Why Americans are completely fucked up

[Nefertiti2]

They torture one another to death in College Initiation Rites

This is one of the most disturbing things I've read for a while. It also seems to explain a great deal about the state of the United States.

[Gerontophile]

I think that's HP's alma mater.

[ad hoc]

No, I think it;s where HP is based now. His alma mater is elsewhere.

[ursus arctos]

That is correct.

He and I had an interesting exchange on Twitter about this yesterday.

For all of its myriad faults, the “Greek System” is much more a symptom than a cause of our national nightmare.

[Lang Spoon]

Fraternities are fucking weird, bra. If you wanted to manufacture a system where the worst exclusionary vicious bullshit of school life continues unabated, you’d come up with something like this malignant nonsense. What a load of shite. Apart from a nepotistic hand up after college, why the hell is this stuff still tolerated?

[ursus arctos]

More or less unconditional support from major donors, trustees and alumni (as illustrated in the article)

[Lang Spoon]

Aye confess I haven’t read past the beginning yet. Saving it for after Ireland’s super soaraway victory.

[San Bernardhinault]

Fraternities are fucking weird, bra. If you wanted to manufacture a system where the worst exclusionary vicious bullshit of school life continues unabated, you’d come up with something like this malignant nonsense. What a load of shite. Apart from a nepotistic hand up after college, why the hell is this stuff still tolerated?

This is definitely the way I see it, too.

I have friends who were members of frats/sororities, and some act as if they still are. It's a fucked up hybrid of private school, cult and old-boys-network.

And I genuinely can't understand the kinds of people who join one in the 21st century. What are they thinking?

[Lang Spoon]

Shared a gaff for about 6 months with Cali Frat and Sorority types as some of the flatmates. Had never heard of Jimmy Buffett, the Piña Colada song, more than a minute of any Garth Brooks before full Thunder Roads bombardment. Shot drinking, drinking games (at fucking 22 man). They were nice in a back slappy sort of way I guess, but insincere tae fuck, as they all carried on whispering campaigns against each other and whoever had just left the room

[Hot Pepsi]

Yeah, this is where I grew up and live now. This all went down about a mile from here.

I have many thoughts.

I find Caitlyn whatshername's pieces on college life to be frequently a lot of pearl-clutching "won't someone think of the children" and she has little feel or understanding for how college towns really are. This one focuses too much on systematic problems and doesn't seem to ask how do young men turn out so awful? (I don't mean the victim, necessarily, but the frat brothers that let it happen). What was wrong with their high school and/or family? They didn't just turn into psychopaths when they came to college. I hate to sound like a "personal responbility" Republican, but that needs to enter the equation somewhere.

In this piece, she draws some conclusions at Penn State "culture" that are false and not at all supported by the non-evidence she puts behind them. And she concludes, with no evidence, that the university and/or its current administration is probably just covering it's ass around an "emerging scandal" and doesn't really care about the students. I tweeted that at her as kindly as I could. Of course I got no response. She just retweets fawning praise.

They certainly are covering their ass, but the scandal is hardly "emerging." It's been in plain site all over America for at least 100 years. And everyone in this community cares. We're just not sure what to do about it because everything that's been tried over the years to stop young people from drinking too much and being reckless and stupid doesn't seem to work. An avoidable alcohol-related death, or near death, happens here every couple of years. And it happens at a frat or a college bar or on campus somewhere in America every year. Probably a few times a year. It also happens to high school kids and people not in school at all.

A lot of reports suggest that the fraternities are a big part of social life at Penn State. I didn't go there, but from what I can tell, that's not really true. Even though its a massive greek system compared to most other colleges, PSU has 40k students on this campus, so it only represents about 15% of the students. Contrast that to where I went to college, where half of the students were at least nominally in a greek organization. And at some southern colleges, its 90%.

