All Articles Tagged "sorortities"
Should Fraternities Be Banned From College Campuses?
Should fraternities caught up in sexual and other violent scandals be banned from college and university campuses?
It’s a question that author Caitlin Flanagan, who believes that frat houses are the most malevolent of male power institutions, answers with a resounding yes.
Recently, Flanagan penned a piece for the Wall Street Journal about rape on college campuses, or more specifically, incidents of rape that involve drinking and fraternities. She cites a 2007 National Institute of Justice study, which concluded that fraternity men who tend to drink more heavily and frequently than non-members are more likely to perpetrate sexual assault than non-fraternity men. Said Flanagan, “The Greek system is dedicated to quelling young men’s anxiety about submitting themselves to four years of sissy-pants book learning by providing them with a variety of he-man activities: drinking, drugging, ESPN watching and the sexual mistreatment of women.”
Honestly, I don’t think I could disagree with her on that point. In my opinion, it’s really simple: if a particularly fraternity—or sorority for that matter—continues to be a source of sexual assault or other forms of violence, then they do not need to exist on a college campus.
However, what Flanagan is suggesting goes beyond scrutinizing the lack of accountability that colleges and universities place on fraternity organizations. What she is actually suggesting is that the entire Greek system helps to encourage the mindset that violence and mistreatment of women is okay. I’m not very certain of that.
However, Flanagan is not alone in her assessment of Greek-letter organizations. Samantha Wishman recently wrote a similar piece for the Daily Beast, in which she argues that a double standard exists between fraternities and sororities on college campuses. While fraternities are allowed to “party” without fear of being subjected to disciplinary action when they commit serious criminal offenses, sororities, on the other hand, are intensively scrutinized by their national organizations for even minor infractions, such as holding parties with alcohol.
In her piece, Wishman highlights an incident when 16 Yale students filed a complaint against the university for violating Title IX—“alleging that Yale had failed to curb a hostile sexual environment” for women on campus,” including an incident where pledges from Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity harassed women students chanting phrases such as “F—ing sluts,” and “No means yes, yes means anal” during their initiation rite.
Certainly, some fraternity organizations do give way to some pretty, immature and downright criminal behavior. With thousands of fraternity chapters in the U.S. alone, it only stands to reason that some of its membership would lack a certain moral compass. But to suggest that the actions of a few reflect the actions of all others fraternities is too broad of an indictment.
Judge Lifts Contempt Ruling Against Sorority
(Chicago Sun Times) — A Cook County judge Thursday morning removed a contempt of court ruling against Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. and gave the organization until later this month to provide financial records.
The move came after the group sent its top finance staffer — who’d been at the AKA national meeting wrapping up in St. Louis — to its Chicago headquarters Thursday morning to provide some records for the sorority’s past president, 94-year-old Julia Purnell.
Purnell had filed to have access to the group’s financial records after members unsuccessfully sued the sorority and its leadership, including President Barbara A. McKinzie, a former Chicago Housing Authority and Cook County Forest Reserve financial manager. The lawsuit alleged that over her four-year term, McKinzie directed the spending of millions of the sorority’s funds for personal use and pet projects, including a salary and retirement for the traditionally unpaid post and a wax statue in her likeness on display at a Baltimore museum.
Judge Orders Black Sorority to Open up Financial Books
(Chicago Sun Times) — After it refused to open its financial records for review, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. must bring them to court today, even as the organization’s members are gathered in St. Louis for a weeklong meeting and its leadership faces charges of misappropriating funds, a Cook County judge ruled Monday.
Judge Daniel Riley said a representative of the nation’s oldest Greek-lettered sorority for African-American women needs to have the group’s check register, minutes book and wire transfer documents after the group stonewalled attempts to retrieve the records, which a former president on July 1 won the right to inspect.
