Perhaps this is why at least some young people are turning against the left: the war on fraternities
Some young people, that is. Not nearly enough.
For example, from an article in Tablet:
UNC wasn’t the only school where the frat community rose to [Israel’s] defense—at Arizona State, frat boys helped the police dismantle a pro-Hamas encampment, ushering in calls to “bring back the frats” and online celebrations of Greek life as “one of the few remaining bulwarks of sanity on campus.”
But there’s a certain irony in the outpouring of appreciation for the bros. Especially at elite schools where the encampments have been most persistent, fraternities have faced university-driven witch hunts aimed at eliminating their presence on campuses. The anti-frat crusade, which features a questionable judicial process led by antagonistic university bureaucrats hired to promote DEI initiatives, is troubling enough before you consider its glaring hypocrisy in the face of the ongoing protests. Universities that now treat the smallest fraternity infractions as grounds for immediate and sometimes harsh limitation—including accidentally setting off smoke alarms with a candle to turning in party permit applications an hour late—are now, very publicly, allowing disruptive and even aggressive encampments to persist despite their deliberate violations of policy, making the school’s double standards for the application of rules and the distribution of consequences abundantly clear.
Other things come to mind, as well: the fake Rolling Stone rape story, the fake Duke rape story before that, and the words of CEO Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid about Bud Light’s advertising no longer appealing to a “frat boy” image.
The Tablet article describes how Cornell polices fraternities, compared to – well, you’ll see [my emphasis]:
At Cornell, the school uses an anonymous reporting system in which anyone can submit a complaint against a frat, even people who don’t attend the university—which can then become near-immediate grounds for a formal investigation during which the fraternity may very likely be suspended. This happened as recently as February, when Cornell’s Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards (OSCCS) received “an anonymous incident report” making unspecified allegations against at least 10 fraternities. By 9 p.m. the same day, OSCCS emailed every new member of those fraternities encouraging them to come forward with their own reports; three days later the school began suspending the accused chapters. The frats were prohibited from all social activity during the investigation, which included banning new members from eating at the house, even though they were paying for the fraternity meal plan, and limiting events at campus apartments occupied by graduating seniors, some of whom even had to cancel their birthday parties. I talked to one senior who wrote to the university, explaining that their guidelines were making it impossible to hold even small gatherings among friends and asking for additional clarity so seniors could find approved ways to enjoy their final days as students—especially since the anti-Israel protests were making campus life notably unenjoyable.
“It was frustrating because most people in our frat are Jewish, and the frat really was essential for us while there were swastikas being drawn on school sidewalks and people were yelling ‘From the river to the sea’ every day,” he said. “I said in my email to the school that campus is divided, isolating, and even threatening for Jews sometimes, so having the fraternity social network is actually a critical part of our lives. They didn’t even respond to my message.” The school lifted his frat’s suspension nearly a month later after the university found insufficient evidence for the allegations.
This incident—and the myriad other times the school leaped to penalize even unsubstantiated infractions—is still fresh in the minds of Cornell fraternity brothers as they watch the university’s noisy Gaza encampment enter its second week, despite multiple statements from the school pointing out its many rule violations. “It’s pretty clear the school views a certain type of rule break as honorable and just, and other rule breaks as violations by entitled jerks, so this was not surprising to me,” the senior said.
“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others,” wrote Orwell, a keen observer of the left.
Much more at the link.
Perhaps it would help if fraternities renamed themselves “fraternités” in honor of the slogan of the leftist French revolution.
They can only have prog organizations you ‘cannot be uninvolved’ as some wag said
Very personal and very visceral reaction:
I have no use for frats and I have no use for hate-USA mobs.
When’s it my turn?
I attended a college where post-WWII students (vets) had had rowdy fraternities. And as veterans, did not like being told what to do. So the college cancelled ALL fraternities. It was all-male in my days.
Now it is wimpy co-ed academia and I would go to college again only if med schools or other professional entities required it. They are leftist swamps run and devoted largely to the female sex and sexual perverts..
PS Preview button yields nada.
Cicero:
I checked the preview button in a comment, and it worked for me. Not sure why you’re having difficulty. Have you tried a different browser, or a different device, just to see if the problem continues?
