The weight of the letters

The rush of rush has come and gone. The debaucheries of bid day Shooters have eroded the obsequious niceties that freshmen display to the brothers in charge of their fate. Tasks of varying utility, ranging from memorizing preambles and lists of Greek letters to standing awkwardly in an unfilled C1 (with or without a watermelon in tow) have begun. A fresh group of freshmen have joined fraternities and I wonder if they’re aware of the obligations that doing so entails.

Look around in your pledge class and see who’s there. Perhaps more importantly, see who’s not there. The Chronicle made a Herculean effort at surveying the diversity, or lack thereof, in Greek life on campus. But if looking at your pledge class is like being in a hall of mirrors, you don’t need the Chronicle to tell you that something’s off. Realize that many fraternities were formed to be explicitly white only or that the Southern heritage celebrated by many fraternities doesn’t lend itself to being easily adopted by people of color. If you feel that these historical barriers have a created a system in your fraternity that leads to homogenous pledge classes, make it a point now to address that when you find yourself on the other side of rush next year. Try to catch the comments and ideas that reek of white privilege in your GroupMe chats and chapter meetings. If there is something structural about your group that has alienated non-white students, you’ll likely see it on display daily, giving you countless opportunities to begin addressing the issue.

In the coming weeks, you may find members of your pledge class sprawled on the bathroom floor, wrapped around a toilet on a Tuesday night. And then again on Wednesday. And definitely on Saturday. If you’re not lying in the stall next to them, think about why they’re there. Were they forced to drink too much, either explicitly or because they felt they had to keep up with everyone else around them? Is this simply a garden-variety “had one too many” type of night, or was he two shots away from having his name in an obituary and national news headlines? The transition from dumb to deadly seemed pretty drastic there. But I can only assume the transition was equally unexpected at various points last year for Timothy Piazza at Penn State, Maxwell Gruver at LSU, Andrew Coffey at Florida State, or Matthew Ellis at Texas State. Before you joined a fraternity, the stories of these young men were just distant tragedies. Now, it’s your responsibility to prevent these tragedies from repeating themselves.

Think back to O-week, when you probably first heard that harrowing “1-in-5” statistic which aims to illustrate how pervasive sexual assault is on college campuses. Now confront the fact that studies have claimed that fraternity men are far more likely to commit sexual assault than independent men. At the very least, the bro culture in fraternities tends to cultivate attitudes toward sex and women that are in and of themselves harmful, such as greater rates of rape myth acceptance. Armed with these attitudes, fraternities may perpetuate a predatory social culture in which sexual aggression is normalized.  

Chances are, you know of friends who went to fraternity events only to be treated disrespectfully or disgustingly without any formal report or account of the behavior. Now that you’re a member of such an organization, think carefully about whether you want to be associated with the worst moment of a fellow student’s life. Carry that thought with yourself at every party. Hopefully it will motivate you to act if you find a brother leading an excessively intoxicated guest to his room instead of to a group of supportive friends who can take care of that person for the night. 

I do not accuse you of being responsible for problems associated with fraternities in general, nor do I find you to be irredeemably guilty in perpetuating a toxic culture (although many on this campus may). I make no claims to be a moral authority worthy of lecturing you on how to be a Greek Gandhi. I also am not making the mistake of claiming that these problems are unique to fraternities, or that every fraternity is a host to these problems. I joined a fraternity with the hopes of addressing these problems, only to be frustrated by the structural limitations I faced. Ultimately, I acknowledged that few of my attempts were successful.

I feel the need to tell you exactly what you’re getting into. 

You will spend large parts of the next few years within an all-male community with little outside input, running the risk of locking yourself into a hyper-masculine, alcohol-filled echo chamber. Pretty soon you’ll be so deep in this culture that calling out a brother for casual racism or sexism, or admitting you have a mental health issue that you try to treat with alcohol, will become impossible. Being aware of this in advance may help you maintain some independence and foresight in your perspective—something that fraternities desperately need. Perhaps you can stay alert enough to identify and stop problematic thinking and behavior before it envelops you, too.