "gone independent" have been small liberal arts colleges, hardly the large, major Ivy League universities that Duke is often accused of trying to emulate.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford Universities all have selective groups in place that rival and are often stronger than Duke's. At Harvard, the finals club system is the measure of the man. Members of such groups as the Spee and the Fly "punch" boys in their sophomore year and invite them to dine, party and play in their ornate mahogany paneled clubs, in an atmosphere far less diverse than Duke fraternities. Princeton's eating clubs, although coed, are just as exclusive, and "bicker" is just as intense as rush; even the word is more esoteric.
At the same time, their traditions are just as dangerous as fraternities'. In 1999, Princeton ordered an end to the 30-year tradition known as the "Nude Olympics"--in which second-year students run naked through the main quadrangle at the first snowfall--after six students were treated for alcohol poisoning. Before that, in 1995, Princeton had to pay $100,000 to a student who lost both legs and an arm when he climbed on top of a local train after a night of drinking and touched an 11,000-volt power line. Yale's fraternities have waned in the recent past, but their parties make up a great portion of the weekend's social events.
Other institutions with greek organizations have tried to eliminate parts of the system, but for more pressing and detrimental reasons than Duke's. When two fraternity members drowned after jumping from a 20-foot cliff at the University of California at Los Angeles, the administration suspended their fraternity indefinitely. Rutgers University suspended its branch of Phi Psi for requiring its pledges to emulate black stereotypes, and the school required them to attend training sessions in racial awareness while fining each $100. In 1991, at Swarthmore College, fraternity members racked up a $15,000 debt for housing and utility services that the school had to pay.
The Duke administration has no examples like these to point to. So whose lead is Duke following? The administration seems to be looking north, to schools like Amherst, Williams, Middlebury, Dartmouth and Colby Colleges. Williams eliminated fraternities in 1972, in an effort to "cultivate the school's image as an elitist institution," as The New York Times reported. At Bowdoin College, two fraternities were closed in 1998 for exclusivity with the expectation the remaining five would dissolve by 2000.
Like the administrations of these smaller colleges, especially Dartmouth of the Ivy League, the Duke administration has not tried to openly do away with the system as a whole. They have just let the groups slip off the map one by one. Instead of claiming that fraternities and sororities are "discriminatory and harmful to campus social life," promoting "vandalism, sexism and anti-intellectual behavior," as Colby and Amherst stated, the University is using a stronger means to get rid of selective living groups in a gradual way.
The tool of choice is the Annual Review. In this process, students in selective houses must be active in seven areas: faculty interaction, student-led programming, cultural programming, educational programming, social interaction, community interaction and citizenship. The failure to fulfill all of these requirements results in a warning, probation or dissolution. Members submit a their written review in December and April, and the Annual Review Committee accepts or rejects the results.
The interesting parts of this review are not its requirements but its vague standards. In the student bulletin, none of these areas are described specifically with quantities. It says merely, "Has your group interacted with faculty members in a social setting?" and "Do members outside your group have access to your student-led programming?" The selective group has no idea whether they have to interact with 10 faculty members or two, go to five plays or act in them, have section parties or faculty cocktails. The only way they find out is if they fail to meet their requirements, which are judged only after the fact. The only time they learn the specifics of the process is when they fail the review. In that case groups must draft a contract with the number of activities in each area they will pledge to do in the following semester.
It is inevitable that groups will fail to meet the entirely arbitrary standards, considering they don't know what they are. On a campus where the average student rarely interacts with faculty outside of the classroom (although that is an issue for Duke Student Government to handle), few students will devote the time to hear safety lectures every weekend.
Old House CC, Phi Psi and SAE had poor annual reviews. Poor annual reviews lead to probation, and--with a subsequent offense--dissolution. It seems like every fraternity is on probation for at least half the year, and social probation means failure to fulfill the social interaction requirement. Not much of a chance for redemption.
This process of heightened restrictions and requirements closely mirrors Dartmouth's. There they have to submit annual reports containing the grade point averages and disciplinary records of every member. In addition, only juniors and seniors can live in the houses there, and they are required to share the space with an alcohol abuse counselor, a sexual abuse counselor and a community service liaison. Fraternities are now coed, a decision which was supposed to diversify the system. However, female entrants into male fraternities are very few.
So, will fraternities follow in Dartmouth's footsteps and become coed? Or will they completely dissolve like Denison University and Middlebury College? No matter what happens, another kind of group will probably grow in their place, for it is human nature to gravitate toward a community. Perhaps the new Duke will some day model its social scene after Harvard or Princeton--just like its academics--but how much of a difference will it make?
Alexandra Wolfe is a Trinity senior and a writer for Recess.
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