I didn’t have much money at college, and didn’t hang out with the Greek groups, which was basically because I didn’t have any money.
However, it looks like these days fraternities are where many “normal” guys can be found.
I was a member of a fraternity, and it was integral to my being able to get through college because e it offered the lowest cost room and board on campus.
It was a fraternity whose membership was 90 % jocks. Maybe 20% of our members came from families who were paying their bills. The rest of us were scraping by with summer jobs, and school year jobs when we could work them in. I cleaned the house and worked in the kitchen top help pay my room and board at the frat house.
Some of the members were big on
fraternity parties, but most of us were too busy and too poor to care about that stuff. So, we didn’t rank high as an active fraternity doing the usual parties, parade floats, and panty raids of those days.
I have watched the decline of fraternities with some mixed feelings. The drinking parties, hazing, and rah, rah frat boy stuff have gotten somewhat worse. I also assume that most members today are from well-to-do families, and don’t subscribe to woke politics.
The colleges are cracking down because of both issues. I think trying to get the fraternities to tone down their high jinks is a good thing, especially the outlandish drinking that has resulted in some deaths.
But not conforming to woke politics? Where’s the diversity of thought? I know, it’s allowed.
All that said, I applaud the frat boys who have defended the American flag or counter protested the pro-Hamas protests. Good for them. My fraternity brothers and I would have rallied to that cause, if we had the time. 🙂
There are Fraternities and Sororities, and there are ROTC programs but then there are groups/ clubs / associations that do not live together like Fraternities and Sororities, but they serve similar purposes. Some are left wing , some are right wing, some are religious ( right or left). And of course, there are whole schools that are religiously inclined, like Liberty University and numerous small Religious colleges. Of course, they have choir groups, etc, within them . But the frats get the most attention. And the sororities are now targeted by the trans crowd for infiltration.
Correction to my comment:
Where’s the diversity of thought? I know, it’s NOT allowed.
Cicero & Neo
That Preview button has never worked for me—on Firefox, and I just tried again w/ Chrome & Edge and it didn’t work. Tried it on my lappy and same thing. Maybe it’s a setting that is stopping … popups maybe?
Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid was not the CEO of Anheuser-Busch. She was some kind of VP of marketing.
I agree with JJ. My fraternity was the cheapest place to live when I was in college. It also provided a social life and friendship. That was in the 1950s and the school admin was hostile even then.
I was moved by comments to try the Preview button. I’m on Safari. The Preview button is dead.
The Edit function works, however.
Michael K., I assume you went to one of the California schools.
I was at Colorado U. in Boulder. Ha, at that time there was no CU outside of Boulder, as there is now.
The 1950s were a different time and I feel blessed to have been a student then. I’ve tried to be flexible and adjust to what has come down the road from the 1960s on, but it’s been hard, very hard. I feel like a toothless old lion roaring at a world that has passed me by.
• I still count my uni days as some of the best in my life – in a life full of good memories & good fortune – and my fraternity was an integral part that experience.
• The stories I could tell, some of the true. Which is no different than the experience many young men have had before and after – uni, military, sports, union, etc. – fraternity or not.
• Absolutely recognize both the attempt to eliminate fraternities – even at unis with a long, rich history of fraternity participation & achievement – and the same behavior that existed when I was in uni: Need to express “no desire/ use”, Disdain for behavior, etc. Have never understood that impulse.
JJ, CSU 64-68 then back after a stint in the Navy. CSU was pretty laid back, some Frats were wild, and Sororities too. Both CSU and CU have expanded to have satellite campuses. Both very far Left too. I had VietNam war vets, combat vets. They were there to study.
Much like what St Joseph’s University did to a faculty member Dr Manco!! Took a private email post and launched an investigation. Read his legal complaint on line!! You will be shocked!!
” I had VietNam war vets, combat vets. They were there to study.”
– SHIREHOME
Yeah, my roommate my senior year was a Korean vet. Artillery officer who had gotten his undergrad degree at Yale and wanted to get his masters in Geology where there was some geology to study just off campus. 🙂 He went on to a long and successful career with Chevron.
I learned a lot about military life and the fight against Communism from him. He was like a big brother to me and became a lifelong friend.
