The headquarters of the closed Chi Phi fraternity chapter at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., on Tuesday.Angelina Katsanis/Reuters
Lisa Wade is the author of Exposed: A College in Crisis Puts Science to the Test and American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus.
During a lull in what Jane Doe has alleged was a seven-hour sexual assault, a Cornell University Chi Phi brother sent a vulgar but audacious text to his fraternity group chat. It stated that a woman’s body was “free” for the taking upstairs. Another member later responded: “Shop still open?”
These do not appear to be the words of men who fear consequences for their behaviour. And in fairness, fraternity men commit crimes with little consequence all the time.
On any given campus with Greek life, fraternity houses are sites where alcohol is served to minors. Many are also places where hazing, illegal drug use, assault and battery, and, yes, sexual violence occur. Yet U.S. colleges and universities have an abysmal record of holding brothers accountable.
As a sociologist who’s studied U.S. college life for more than 15 years, I’ve learned that risk-taking – and more perniciously, risk-making – is not incidental, but rather long constitutive of the power and pleasure of membership in historically white fraternities with generational wealth.
The first social fraternity was founded in 1825 by a group of men at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., 170 miles south of the Canadian border. An invite-only organization, Kappa Alpha gave its wealthy members the opportunity to segregate themselves from peers they considered lesser. They then endeavoured to do things the administration did not want them to do – including the pursuit of sex with women. “I did get one of the nicest pieces of ass some day or two ago,” wrote one fraternity man to another in 1857.
“Fraternities constituted a rebellion against authority,” wrote Nicholas Syrett in The Company He Keeps, his history of white college fraternities. They openly disobeyed college authorities, asserted a previously disallowed independence, and engaged in “forbidden” activities. “[T]he thrill derived,” wrote Mr. Syrett, “not just from the activities themselves but also from the fact of their illegality.”
The idea of an exclusive, decadent, nose-thumbing secret society spread like wildfire. New organizations were formed with regularity. By 1861, there were nearly 300 chapters in the eastern and southern U.S. states, where higher education was gaining ground.
College and university presidents were mortified by this development. A survey of these leaders, reported by the president of Amherst College in 1863, found them flabbergasted about how to rid themselves of the infestation. They described fraternities as “injurious,” a “plague” and “evil.” “They have led to greater unkindness and ill feeling than almost any thing [sic] else in college,” said one. Many presidents vowed to eliminate fraternities but failed.
The power of fraternities escalated throughout the next 100 years, but 1984 was a turning point. That year the U.S. government informed its 50 states that federal transportation funding would soon be contingent on raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 21. By 1987, the only place an underage student could reliably get free alcohol was a frat house.
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The decision by authorities of all kinds to allow fraternities to persist in serving underage drinkers sent a clear message to members: You are allowed to do illegal things. Fraternity brothers also face few consequences for hazing, which is illegal in 44 states and the District of Columbia; for the shocking amount of assault and battery reported on many of their properties; for the illegal drug use and dealing ubiquitous in these organizations; or for the death-defying parties they threw during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in violation of public-health orders.
If many fraternities aren’t so much a social club as a criminal club, why do colleges and universities treat them with kid gloves? In part, it’s because a thriving Greek life is a huge asset. With billions in real estate, fraternities and sororities house a quarter-million students each year. In funnelling money toward partying, fraternities provide students the raucous good time adults promise when they insist college will be “the best time of your life.” Because they often operate on private property, fraternities shield their host institutions from some liability.
And it’s a windfall financially. Party-oriented students are more likely to apply and pay full tuition and Greek-affiliated alumni contribute an outsized portion of donations. These broader networks are also valuable for securing high-status jobs in elite occupations, which also boosts a school’s reputation.
Every blue moon, after a scandal, there is genuine accountability. But even the truly grotesque controversies have thus far done little to undermine old-line fraternity men’s power. We shouldn’t expect otherwise. The sense of entitlement so often cultivated by fraternities, and the broader institutional deference to them, is why we both love and hate them. And this latest scandal alleges how brazenly bad the boys really can be.