Wesleyan University recently announced that all of its all-male residential fraternities must become co-ed within the next three years. The university’s president and the chairman of its Board of Trustees wrote an email to the student body saying “Our residential Greek organizations inspire loyalty, community, and independence. That’s why all our students should be eligible to join them.”
The email explaining the change conspicuously lacks any mention of sexual assault, hazing or drug and alcohol abuse — the significant topics raised in Caitlin Flanagan’s Atlantic article, “The Dark Power of Fraternities,” which focuses on incidents at Wesleyan University.
Portraying this change solely as a matter of “equity and inclusion,” as the email states, does not accurately represent the situation. The email makes no mention of sororities being required to change their membership, which effectively treats all-male groups differently than all-female groups. Wesleyan’s one sorority was perhaps not mentioned in the decision because according to the university’s website, the sorority does not have a house, and so it is not “residential.” But even so, the only logical reason the university would apply the co-ed mandate only to residential all-male organizations, is that it believes the conduct which occurs in those houses somehow needs to be remedied.
The idea of a co-ed fraternity is not necessarily a bad one. There are co-ed fraternities already, but most are dedicated to service, or a specific academic or career interest, like engineering. Social fraternities are different in that they do not primarily devote themselves to one of the aforementioned purposes, and they value same-sex membership as a way of bonding. Admitting women to social fraternities is not a guaranteed remedy to the problems plaguing fraternity life — namely: sexual assault, alcohol abuse and hazing.
Some think mandatory integration of women would help address the issue of sexual assault in fraternities, presumably because they think brothers will be more likely to respect women if they are members of equal status to the men. This approach has the potential to be effective, if male members do actually treat the female members equally. But the integration process could be risky for the women, and may actually exacerbate the problem of sexual violence.
The prevalence of hazing ties into the risk posed to women entering fraternities for the first time. Most fraternities have new member pledging processes, and when the first female pledges will have only men as their superiors, there is great potential for the older members to exploit the women even more than they exploit the men during that process. Even though some fraternities have eliminated pledging in order to address hazing issues, we have argued that this approach is unlikely to be effective for individual chapters, because hazing is so ingrained in fraternity culture. When you add women into the mix, the power dynamic can be amplified.
This is not to say that all fraternity men seek to exploit women. But even if brothers do treat their new female members as equals, there is no guarantee there will be any major change in behavior, with regards to other fraternity issues.
A major fraternity problem which administrations say needs to be addressed is the abuse of drugs and alcohol. This was the justification of Connecticut’s Trinity College when they mandated their fraternities become co-ed in 2012. This logic, though, discounts the existence of drug and alcohol problems among women’s Greek life, which undoubtedly exists, even if it has not received as much publicity. At the University, during the Greek rush and bid period of 2013, many students hospitalized because of excessive drinking were new sorority members.
For the same reasons, admitting women will likely not be an effective remedy for hazing either, as women’s Greek life also has problems with hazing. Just recently, Jezebel revealed that Miss America 2015 Kira Kazantsev was expelled from the Alpha Phi sorority at Hofstra University for hazing pledges.
Universities must find alternative methods to make Greek life safer, before presenting arguments about “equity and inclusion.” Equal access to Greek organizations is an entirely separate issue from the safety concerns. They must be dealt with separately if any change is to occur.
Read More
EDITORIAL: Scapegoating students will not stop hazing
By Editorial Board | 21 hours agoInstead of retroactively responding to extreme hazing allegations, we, and especially the University, must begin asking more probing questions about the role of fraternal organizations on Grounds.
EDITORIAL: Celebrating and reflecting on The Cavalier Daily’s independence
By Editorial Board | April 18, 2024Our independence grants us the ability to ask the hard questions and to say what University representatives cannot.
ARRAS: U.Va. must revise the Sexual Assault Prevention Training module
By Aoife Arras | April 17, 2024In addition to its failures in interactivity, the module lacks details specific to the University and discusses key concepts in universal terms.
