Do Fraternities Have a Place on the Modern Campus?

Throughout their history, fraternities have taken many forms. They began as early-American literary societies, evolved into clubby training grounds for corporate leaders, and entered the 21st century hung over from the legacy of Animal House. They have always reflected the best and worst behaviors of college life, turning out student-government presidents and binge-drinkers alike.

But today people are asking whether fraternities have fallen out of step with the times. A string of ugly incidents has reinforced the image of entitled white men egging each other on to behave badly: chanting racist songs, sharing pictures of incapacitated women, hazing their pledges. At their worst, fraternity houses have been the sites of sexual assaults and accidental deaths.

So how did we get here? And is there a place for fraternities on the modern campus?

In some ways, they appear a relic of a bygone era, in which college was largely the purview of white, well-off men. It’s no surprise, critics say, that these homogenous, secretive groups with vaguely defined membership criteria regularly get themselves into trouble. The first widely publicized Greek hazing death dates back to the 1870s, and reports of misogynistic, racist, and homophobic acts — often fueled by drinking — have dogged fraternities ever since.

Fraternities also have a lot to recommend them. Greek students tend to be more active on campus than their classmates, and, supporters say, well-managed chapters foster leadership, facilitate service, and provide healthy camaraderie. A disproportionate number of elected officials and heads of major companies have gone through the fraternity system. And most members shun the extreme behaviors that get dozens of chapters in trouble each year.

The pressure for further reform may be greater today than any time since the 1990s, when a cascade of lawsuits led to the first modern restructuring of the system. Victim advocates and frustrated college administrators, along with a steady stream of negative news, have been raising questions about what fraternities value and who is overseeing them. In one month alone this spring, 30 chapters were suspended for offensive or dangerous acts.

Change, however, comes slowly, and even those who agree it is needed cannot agree on what should happen or how. Few anticipate the demise of fraternities. While fewer than 400,000 college undergraduate men, about 11 percent of full-time students, are members, the Greek system as a whole is a national force. In addition to having alumni on Wall Street and Capitol Hill, fraternities and sororities own and manage $3 billion in student housing and, according to a Bloomberg investigation, several hundred million dollars more in annual revenue and foundation assets.

• This article is part of a special report on fraternities. Read part 2: “The Mystery of a Pledge’s Death Exposes Fraternities’ Fatal Flaws.”

Yet the 74 organizations that make up the North-American Interfraternity Conference are showing signs of division, with reform-minded ones frustrated by those who talk of problems in terms of a few bad apples. The interfraternity conference recently organized three task forces on hazing, sexual assault, and alcohol, which promise a surgical examination of fraternity culture, in which all treatments are being considered.

“We’ve really got to address the issues and not circle the wagons,” says Walter M. Kimbrough, president of Dillard University and chair of the interfraternity conference’s commission on hazing. “I don’t want to hear about all the good we’ve done. That’s not an acceptable response anymore.”

Colleges, too, are demanding more from fraternities. They are driven, in part, by a more diverse student body that is more likely to reject fraternities’ traditionalist characteristics, experts say. Administrators are quicker now to suspend a chapter, and sometimes their entire Greek system, when reports of problematic behavior surface.

The changes underway suggest that both colleges and national organizations are considering a more active role in overseeing chapters, from who is recruited to how students spend their time once they are there.

But there are enormous challenges to making that increased oversight a reality. Money and time are sticking points in any conversation about reform, and colleges and fraternities each think the other is falling short.

For every one college staff person devoted to Greek life there are 750 students, according to estimates by Mark Koepsell, executive director of the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors. By comparison, the ratio of residence-hall advisers and staff members to students is about one to 20. Greek advisers are also some of the youngest and lowest-paid administrators on campus. Universities depend on interfraternity councils, composed of students, to govern chapters and their members.

Meanwhile, national fraternal organizations are thinly staffed, relying on a cadre of volunteers, often quite young, to keep tabs on their student members. Local alumni advisers have sometimes caused headaches for their national group by defending chapters that have violated fraternity or campus policies. National organizations also hold local chapters at arm’s length. While they issue the charter and set rules and policies, the chapters are legally independent from the main organizations. Chapters also risk losing national insurance coverage if someone is hurt because of a policy violation, such as hazing or underage drinking.

Tension between fraternities and colleges has slowed reform efforts. Fraternity alumni sometimes threaten to withhold donations if they are unhappy with how chapters are treated, and college administrators complain that fraternity headquarters can be unresponsive to their concerns. National fraternities say they are singled out for criticism even though problems like binge drinking and sexual abuse exist on other parts of campus, too. And they’ve criticized campuswide suspensions of Greek activity while one chapter is being investigated as heavy handed.

