There is a persistent, vocal minority of students who year after year advocate the immediate abolishment of fraternities. To get their point across they usually resort to anonymous guerrilla tactics such as midnight poster-hangings, chalking and bouts of guerrilla theater in public places. These methods are understandable because guerrilla tactics act as a force multiplier when you are few in number and need to get a message across. Sometimes these students express their views in columns.
Sean Donahue '96 has historically been at the forefront of these efforts, again making his desires abundantly clear in his column, "College Must Stop Supporting Frats" (Feb. 13, 1995). Plainly, he calls for the immediate destruction of all fraternities and the conducting of a review to determine whether sororities and coeds should be "allowed to continue to exist."
He also says, using dubious reasoning, that fraternities promote anti-intellectualism. He argues that fraternities have the power on this campus, so those students against fraternities must "develop and refine more sophisticated analyses" to make their arguments effective in the face of a more powerful adversary. Follwing this reasoning, fraternity members reject intellectual analysis as a method used by their enemies, so hence they are unintellectual.
Does it follow that you will reject the means of your enemy? Not at all. If your enemy has a good means, you copy him.
Secondly, let's assume (wrongly) that fraternity members are unintellectual in invoking arguments in their defense. Does it then follow that these men are generally unintellectual otherwise? Not at all, and the facts bear this out.
Although academic performance is not a perfect indicator of intellectualism, if we compare the Grade Point Averages of Greeks to those of non-Greeks, we can at least see how intellectual both groups can be in the classroom. In the 1994 Fall term -- when more Greeks pledge than at any other time -- the overall term GPA for all undergraduates was 3.214. Independents had a mean GPA of 3.225. The Greek average was 3.204, putting them .01 below the general average, and .021 below the independents. Fraternity men had a mean GPA of 3.149, putting them .065 below the overall average and .076 below independents, all very small differences.
Some simple subtraction and division will reveal that those men who stay clear of frats are on the average only 2.4 percent more intellectual than those who affiliate themselves, if we assume that doing well at Dartmouth means you're probably a smart person. Regardless, this marginal difference indicates nothing that can be construed as negative against fraternities. Indeed, considering how much more apt frat members are to have very active social lives, drink, party and otherwise waste time, it might actually mean that they are somewhat more intelligent than the others and hence only handicapped very slightly by their lifestyle in the end.
Donahue mentions that an open letter signed by 90 students, faculty members, and alumni was put forth to the administration calling for an end to the fraternity system. If we estimate the pool of faculty and students to be 4,700 people, which is a little low, then all he is saying is that less than 2 percent of the college community wants to take away a system that over half of all men elect to join.
Any movement that is as obviously morally correct as Donahue would have this abolishment seem would need to have more broad-based support than this. Most of the world was against the Nazis. Slavery used to be prevalent, but by the time the U.S. moved to abolish it, there was widespread support. There is widespread support against sexism and racism. Bear in mind there need not be a majority; just more than 2 percent, or even 15 percent. When there was a referendum on the issue in the fall of 1993, a clear majority of the voters were in support of keeping the Greek system.
I would agree with Donahue that there are some respects in which fraternities are problemed; many of their members are indeed sexist and homophobic, and these are two things that must be stopped. It does also follow that sexists are more likely to commit sexual assault than those who truly respect women. But while it follows that people who have those traits would go to a place where they can be more freely expressed, it does not follow that fraternities make men this way. Frats are just not a priori morally wrong.
It is evident in this case that men make the institutions more so than institutions make the men. The men of Dartmouth cannot be brainwashed so much by the social system in one year that they are somehow transformed into sexists and criminals by the time they finish pledging. Proper education must start when people are young, and not by taking away a good system that some of the more raucous, notable ones occasionally abuse.
