By Liz Willen/The Hechinger Report
A few days after headlines exploded about yet another university president suspending Greek life activities after yet another hazing death, a group of college presidents sat around a dinner table expressing concern about bad behavior at fraternities.
But somehow, they couldn’t help singing their praises as well.
Fraternities foster a sense of belonging. Their members do community service and care about social welfare. They boost retention and graduation rates. They raise money for charity and provide vast alumni job networks. They add value to the college experience. It’s wrong to generalize from a few bad actors.
These rationalizations for Greek life on campus came up during last week’s annual gathering of presidents of mostly large public universities and journalists at the Penn Club, organized by Arizona State University. Guests included Louisiana State President F. King Alexander, who presides over a campus reeling from the death last month of 18-year-old freshman Maxwell Gruver.
Over dinner, LSU President Alexander noted that he’d immediately suspended Greek life after Gruver’s death and set up a task force to study it, but at the time, he’d made sure to add a supportive statement: “Many of our Greek organizations represent all that is good about our university.”
At the dinner, he acknowledged that “there are bad actors . . . but I know what good [fraternities] do and I value what they do. You can’t generalize and say Greeks aren’t doing good things.”
It’s getting harder to appreciate the good. Reports of the events leading to Gruver’s death at LSU are sickening: During a night of drinking at the Phi Delta Theta house, which has since been shuttered by the national chapter, Gruver was reportedly ordered to recite the Greek alphabet, pelted with hot sauce and mustard and forced to chug hard liquor if he messed up.
Gruver died at a nearby hospital with a blood alcohol level of .495, more than six times the legal intoxication level in most states. Ten students have since been charged with hazing at LSU, and one with negligent homicide. Two more fraternities have since been suspended for infractions, six have been removed from campus and seven are on some form of probation.
Read More
Posted on November 20, 2017