The biggest question looming over fraternities may be this: Can you substantively improve a system that was poorly structured to start with, one in which the adults live far away from the students they supervise and 20-year-olds are in charge of daily operations? Add to that the sprawl of the fraternal system: 6,100 chapters, with an average of 45 students each, on 800 campuses. It’s easy to see how a single chapter can spin out of control with little warning.

“It’s a bad business model,” says Bradley Cohen, former president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, one of the country’s largest fraternities. “Every four years you have a completely different set of employees, including your CEO and president.”

Skeptics also question how much you can tinker with the social structure of organizations rooted in traditionalism and group loyalty. Several studies have suggested that fraternity life limits students’ exposure to people from diverse backgrounds.

“They come out in ways being more traditional, less challenged than when they started,” says Alan D. DeSantis, who spent hundreds of hours talking to fraternity and sorority members for his 2007 book, Inside Greek U.

Yet college administrators caution against trying to do away with fraternities altogether, arguing that banning them could create a far worse alternative. “It’s in everybody’s best interest to have strong, viable national fraternities and sororities,” says Mr. Kimbrough. “Students will still have the right to associate. They will create unsanctioned, underground groups, and that’s going to be a nightmare for everyone.”

Some people may say that fraternities are facing an identity crisis, but that underplays how resilient and adaptive they have always been. They’ve existed since the time of the American Revolution, appeared in modern form in the early 1880s, survived the Civil War, and rode the waves of social upheaval in the 1960s and ’70s. They thrived in the 1980s, nearly collapsed under the weight of lawsuits in the 1990s, and returned, corporatized and professionalized, in the 2000s.

From their beginnings, fraternities have often operated in opposition to the colleges with which they were affiliated. Secretive and exclusionary, the groups have bothered faculty members and administrators since their earliest days. But at a time when college life was far more austere, offering little in the way of culture and social events, the first fraternities provided a welcome outlet for students, notes Nicholas L. Syrett, author of The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities.

The 20th-century fraternity has gone through many changes. In the 1950s and early ’60s, their conservative values and traditions meshed well with the mood on college campuses, although as Mr. Syrett notes, they were also the source of a steady stream of racist and sexist behavior. In the tumultuous 1970s, their traditionalist views stood in increasingly stark contrast to the political shifts on campus.

Then came Animal House. The 1978 movie touched off a renaissance of sorts, fueled by more relaxed attitudes toward drinking and sex. When the drinking age was raised to 21, in 1984, off-campus fraternity parties became a staple of college life, and the Greek experience changed profoundly. A landmark study conducted in the early 1990s found that 86 percent of fraternity members engaged in binge drinking.

“Kegs, party balls, beer trucks with a dozen taps along the sides, kegerators, 55-gallon drums filled with a mixture of liquor and Kool-Aid, ad infinitum. ‘Tradition’ became a common theme for parties, ranging from ‘tiger breakfasts’ to ‘heaven and hell,’ with variations.”

That reminiscence comes not from a nostalgic fraternity brother, but from the Fraternal Information & Programming Group, a risk-management organization formed in 1987 by national Greek leaders who watched what was happening inside fraternity houses with growing alarm. An increase in fires, serious injuries, and sexual assaults led, inevitably, to lawsuits. Phi Kappa Sigma, for one, estimated that it handled 41 claims from 1990 to 2000, paying out $3.5 million, including more than $1 million for a house fire at the University of California at Berkeley that led to three deaths. Insurance companies began dropping fraternities, and insurance costs rose rapidly.

Fraternities’ relationship with colleges, never easy, became more fraught. “What you had was a divorce,” says Peter F. Lake, a professor at Stetson University College of Law who specializes in higher-education law and policy. “And alcohol broke up the marriage.”

Whether because of internal disorganization, crackdowns by colleges, or their tainted public image, fraternities began losing their appeal in the late 1990s. By one estimate, 50,000 fewer students were members at the end of the decade than at the beginning.

“Fraternities were hemorrhaging from all angles in terms of academics, recruitment, risk management, housing infrastructure, alumni involvement, institutional support, public relations, etc.,” Beta Theta Pi writes on its website. “To suggest the whole fraternal community was in a state of disrepair would be a gross understatement. Disarray was more like it, and Beta Theta Pi, in many respects, was no exception.”

It was also one of several fraternities that tried to turn the tide by creating programming and policies that emphasized academics and character building. National groups like the interfraternity conference adopted or updated policies that explicitly banned hazing and stressed high academic standards and leadership development. Many fraternities required students to follow the guidelines outlined by the national risk-management group.

