Their Students Died at Frat Parties. Now These Presidents Are Trying to Make Sure That Never Happens Again.

In April, three prominent college presidents sat before an audience in Chicago of dozens of campus officials. They were there to talk about their experiences as leaders during one of the most tragic campus crises imaginable: when a student dies at a fraternity party.

For Eric Barron of Pennsylvania State University, it was Tim Piazza, who died after becoming intoxicated and falling down stairs in a fraternity house in February 2017. For F. King Alexander of Louisiana State, it was Maxwell Gruver, who died at a hospital following an initiation ritual in September. And for John Thrasher of Florida State, it was Andrew Coffey, a fraternity pledge found unresponsive the morning after a party in November.

The trio was pleased to see in attendance so many administrators who felt strongly about making Greek life safer. But none of the three really wanted to be there. Alexander put it this way: “Eric and John and I have kind of become experts in something we never wanted to become an expert in.”

The three men are among a small, but growing, cohort of college presidents who say they are tired of worrying every weekend that a student is going to die at a fraternity event. Led by Barron of Penn State, they are trying to spur a national charge against the bad behavior that has become synonymous with such organizations.

Conversations around reforming fraternities and sororities tend to be cyclical. A tragedy happens, and campus leaders condemn the incident and demand change. A task force might come together and make recommendations. Then other issues command the institution’s attention. The commitment wavers. The discussion dies down.

Barron and his colleagues stress that this time will be different. But will it?

Since Tim Piazza died at Penn State’s Beta Theta Pi house — when members of the fraternity failed to call 911 for nearly 12 hours, despite his worsening condition — Barron has become the chief spokesman for changing the status quo. If the organizations didn’t clean up their act, he said last year, “We will see many empty houses and then the end of Greek life at Penn State.”

But Barron also knew that he wanted to take his crusade beyond Penn State, to establish a new normal in Greek life. In his view, that means campus administrators taking a more active role in getting the chapters back to their foundational values of leadership and service. It means scaling back the self-governance model that the organizations have long treasured.

It also means creating a “national scorecard” that would make data on fraternity and sorority performance and misconduct publicly available.

To start, Barron proposed the national conference. Amid the most recent wave of high-profile hazing incidents, plenty of presidents were making changes in fraternities and sororities on their own. Why not come together, he thought, and exchange ideas?

That’s how Barron, Alexander, and Thrasher came to share the Chicago stage in April, at an event sponsored jointly by Penn State, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and the University of Iowa. They then got the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities involved, requesting to speak at a June meeting; Barron and Alexander led the discussion. The APLU has asked the three of them to do so again, at the group’s annual meeting in November.

“Do I want to do it? No,” Alexander said. But he feels like he has little choice. His colleagues need help.

The presidents face an uphill battle. They’ll need to work with national fraternity and sorority organizations, and with the alumni who remain closely involved with their individual chapters and often balk at sweeping changes. They’ll need to work with lawmakers to pass stronger anti-hazing statutes. Perhaps most importantly, they’ll have to get students on board.

Deeper Conversation

A year ago, Barron was sitting in a meeting of Big Ten conference presidents, still reeling from Piazza’s death. At one point, he spoke up. I want to have a deeper conversation about the future of Greek life. Does anyone else want in?

Several people did, including Ronnie Green, chancellor of Nebraska at Lincoln, and Bruce Harreld, president of Iowa. The two universities began working with Penn State to organize a conference under the Big Ten’s banner.

As that event was coming together in the fall, another student died at a fraternity party. Then another. Then another.

By the time the APLU’s annual meeting rolled around, in November, outrage over the turmoil at fraternities was reaching a fever pitch. Coffey, the Florida State student, had died less than two weeks earlier. And Matthew Ellis, a Texas State University fraternity pledge, died as the association was meeting.

While at the APLU conference, Barron approached Thrasher, of Florida State. The two men are friends; Thrasher was a Republican state lawmaker during Barron’s tenure as Florida State’s president, from 2010 to 2014.

Thrasher had just suspended all Greek life at Florida State, and he was getting resistance. Why are you punishing everyone for the actions of a few? When Barron suggested working together on a national effort, Thrasher was all ears. The student deaths, he said, “turned some lightbulbs on in everybody’s minds about, what are we doing in this area? And are we doing enough?”

Alexander, too, was trying to figure out what to do about LSU’s fraternities. He had suspended Greek activities right after Gruver’s death, in September, then gradually loosened the restrictions. By October, fraternities could have alcohol at parties again, under the condition that they followed new rules around security and checking IDs.

That privilege lasted one weekend. Too many fraternities, Alexander said, were not taking the rules seriously. He reinstated the alcohol ban until January.

Alexander can rattle off a half-dozen recent fraternity incidents off the top of his head: a racist video at Syracuse University; alcohol-related hospitalizations and sexual-assault reports at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; a crashing wave of hazing allegations at Ohio State University. He wishes he couldn’t.

Making Fraternities Safer

Bringing problems out into the open and promoting confidential reporting have helped lift the veil of secrecy that perpetuates abusive behavior.

• Fraternities Can Change on Their Own
• Colleges Confront the Perils of Frats
• How One University Is Challenging an Ugly ‘Tradition’ Among Students

In February, Alexander got a call from Barron, who told the LSU president about what he and Thrasher had been discussing and said he “thought we’d have the most influence.” A plan was set: The three men would speak together on a panel at the conference in April that Penn State, Nebraska, and Iowa had been organizing.

The event brought together presidents, provosts, and student-affairs administrators from 31 colleges. They envisioned what a national scorecard of fraternity and sorority conduct might look like, and who would benefit.

Parents and students could make informed decisions about which chapters to join. Administrators could spot trends within particular fraternities and sororities. (Some institutions, including Penn State, Florida State, and LSU, are already publishing campus-specific scorecards.)

