Kapping the damage

Duke almost made it through Fall 2011 without winding up in an online tabloid. But a guest column protesting Pi Kappa Phi’s moronic Pilgrims and Indians party has reignited a perennial debate about gender, race and the Duke social scene. In what is quickly becoming an annual tradition, Duke columnists, commentators and students have drawn attention to fraternity social emails that objectify women, invoke racist narratives and typify an influential social group that hasn’t yet figured out how to use its power.

At its most basic level, this party theme was an unwise and offensive choice. It serendipitously used stereotypes about Duke women to sexualize and demean Native Americans, and used stereotypes about Native Americans to sexualize and demean Duke women. Using one marginalized group to insult another is never a smart decision. It’s even dumber when it communicates expectations of sex. For all this, the members of Pi Kappa Phi have correctly attempted to make amends by issuing a public apology and by creating a public forum on this subject.

This editorial is not about demonizing one fraternity—or any fraternity. Pi Kappa Phi’s actions provide a symbol of a much larger problem on campus, one that can—and in fact, has—been extant in countless offensive party themes, email invitations and listserv conversations. We shouldn’t direct our anger at people right now. We need to direct it at a situation which manages to repeat itself year after year.

The discourse that has erupted following this party has been a positive step toward generating awareness about racism and sexism on campus. But discourse too often does nothing. Right now, words need to turn into a few very simple actions.

Offensive party themes are an easy problem to solve, precisely because no one benefits from them. We assume that Greek men would prefer not to throw offensive parties, that Duke women would prefer not to be radically sexualized and that neither group wishes to coerce the other with destructive expectations. But this is exactly what happens now. Greek men craft jocular sexist emails to impress girls, and women go along with it to impress guys. Neither group gets what it wants because both groups are responding to expectations that may not exist.

To be clear—sexual behavior isn’t the problem here, coercion is. Greek men, who have residential space and can host University-sanctioned parties with alcohol, do the lion’s share of coercion. Women who want access to a large swath of the social scene have to accept the terms and expectations laid out in social emails, even if they would prefer not to.

But women have a hand to play here, too. The perceived expectations of Duke females presumably drive much of the behavior of Duke men. Boys will be boys, but mostly only because they think girls will like it. If Duke women don’t want to be sexualized and coerced, they can vote with their Friday evening activity.

What needs to happen is a formal discussion—face to face, in a room, with real people­—between Greek men and women about what they honestly expect to get from the social scene. We think their goals may be closer than they think. And, even if they’re not, each group can agree it doesn’t want to be coerced by the other. And each can agree that it doesn’t take racist, sexualizing parties to have fun.