Sigma Phi Epsilon banned pledging and created the Balanced Man Program, to provide a structured plan for personal development. Phi Delta Theta declared it would become alcohol-free. Pi Kappa Sigma went substance-free. And Beta Theta Pi started Men of Principle, which, among other things, banned hazing and alcohol in recruitment.

Today, more than 15 years after fraternities and their national affiliates began rewriting their rule books, there are signs of progress. Hazing, now illegal in 44 states, is far less of a problem than it used to be, and raucous open-keg parties are also largely a thing of the past, according to college administrators and fraternity officials. Many fraternities require members to take workshops about alcohol and sexual assault, training that has ramped up significantly in recent years. Five fraternities within the interfraternity conference have banned pledging. National leaders now talk about being in the business of men’s development, in which fraternities are living-learning communities.

All of these efforts have put fraternities on the leading edge of fighting risky behaviors, says Peter Smithhisler, president of the North-American Interfraternity Conference.

But frat-house culture is resilient. “The expectation for being Greek is so distorted that it’s affecting decisions and it’s affecting the culture of memberships, of chapters, and maybe even college campuses,” says Brian C. Warren Jr., chief executive of Sigma Phi Epsilon.

Researchers continue to ask whether fraternities breed troublemakers, even as they produce students engaged in campus life.

“The studies are consistent about certain things: alcohol use and abuse, sexual violence and hazing,” says Steve Veldkamp, executive director of the Center for the Study of the College Fraternity and assistant dean of students at Indiana University at Bloomington. “They’re not only found in fraternities and sororities, but absolutely found there to a higher degree.”

A commonly cited study from 2007 found that men in fraternities were three times more likely than other college men to commit rape. A more-recent study, of campus sexual-assault claims from 2011 to 2013, found a different issue. About one-quarter of repeat offenders were fraternity members, even though they make up only 9 percent of students.

“The biggest problem in Greek life is not that everyone in Greek life is a potential perpetrator, but that we create a culture in which perpetrators feel comfortable in our organizations,” says Matthew Leibowitz, a fraternity alumnus and executive director of Consent Is So Frat, an educational group focused on sexual assault prevention.

One of the largest studies of the impact of fraternity and sorority membership, which examined surveys of 100,000 students from 400 institutions, concluded that Greek life may have less influence on behavior than previously thought. But that’s largely because Greek organizations draw students who already drank more heavily and were more socially engaged than their peers in high school. In other words, fraternities may not produce socially active, hard-partying members so much as attract them.

Mr. DeSantis, author of Inside Greek U. and a communications professor at the University of Kentucky, says defending the Greek system has become harder as the years go by. He formed lasting friendships with his fraternity brothers, he says, and has long believed in the positive value of Greek life. But he has had to reckon with the negative forces within it, including a tendency toward anti-intellectualism and gender stereotyping. “These groups aren’t just conservative,” he says. “They’re hyperconservative.”

Fraternities that shun the frat-boy image, he says, are typically the outliers. And he doesn’t buy the argument that fraternities prepare future leaders. “Look at the group you’re drawing from,” he says. “These kids were born on third base.”

This past year he got involved in the development of a living-learning community on campus with a diverse group of students: wealthy and poor, rural and urban, Muslim and Christian. Weekly group discussion on complex topics, like relations between Israel and Palestine, were guided by him and another professor. By the end of the year, the students had not only formed tight bonds, he says, they changed each other’s lives.

“I see that and I think that’s the idea,” says Mr. DeSantis.

As Mr. DeSantis’s experience suggests, college life may be eclipsing fraternities. “If you go back 50 years, fraternities and sororities provided much more developmental experience than most campuses provided,” says Mr. Koepsell, of the Greek advisers association. “Campuses took that model and implemented it. Probably most people would argue that residential life is better than most fraternities and sororities today.”

Sororities may have a better case to make than fraternities about the quality of the residential life they offer. Their chapters are alcohol free and often have a full-time, live-in director. Unlike with fraternities, several studies have shown that sorority members often have higher grades than their non-Greek peers.

Fraternities and colleges today operate in parallel, each trying to shore up the Greek system in its own way. The result is a patchwork of strategies, offering some clues but no big answers, as to how to improve the fraternity experience.

Some fraternities are trying to develop the kind of living-learning community that Mr. DeSantis experienced. They are revising recruitment procedures, adding educational and service opportunities, and, in some cases, hiring house directors.

Over the past eight years, Delta Upsilon has closed 25 percent of its chapters for poor performance, including weak academics and risky behavior, then opened about an equal number of new ones under the close supervision of the national organization, says its executive director, Justin Kirk. The goal, he says, has been to recruit better-quality members and provide a stronger educational experience.