At PSU, the people in frats and sororities are frequently reviled by those who are not. Not everyone people in Greek organizations are bad people. Some of them just like to drink a lot (which is unhealthy, but not necessarily morally repugnant) Some just wanted to rush because they wanted to make friends which can be hard at such a big school. But enough of them are awful to give them all that reputation and it's bad enough that I tell every high school kid I know headed to Penn State or another big school not to go to fraternity parties. They just aren't safe. Especially for women, but for men too because there's liable to be some belligerent asshole looking to fight. Just too crowded and sweaty and full of assholes. I recommend that if they want to drink underage, don't. (because I'm supposed to say that) but if they really need to, just hang with friends. And when they're 21, go to bars that have bouncers and bartenders looking after the crowd.

Since Tim Piazza's death, Penn State has brought the hammer down far more than it ever has before. Most importantly, it is taking oversight away from the interfraternity council and instead charging every fraternity member an extra fee in order to pay for university employees that will police them. They're all being put on a tighter leash in terms of violations too and forcing a new rush system on them, which is overdue. We'll see how that goes. The threat that more houses could be banned forever and that we might see some of the big houses actually torn down or converted to something other than a frat.

So we'll see. I think it will get better, but it's very sad it took this to get there.

As for why it took a death to spur these changes...I think Penn State and other universities have been trying, unsuccessfully, to keep the frats at arms length as much as they could. If they're on private property off-campus and govern themselves, the universities have hoped that that will get them off the liability hook. But that's never worked from a PR perspective and probably doesn't work from a legal perspective.

As a townie, I really see it from the university's perspective. In so many situations, but especially when it comes to the laws governing off-campus housing, we hear endless bitching and moaning that we're infringing their rights by not letting them put 20 people in a rental house in a residential neighborhood and that we're not giving them the respect as adults that they deserve. But when something like this happens, as it inevitably does, then they or their parents complain that it was the university's responsibility to be their kids' parents. I understand in this case that the parents are going to sue the deep pockets, and I don't blame them, but the university could argue that they're not responsible for looking after students off campus.**

So this all leads to the question why universities "recognize" fraternities (or sororities) at all. Why not try to ban them or, as some northeastern schools have done, make them go coed?

Even though it doesn't seem like it, the system as it is gives fraternities a lot of incentive to remain recognized and in-good-standing by their university. For one, our borough zoning laws won't allow that many people to live in a house together unless they're a university-sanctioned organization. It was a way to grandfather in the frats while keeping "animal houses," as my dad calls them, out of our nice neighborhoods. Plus, only frats and sororities in good standing can participate in certain campus-wide events that they care about like THON and the national organization won't support them if they're not recognized. So they have a strong incentive not to get suspended or kicked out, and that means the university can exert some control over fraternities that it can't exert over students living in other off-campus houses or apartments. Obviously it's not enough, but things could be potentially even worse without that.

As Wesleyan, among others including Penn State, have found out, the only thing worse than a bad fraternity/sorority in your Greek system is having a "rogue fraternity" of students or just an off-campus house or apartment where the same shit will happen. Because there are places like that around campus and it can and does happen. No university this size can or wants to build dorms for everyone and many students prefer to pay for a place in the private market, and there's no shortage of builders and landlords to satisfy that demand. So it gives its students the freedom to live on their own.


So the universities are in a "can't stop it, you can only hope to contain it" situation with the debauchery.

The other major problem, as noted in that article, is that a lot of the rich alumni and people on university boards were in Greek organizations and push to keep it going with as little interference as possible. That's never been quite as true at Penn State as other places and the death of Mike Piazza made it politically impossible for anyone on the board to argue against the president's plan to crack down. So in that way it was a "never let a crisis go to waste." However, I suspect the rules would have tightened under this president even without the tragedy. This president has a more appropriately adversarial relationship with the board and is definitely more willing to have lots of people hate him as long as he's doing what he thinks is best. Spanier, who will hopefully be doing some jail time soon, tried to be a man of the people too much.


