It’s time to reaffiliate Greek life

On Friday, March 21, the joint quads of Crowell, Kilgo, Craven and Few held a Central Campus party: “A Night in Rio.” The councils went all out, contracting a student DJ and covering the tent in decorations. However, I wouldn’t blame you if you hadn’t heard about it — most people didn’t. An hour into the party, at its peak, only about 20 people were in attendance. In the pretty expansive Central Campus tent, that is hardly enough for a rager. Unfortunately, that party was the same night as Alpha Tau Omega (ATO)’s “Taumorrowland” party, which you are more likely to have heard about, and had much more than 20 people in attendance. 

This observation is not to mock the hard work of the quad councils or further hype up the ATO social chairs. Rather, it points out a larger problem with Duke's approach to social life. The Duke administration seems to believe that keeping Greek life off campus and creating QuadEx housing and parties will make the university more inclusive and end our dependence on fraternity parties for Duke’s social scene. It won’t. 

Maybe it’s a branding thing: After all, Duke’s tour guides are encouraged to underemphasize the impact of Greek life on campus and promote QuadEx as similar to peer institutions. No matter the reason, the Class of 2026 and 2027, who both experienced the implementation of QuadEx, remain relatively interested in Greek life, at 60% and 61%, respectively. It’s pretty clear that QuadEx has not acted as a replacement for Greek life, and discontinuing on-campus housing for Selective Living Groups has probably aided in its growth. 

So, if forcing Greek Life to remain off campus hasn’t decreased the influence of fraternities and sororities on culture, what has it done? Placing fraternity houses next to essential workers and families with children has likely worsened our relations with the Durham community, exposed Duke students to possible criminal charges and weakened oversight of the Greek life system.

Duke’s history with Durham is not without tension. Beyond its literal demolition of dozens of homes during its expansion in 1965, Duke today remains an isolated, closed-off, wealthy bubble in a city suffering from high rates of poverty in certain areas. While Duke has contributed to community programs and revitalizations, it received significant criticism for unilaterally killing a billion-dollar light rail project in 2019. As recently as 2004, it apparently contributed “far less than what Princeton, Harvard, and Brown universities pay to their host cities.” 

To be fair, there were already some off-campus parties before Greek Life disaffiliated in 2021. But it’s not a positive step forward in Duke-Durham relations to add more literal party houses and off-campus functions in residential neighborhoods. Our desire to let off steam and celebrate in a crowded house at midnight cannot come before the needs of the Durham community to sleep, work and raise children. As a response, Duke has implemented The Good Neighbor program, which “advises students to keep gatherings to less than 30 people.” While it seems “A Night in Rio” followed that advice, it would be laughable to believe that a single off-campus party this year has remained below 30 people. These parties have already created increased resentment: In 2022, 300 Durham residents signed a petition arguing that the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity’s ownership of five single-family homes “tremendously impacted the quality of life of our neighbors.”

Increased negative interactions with Durham residents and Duke students are toxic to the Durham community and broader university relations, as well as to the futures of undergraduates. As The Chronicle previously reported, “the number of calls by concerned neighbors has disproportionately increased for some fraternities since August 2023.” The charges range pretty broadly, from alcohol to noise or building code-related. And while all previous charges have been dropped, the increased police presence puts students at risk of civil or criminal charges. Any of these citations can be expensive legal hassles, but charges like giving or selling alcohol to minors under 21 could potentially damage employment or graduate opportunities. 

It’s absurd then, that in Duke’s quest to reduce its liability or improve its image, the administration simply pushed liability onto any students associated with Greek life. And with liability comes oversight. Shifting oversight doesn’t only mean less immediate access to campus resources or healthcare services in the event of an emergency at a party. It means that instead of having the ability to disband or suspend chapters, deal with organizational-level scandals or enforce safety protocols, Duke’s administration leaves it up to the chapters to decide for themselves. However much faith you may have in the Greek life chapters at our school, that will never be an effective policy: There’s much less incentive to legitimize and deal with misconduct without the administration breathing down your neck. After chapters disaffiliated at West Virginia University, for example, risk standards across every fraternity became far more inconsistent, and national organizations lacked the ability to monitor local activities effectively.