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| Penn State Obelisk |
For many young people the way to belong and find friends who can help facilitate business and personal success after college means joining a fraternity or sorority. Making these right connections can often help someone get hired for a job that can lead to success, so college folk seek to join the organization that offers the best opportunity to make those right connections. Along with this, however, come patterns that are difficult to break and can lead to bad behaviors that are reinforced by the social interactions that take place in the world of the Greeks.
Recently Jimmy Carter appeared on television to promote his new book about the treatment of women on college campuses entitled “A Call to Action."" Date rape, he tells us, is widespread and kept gracefully tucked behind those ivy walls by college administrators, many of whom were members of special social organizations where they could be seen, heard and eventually be put in charge. With the date rape, alcohol is often the drug of choice that allows members of a group to be less inhibited than they would be otherwise and more willing to follow the lead of others.
“One of the worst places in our country for sexual abuse is on college campuses,” Carter told David Letterman recently. “College presidents don't want their university to get a reputation as a center for sexual abuse.” The article on the Washington post that offers Carter's insights tells us that as many as one in five women will be assaulted in college. Freshmen are among those with the highest risk for sexual assault, as they constitute 63 percent of the victims.
Bob Beckel, a Fox News commentator, responded, “When was the last time you heard about a rape on campus?” as other individuals such as Greg Gutfield, in the ways a lusty pirate might respond after a night of booze with buddies agreed, using it as a way to reinforce the value of guns for protection with : “It’s the rapist who should be crapping — not victim. And that means being armed.”
While some research observes that college fraternities and sororities now offer strict guidelines about drinking behavior, a multidimensional examination reveals that added to additional factors involving early adult developmental patterns and the socialization that takes places among the Greeks, high-risk drinking is associated with belonging to a fraternity or sorority. Living in a Greek house increases the likelihood of binge drinking, for example. Furthermore, those campuses without a Greek system have fewer alcohol-related issues.
Much of what happens to the young people on campus has to do with societal factors they arrive with that include how they interacted in high school, the emphasis placed on having the right social group and belonging to the “in” group, parents' drinking patterns, the feelings of isolation and boredom that can come with being in a new situation where the parent is not in control and the social group offers a substitute family. The Greek language embraces that family role with the term “brother” and “sister” used to describe members.
Add to the presence of the Greeks the relative importance of athletics on a college campus and the risks of heavy drinking increase. College fraternities are a source of support for athletics and add to the relative invincibility of coaches and sports directors. Penn State became an example of college administrators who looked the other way at the behavior of its coach, Jerry Sandusky, and his sexual molestation of young boys. The cult of football that dominated the campus allowed for an atmosphere where sexual deviation was acceptable so long as it did not interfere with the athletic challenges.
The Atlantic Monthly looked at the dark patterns and power of fraternities and sororities in February 2014, finding that power has created high-level executives, among them many of the Chief Executive Officers of America's major corporations. The author points out that many fraternities have more power than the college host itself. Greek sororities and fraternities are rooted in American soil, offering the influence that can last a lifetime. They are well-known for contributing large sums of money to their alma maters, thus creating a continuous power-broker pattern that extends to the boardroom and the halls of Congress.
The problems on campus that lead to bad behaviors continue to be part of a national conversation, but the actual implementation of change may be difficult because the patterns are difficult to break, especially when they have been part of long-held traditions. Drinking and Greek membership have been associated since their initial founding. Along with drinking, and the addition of a few chemicals into a girl's glass, can lead to date rape and to other incidents when inhibition is lost. The fact that many colleges choose funding of athletics over maintenance of some academic programs gives the consistent message of where the values are for everyone. And while college is that place young people long to experience freedom, some of that freedom can come with a high price that includes the growing epidemic of sexual assault, binge drinking and violent initiations that can hurt a young person in many ways in the future. It can also hurt the social and political structure when those same patterns continue.
So if laws are to be changed to reduce those bad behaviors, perhaps it is the nature of the college atmosphere that needs to change how the wrong patterns are reinforced that fuels a pirate-type, daredevil atmosphere that can occur when young people gather in groups where “pass the rum, me hearty” is the challenge. Most experts tell us that, as with other social problems, the education begins in the home as the young person prepares for being in an atmosphere where parental overview is remote. That might mean the right Greek group might be none at all or one where academics are valued more than sports and non drinking behavior is a value rather than an aberration.