“SAE had problems all across the nation,” said Barron, referring to Sigma Alpha Epsilon. “But individual presidents didn’t know that individual SAE chapters didn’t have the leadership nationally that they needed.”

The group also talked about what fraternities are supposed to stand for. They talked about new-member recruitment; in sororities, it’s largely standardized, but fraternities’ methods are all over the place. “We found out,” said Green, of Nebraska, “that many of the institutions that were in that workshop were having parallel conversations.”

It became clear that day, Barron said, that college leaders are desperately looking for guidance. “I think there’s been a sense,” he said, “that every university is on their own in dealing with this.”

These presidents have come to the table with vastly different personal opinions of the Greek system. Barron has openly speculated about whether fraternities and sororities should continue to exist. Last year, in an open letter to Penn State’s Greek community, he wrote: “Is there any hope?”

Green was part of Greek life as an undergraduate, as were all four of his children, and he sits on the national board of his fraternity, Alpha Gamma Rho. He has framed his efforts on the campus — designed to improve the relationship between the university and its Greek organizations — around the concept of “Greek vitality,” which he characterizes as a “fresh start.” He sees a clear future for the system, yet acknowledges that there’s work to do.

But the presidents have united around what they have in common: They all believe that fraternities and sororities have value, and can continue to have value if improvements are made.

Officials also want to help end the stigma around reforming Greek life. Presidents who call for change are often painted as anti-Greek and draw the ire of angry students and alumni.

It’s harder to make that argument, Alexander said, if you frame the changes this way: Look, LSU is doing this. Michigan is doing this. Why shouldn’t we?

Bully Pulpit

So far, Barron said, there’s been a broad consensus and head-nodding among his colleagues. It helps that the institutions leading the charge are major public universities with strong Greek cultures.

“The bully pulpit is kind of working in this regard,” Thrasher said. He, Barron, and Alexander are in regular contact, as are their student-affairs teams.

At the April conference, campus officials came up with a handful of recommendations, which Barron and Alexander took to the June APLU meeting for further discussion. They include a resource database for sharing strategies and highlighting which approaches are supported by evidence and data. Plans for a national scorecard, another recommendation, are underway.

At first, Penn State will house the scorecard, hiring more staff to start compiling the data. The hope, Barron said, is that a “national entity” will eventually assume responsibility for maintaining the scorecard. One possibility, Alexander said, is Naspa: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.

Damon Sims, vice president for student affairs at Penn State, said he hasn’t seen anything like this effort in his three decades in academe. “What may be most pleasing,” he said, “is the attention this is getting from presidents.”

When it comes to fraternities and sororities, though, there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen, from Greek lobbying groups and national organizations to alumni and student leaders. Presidents can’t do much on their own.

In fact, they shouldn’t, said Gentry McCreary, a consultant with the Ncherm Group, which advises colleges on risk management. If attempts to carry out new policies are top-down, McCreary said, “that is a recipe for failure.”

The presidents also need to be sure they’re promoting best practices in this national effort, McCreary said. Several colleges have required fraternities and sororities to move the new-member recruitment process from the fall semester to the spring, he said, despite the fact that there’s no research showing that it makes Greek life any safer.

Both the North American Interfraternity Conference and the National Panhellenic Conference said the presidents hadn’t yet reached out to them. A spokesman for the sorority group said the conference was supportive of their efforts and open to collaborating.

A spokeswoman for the interfraternity conference said the organization would like to see presidents “broaden their focus” and compile data for all stiudent organizations, not just the Greek system. The group is already working with some campuses to improve safety in Greek life as part of a pilot program, she said.

Thrasher said representatives from the national Sigma Phi Epsilon organization visited Florida State this summer. “We’ve had some good responses” from the individual fraternities, he said. “Some maybe could do a little bit better.”

Barron has butted heads with Penn State’s Greek student leaders in the past, but he said he’s improved those relationships. Several students were on LSU’s Greek-life task force, Alexander said, and his own daughter held a leadership role in her sorority last year.

At Florida State, Thrasher said, Greek leaders came to a recent Board of Trustees meeting and made presentations in favor of a fee increase for Greek members, which will help the university carry out its new chapter-monitoring policies.

These presidents have resolve, but in talking to them, you sense notes of frustration. “I don’t like to be sitting on a panel talking to other presidents about what we’ve done because I still can’t prevent it from happening,” Alexander said of fraternity injuries and deaths.

“We just can make sure that we’re educating them and providing the resources necessary to help them — helping them make the right decision when one of their brothers passes out on the floor,” he continued. “You don’t just go to the football game and then come back and hope he’s OK.”

Barron knows how hard it is to translate policies into tangible cultural change. Beta Theta Pi had supposedly been a model fraternity at Penn State, in many respects, and had pledged to keep its house alcohol-free. Yet Tim Piazza died there.

And there’s the fact that these conversations tend to ebb and flow. Thrasher put it frankly: “Presidents come and go.” So do students.

Florida State has increased its staffing devoted to fraternity and sorority work, and Thrasher and Amy Hecht, student affairs vice president, talk weekly about Greek life. The university has devoted $1 million to carry out the policy changes, including restrictions on how alcohol can be served at parties. But once things are going well, it’s easy to breathe out a sigh of relief and move on to other priorities.

“The next president that comes here, when I leave,” Thrasher said, “one of the first things I’ll tell that president is, Please don’t let this die.” Implied in his comment is another plea: Please don’t let another student die.

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.

Correction (8/3/2018, 10:51 a.m.): This article originally misstated the name of the national fraternity on whose board Chancellor Green serves. It is Alpha Gamma Rho, not Alpha Phi Alpha. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.