*There's an idea out there that dangerous drinking and stupidity only happens at universities that aren't very hard to get into, but kids have died from drinking at MIT, which is damn near impossible to get into. And the Ivies have as big, or more, of a sexual assault crisis as anywhere else. One of the reasons why I didn't want to go to Penn State was that I thought a place with more competitive admissions would have a lot less of this kind of thing. W&M had less of it, to be sure, but a lot more than I was expecting. It turns out that people can be really good at academics and still be alcoholics and or complete assholes or both.


** The frat where this happens looks like it's on campus, but it's actually part of a row of old frat buildings that are on private land surrounded by university property. They used to be just past the western frontier of campus, but then campus grew around them.

[Benjm]

That's never been quite as true at Penn State as other places and the death of Mike Piazza made it politically impossible for anyone on the board to argue against the president's plan to crack down.

Didn't Ursus offer to defend the fraternity on a pro bono basis for that one?

[Hot Pepsi]

More or less unconditional support from major donors, trustees and alumni (as illustrated in the article)

And students and, I guess, their parents who are usually the ones paying the extra fees to be in a Greek organization.

Obviously, nobody signs up to die in a fraternity, but nobody who rushes a fraternity can reasonably pretend to be shocked by the level of drinking or shitassery that goes on there. For every whistleblower or pledge who quits, there are many more frat bros that fully embrace the process and think its how "brotherhood" is forged.

And, of course, the level of hazing and stupidity varies from school to school and chapter to chapter. The level of drinking is pretty much always farirly high, but a lot of frats' leadership know that its not going to look good on their resume to have been the president of a frat known for a hazing or rape story. And most people simply don't want to participate in the kind of horrible and disgusting sexually degrading hazing you hear about, even if they're the ones holding the power.

The more typical kinds of hazing that you might hear about are much more mild: Like making the pledges stay up all night, or getting them all up at 3 am to go for a 10 mile run, or just making the pledges come over on Sunday morning to clean up the house. The guys I've talked to who did that stuff said that it was a good way to get to know their fellow pledges. It's not for me, but I suppose I can see how that would be true.

[Benjm]

Does fraternity membership skew towards people from affluent backgrounds? There's nothing really comparable in the UK (Oxbridge dining societies and the like are a vanishingly small minority, albeit over represented in government) but general dickishness by former public school pupils tends to have a strong element of ancestral continuity about it.

[San Bernardhinault]

I can't help thinking that this would all be a bit less of a problem if America freaked out less about teenagers who drink alcohol. If America had a more mature relationship with booze, boozing-communities wouldn't need to be created for the zitty students who aren't allowed in bars. And, of course, if everyone was allowed a few drinks in their first weeks at university, it might be a little less difficult to make friends...

Sure, there'd probably still be alcohol related deaths, and there'd certainly still be the sexual assault problem, but I imagine it might be reduced; and it certainly wouldn't have the veneer of coming from a ludicrous ersatz-private-school environment which tries to cover everything up.

[Hot Pepsi]

Does fraternity membership skew towards people from affluent backgrounds? There's nothing really comparable in the UK (Oxbridge dining societies and the like are a vanishingly small minority, albeit over represented in government) but general dickishness by former public school pupils tends to have a strong element of ancestral continuity about it.

Not overall, I don't think. It's not like the Finals clubs at Harvard or the eating clubs at Princeton (which are now all non-exclusive, IIRC. Or maybe it's Yale that did that? I forget). And even though the houses often look really fancy from the outside, they're usually dumps on the inside because their tenants do a poor job of upkeep, needless to say.

Certain fraternity chapters are more likely to rich kids simply because the membership picks its new members and guys interested in golf and expensive clothes gravitate to each other. And fraternity membership costs a few hundred a year over and above a normal apartment or dorm, so there is some economic constraints. But a lot of students are going so far in debt to pay tuition that a few more hundred (or thousand) doesn't seem like much. And the universities that attract more working class students have greek systems too.

Sororities, especially in the south, usually have an unwritten hierarchy and pecking order, so getting into a "good" one is regarded as an important marker of social standing. That's fading, no doubt. But I suspect it's still a thing.