“You can either be about better experience or be about growing,” he says of the differences he’s noticed among the national fraternities. “Where you spend your money says what you prioritize.”

Colleges have also taken distinct approaches to Greek life: push away or pull close. Under the advice of their lawyers, some institutions have decided they’d rather keep the Greek system at a distance.

Other colleges have bucked that trend. At Lehigh University, where 40 percent of students are Greek, all fraternities and sororities must be accredited by the college, using measures including evidence of intellectual development and good facilities management. “I’m more comfortable knowing we’ve done all that we’ve done, rather than keeping fraternities at arm’s length and keeping our fingers crossed,” says John W. Smeaton, vice provost for student affairs.

The University of Maryland runs an eight-person Greek-life office, one of the largest in the country. Headed by Matthew L. Supple, who has worked in Greek life for more than 20 years, the department requires Greek chapters to participate in leadership and educational programming. The university owns 21 of 34 Greek houses and requires a live-in house director for any chapter with more than 15 members.

While problems still regularly occur, says Mr. Supple, strong relationships with the Greek community have helped Maryland respond quickly and cultivate self-policing.

Still, he’s aware of how slippery the university’s hold is on Greek life. His office’s website lists seven chapters that have had their recognition removed and their national charters suspended but continue operating underground.

Some institutions are reworking the financial equation by developing Greek villages, in which the college owns the land and sometimes the buildings and uses the income to finance further support of Greek life. At the University of South Carolina, each of the 20 houses in the Greek Village has a live-in director. Students are billed for room and board, which supports this infrastructure. Their fees also go toward maintenance, a perennial problem with off-campus fraternity houses everywhere.

But most colleges do not have large budgets set aside for Greek life. Mr. Koepsell says it’s a matter of economics. Dorm fees build in the cost of staffing and programming. “In fraternity and sorority life, where is the income coming in to support that level of staffing?” he asks. “They’re independent living structures outside of the community.”

Meanwhile, national fraternities are trying to come up with ideas that could be applied everywhere, through their commissions on hazing, sexual assault, and alcohol. Those reports are due in March.

Commission heads say the problems they are trying to tackle are not confined to fraternity houses, making it tricky to devise solutions.

Edward H. Hammond is president emeritus of Fort Hays State University and chair of the alcohol commission. His group expects to turn in draft recommendations this summer. On the table is the possibility of making every fraternity alcohol-free. It’s an idea that makes sense to Mr. Hammond. “The vast majority of undergraduates in our fraternity houses are not of legal age,” he says. “The campuses, basically, their housing is alcohol-free. So it would be a consistent message.”

Alcohol-free chapters have students with higher grades, fewer problematic behaviors, and lower insurance costs, he says. But for the idea to work, everyone would have to move in the same direction. “If some are not doing it, it’s going to be a lot harder to pull off.”

Among the campuses Mr. Hammond’s commission studied was Colorado State University, whose Greek system went dry following the alcohol-poisoning death of a female student at a fraternity house in 2004. Banning alcohol in housing worked, says Jody Donovan, assistant vice president for student affairs, because it was part of a broader, student-supported effort to limit access to alcohol. “Nobody pointed fingers at one another, which is really significant,” she says.

In other areas, students may be the drivers of change. Some Greek student activists took their national leaders to task this spring after members of the Fraternal Government Relations Coalition suggested that colleges should hold off on sexual-assault investigations until cases worked their way through the legal system. The national leaders seemed more concerned about the treatment of alleged perpetrators than the care of assault victims, students said.

“We’re doing all of this work to educate our students, but that leaves the older generation out of the conversation,” says Julia K. Dixon, a sorority alumna who works with Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment, a nonprofit group. “Right now what we’re seeing is grass-roots groups trying to change culture within Greek life.”

Another glimpse of the future may be found in historically white fraternities in the West and parts of the South. There, in states like California, Texas, and Florida, chapters are more ethnically and racially diverse than those in Indiana or Mississippi, says Christianne I. Medrano, associate director for fraternity and sorority life at Florida International University.

Her university is majority Latino, she notes, and so are the fraternity and sorority chapters. Her colleagues at historically white Greek organizations are “very much pushing for diversity,” says Ms. Medrano, who is former head of the National Multicultural Greek Council. “But you’re combating 400 years of embedded history in this country. You can make change, but it will be gradual change that will take a long time.”

Timeline: Fraternities Through History

Correction (8/4/2015, 9:15 a.m.): This article originally included an incorrect title for Justin Kirk. He is executive director, not president, of Delta Upsilon. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.

Beth McMurtrie writes about campus culture, among other things. Follow her on Twitter @bethmcmurtrie, or email her at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.