Wrongdoings and Fraternities

credit to society19.com

When the word Greek Life comes to people’s mind it is often associated with parties and drugs. Fraternity parties are the huge part of Greek Life and college life as a whole. The interesting part about Greek Life parties is that sororities are not allowed to have alcohol in their houses making them bend to the male. But through a Rolling Stones article, “The Most Out of Control Fraternities in America”, written by Blaine McEvoy and an article from The Atlantic, “The Dark Power of Fraternities”, written by Caitlin Flanagan we view the supposed big negative of Greek Life. In this blog post, we see that people are attracted to Greek Life's parties and doing drugs because people enjoy being mischievous and being part of a popular social scene.

In the article “The Most Out of Control Fraternities in America”, Rolling Stones gives an actual list of fraternities committing horrendous acts. Kappa Sigma of Tulane University was cited having

“State Police seized $10,000 worth of psychedelics from the Kappa house after two 19-year-old brothers scored 107 grams of ecstasy from undercover officers. The bounty included 57 tabs of LSD, 69 grams of mushrooms, 48 grams of opium, 22 grams of marijuana, .80 grams of cocaine and .91 grams of DMT.” Another example given was  Sigma Alpha Epsilon of the University of New Mexico was said to that “over the past five years, the SAE brothers have been repeatedly cited for hazing and damaged property. But rapes have plagued this Albuquerque house since 2007.” These are worst case scenarios but these stories are what gives fraternities and Greek Life a bad name.

“The Dark Power of Fraternities” takes a different approach. They do agree that “They [fraternities] also have a long, dark history of violence against their own members and visitors to their houses, which makes them in many respects at odds with the core mission of college itself” There is something attractive about being mischievous, it makes you stand out, it makes you noticed. Being an icon on college campuses is a dream of students whether it be for grades, sports, or in this case wrongdoings.

I believe that a big part of joining Greek Life is the social scene. It’s scary to enter an unknown place with no friends and Greek Life gives you a unique opportunity to instantly make a handful of friends that appeared to have some of the same qualities as you. What comes with this social scene are parties and with parties come wrongdoings. I don’t think that fraternities should be banned from having parties, in fact, I promote it. It allows people to make more friends and make connections. The bad things are the drug and rape, but today in American society there is something oddly fascinating about it and I believe that’s the attraction.