But that's not usually true of fraternities. They each have their own reputation for a certain kind of dude, and obviously a lot of people in them think their's is the "best," but there's not the same kind of snobbery about it. At least not in any places I've heard about. Maybe in the deep south where it's all taken a lot more seriously, there is more of that.

[Hot Pepsi]

I can't help thinking that this would all be a bit less of a problem if America freaked out less about teenagers who drink alcohol. If America had a more mature relationship with booze, boozing-communities wouldn't need to be created for the zitty students who aren't allowed in bars. And, of course, if everyone was allowed a few drinks in their first weeks at university, it might be a little less difficult to make friends...

Sure, there'd probably still be alcohol related deaths, and there'd certainly still be the sexual assault problem, but I imagine it might be reduced; and it certainly wouldn't have the veneer of coming from a ludicrous ersatz-private-school environment which tries to cover everything up.

I agree with you, but the prevailing wisdom among politicians and the sort of Maude Flanders types who vote is the opposite.

[Lang Spoon]

Aye that seems to be what I got as well. Drinking games and shots with every beer seems like kid in a sweet shop stupidness. Spanish kids could drink beer at 16, but in pijo Eixample or Gracia at least, the molt Catala fuckers from 16-26 were like monks compared to the Anglo Celt dissolute TEFL wasters, but the Danville types were a brutal Southern Comfort sick mess. Fucking savages, beyond the law. Proto republicans baked on skunk their daddy smuggled through first class on a visit to Hotel Majestic.

[anton pulisov]

A Dutch student died in one of these things a few years ago.

I remember my first year at college. We were supposed to scrape our behinds (with jeans still on) along a wet field. I didn't bother because I had no interest in having a wet bum for the rest of the day. And that was that. I don't know why people did it. I was the only one who didn't bother.

[Lang Spoon]

Ah, this kind of shite is big in the Netherlands too? Do remember New Yorkers saying their culture was way more in tune with the Amsterdam gentrifying wen than the London abscess.

[Furtho]

Aye that seems to be what I got as well. Drinking games and shots with every beer seems like kid in a sweet shop stupidness. Spanish kids could drink beer at 16, but in pijo Eixample or Gracia at least, the molt Catala fuckers from 16-26 were like monks compared to the Anglo Celt dissolute TEFL wasters, but the Danville types were a brutal Southern Comfort sick mess. Fucking savages, beyond the law. Proto republicans baked on skunk their daddy smuggled through first class on a visit to Hotel Majestic.

Trying to recall an OTF post I understand less than this one, winky smiley thing.

[Nefertiti2]

I posted it not because I think that things don't happen anywhere else- goodness knows the British public school was built on similar hierarchical bullying, as was the army.

It's that there is no interest or ability in rooting it out and the combination of deviousness, bullying and structural planned incompetency to allow a cruel toxic inefficient culture to dominate.

Another example. THE NRA prevent computers being used at the national firearms registry

There's no telling how many guns we have in America—and when one gets used in a crime, no way for the cops to connect it to its owner. The only place the police can turn for help is a Kafkaesque agency in West Virginia, where, thanks to the gun lobby, computers are illegal

[Satchmo Distel]

Non-tenured professors have to tread carefully with Greek culture. There's a not-subtle pressure to self-censor. Tenured professors OTOH can let rip about frat rape culture, etc.

[Nefertiti2]

I'm not digging the thread title much.

Apologies if I offended you- It was meant in the Philip Larkin "They fuck you up your Mum and Dad" sense. I'd edit it to something like "Is this why American culture is so deeply disturbed?" But I don't know how to.

[Hot Pepsi]

Non-tenured professors have to tread carefully with Greek culture. There's a not-subtle pressure to self-censor. Tenured professors OTOH can let rip about frat rape culture, etc.

Nontenured faculty have to worry about offending anyone for all kinds of reasons. But how much support the college/university gives to the teacher vs the whining students depends on the institution and the department.