A flurry of fraternity-related crises on college campuses this month has resulted in stiff penalties against chapters and a wave of soul-searching about how to curb dangerous behavior.
Clemson University on Tuesday suspended the activities of 24 fraternities amid an investigation into a pledge’s death and after several recent reports of alcohol-related medical emergencies, sexual misconduct, and other “violations of the law or student conduct code.”
The Clemson student who died was found in a lake this week after an early-morning run with members of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. Officials believe he died of a head injury after falling off a bridge and hitting a rock in shallow water.
Earlier this week, Clemson’s Interfraternity Council voted to suspend the activities of all of the fraternities it governs, a decision the administration agreed with and extended indefinitely. The university will work with the fraternities to come up with risk-management and accountability strategies to prevent further tragedies.
The university’s four fraternities that are not governed by the council were not affected. Allegations of possible criminal matters were turned over to law-enforcement agencies, while violations of the student code of conduct were being investigated by the university’s Office of Community and Ethical Standards, Clemson officials said.
Missing After a Run
The student who died, Tucker Hipps, a 19-year-old sophomore, reportedly had been lagging behind during the morning run. His fraternity brothers reported him missing after he failed to show up for breakfast.
Authorities said on Wednesday that they had not yet determined whether Mr. Hipps had been drinking or whether hazing had been involved.
But campus officials had obviously reached their limits after a series of reports of dangerous behavior that Gail DiSabatino, vice president for student affairs, said “mandate swift and effective action” to protect students.
“There have been an unprecedented number of violations of conduct rules since the beginning of the year, and that, coupled with Tucker’s death, convinced us to call things to a halt, restore order, and decide what’s best for our community,” Ms. DiSabatino said in an interview on Wednesday.
Of the 15 reports of dangerous behavior in the first three weeks of the semester, five involved hazing, three sexual misconduct, and seven alcohol abuse, she said. Some of the reports came from parents, who were urged over the summer to talk to their children about acceptable behavior and to take advantage of a new hazing hotline. Ms. DeSabatino also speculated that the recent attention to sexual abuse on college campuses has made students feel their complaints will be taken seriously.
Most Clemson students have supported the fraternities’ suspension, although “a few don’t get it and don’t think we have the right to tell them they can’t have a good time,” she said.
‘Incredibly Bad Things Happen’
Meanwhile, campuses across the country are struggling to rein in fraternities.
A national expert and consultant on fraternity hazing said he had seen a shift in recent years from hazing “that, while problematic, served some purpose, like building solidarity, to one based on social dominance in which ‘I’m going to make you do anything I want, just because I can.’”
Gentry McCreary, associate dean of students at the University of West Florida and a former director of Greek affairs at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, said in an interview on Wednesday that those doing the hazing have become morally disengaged and tolerate greater abuse, with each subsequent class upping the ante because they’ve just been through it themselves.
And unlike groups, like college bands, where an adult is theoretically in charge, in fraternities “we have the inmates running the prison,” he said. “They have ultimate power over the lives of their peers, and incredibly bad things happen.”
A Death in California
Officials at California State University at Northridge determined this month that hazing was involved in the death this past summer of a pledge who passed out, blistered and barefoot, during a fraternity-ordered hike that continued after the pledges ran out of water. The fraternity involved, Pi Kappa Phi, was suspended, and later permanently withdrew from the university. Fraternities at Northridge are now required to submit student-recruitment plans in advance and offer new training programs for members.
“Hazing is stupid, senseless, dangerous, and against the law in California,” the university’s president, Dianne F. Harrison, said in a written statement. “It is a vestige of a toxic way of thinking in which it was somehow OK to degrade, humiliate, and potentially harm others. It has no place on this or any university campus, in any student club or organization, and it will not be tolerated.”
At the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, the national fraternity Tau Kappa Epsilon kicked out the campus chapter’s president this month as police officers were investigating whether fraternity members might have slipped date-rape drugs into partygoers’ drinks. The chapter president was charged with several drug-related crimes, and the university suspended the chapter during the investigation.
Required to Go Coed
And at Wesleyan University, students and faculty members who have blamed all-male fraternities for fueling sexual assaults won a victory on Monday, when the president and chairman of the Board of Trustees announced that all of the university’s residential fraternities must start admitting women within three years.
That decision affects two fraternities that have residences on the campus. Wesleyan has only one sorority, which doesn’t have an on-campus residence.
A third fraternity at Wesleyan had a campus residence, but students were barred from living in it this month after a woman attending a party was seriously injured in a fall from a third-floor window. That fraternity, Beta Theta Pi, was also prominently mentioned in an article about fraternity abuses that appeared this year in The Atlantic.
The announcement ending all-male membership did not mention any abuses, but was framed as a gesture of equal opportunity for women. “Our residential Greek organizations inspire loyalty, community, and independence,” wrote the president, Michael S. Roth, and Joshua Boger, the board chairman. “That’s why all our students should be eligible to join them.”
National leaders for Delta Kappa Epsilon, one of the two fraternities affected by the decision, objected that the announcement “does not mention a single specific problem that this decision is intended to resolve, not to mention how or why this step would resolve such problem(s).”