Three of my best friends in high school tried a semester of college before deciding it wasn’t for them. They all enlisted and served three-year hitches. Their military experience persuaded them that they should go back to college. Two became veterinarians, and one a National Park Service ranger. I’ve always looked at their experiences as why military service can mature a person enough to know what they want to do with their life.
The vets on campuses in the 1950s/60s were mostly a very serious bunch and had a positive effect on younger students.
Most of them would have been willing to tell these pro-Hamas people shut up and go bac k to class.
Gee. I forgot all about the Preview button. I’ve just been hitting Post Comment then beating the clock for any fixes.
neo — Thanks for the ten-minute editing window!
Preview doesn’t work for me either — Windows 10, Brave (Chromium)
I sometimes wonder if all the anti-white, anti-male, anti-frat stuff really boils down to anti-jock from K-12. Before the woke.
My high school football team was All-State for most of my years there. The way those guys with football letters lorded it over everyone else…
How could one not hate them? 🙂
Perhaps my favorite high school story was when the quarterback picked a fight with a low-status new kid. But that kid was from New Jersey and knew how to street fight. He took the quarterback apart.
I love a happy ending.
The individual must be naked before the State.
Supporting structures; family, church, civic groups, and in this case fraternities must be either be destroyed or captured by the State.
this is how you get here:
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1787139560062734704
poor choices
https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1787154779556454550
I guess it shouldn’t surprise, with whatever ridiculous propaganda they receive
And the American commie-Hamashites imagine they won’t be eating grass or in a Gulag if their dream comes true? You can’t fix stupid.
They *want* to eat grass, om, and bugs. Gulags I’m not sure about but they may be happy to obey party dictates.
“The way those guys with football letters lorded it over everyone else…
How could one not hate them? ?”
– huxley
Yeah, we sort ourselves out in different ways. In my day the football, basketball, and baseball jocks were the highest status. (Probably true today as well.) Our fraternity only had six-football players, zero basketballers, and two who played baseball. The rest were wrestlers, gymnasts, track and field, and skier’s (My sport). We skiers were low status. No one ever came to watch us at the ski meets, and we produced no revenue for the school. So, we didn’t really rate high even though we got letters like
other athletes. 🙁
At the time, if you knew where to look, the school was becoming more snobbishly elite. Students who participated in student government, the school newspaper, and organizing various school activities (Homecoming, the Engineer’s ball, various political lectures, etc.) were lionized as the “leaders of tomorrow.” I didn’t notice or care. I wanted to get a degree and get a job.
Two of my fraternity brothers became pro football players – Tom Brookshire and Frank Bernardi. One became an astronaut – Jack Swigert. One was an All-American track sprinter – Don Campbell. We had some talent even though we were a low status fraternity. That said, there were probably some students on campus that looked at us as privileged jocks/jerks. Such is life.
As Max Ehrmann said, “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” Words to live by.
Immigration Crisis Ended As Frat Boys Deployed To Guard Southern Border
https://babylonbee.com/news/immigration-crisis-ended-as-frat-boys-deployed-to-guard-southern-border
“‘It turns out that if you defend the border, people don’t illegally cross the border,’ said one mystified political commentator on CNN. ‘We never thought about that before.'”
I was in a fraternity – one of the smaller social fraternities nationwide. I was lucky because the authorities at our HQ greatly emphasized that hazing (i.e. excessive drinking), any unsavory actions towards each other (i.e. homophobic or racist remarks) and things like date rape was a no-go. We’d lose our membership if anything like that happened. Of course, not all fraternities are regulated in this way and members can definitely fulfill the negative stereotype of a “frat bro.”
Say what you will about GLO (Greek Letter Organizations), but I support the idea of them and, for better or for worse, they have contributed to on-campus culture. Sometimes they can surprise people, such in the case of not bending to Woke demands, thoughts or whatever is the newest thing to protest/support on campus.
When universities like Dartmouth tried to eliminate GLO organizations, specially fraternities, I knew it was just merely out of spite and, ironically, bigotry, self-hatred and self-importance. There were probably more unwanted pregnancies on Darthmouth’s campus than hazing deaths, racist remarks, and rape incidences related to fraternities yet they didn’t call to keep their students’ legs closed and flies zipped, instead they encouraged sex.
“Then as of this moment they’re on double secret probation!”