Moralizing on frat socializing

Those words came from “Ivy ’68” in a comment on the Daily Princetonian website.

With alumni who write gems like this as online comments, is it any wonder that students at Princeton are often called elitists?

I hope I’m not the only one repulsed by the display of moral superiority from many ‘Prince’ commenters on this week’s stories about Greek life on campus. Making people do dangerous things is bad. Duh. But it’s sad that Princetonians try to use that fact to climb on a high horse and look down on those who pledge fraternities and sororities.

Yes, I know that ‘Prince’ commenters, especially alumni, aren’t a representative sample of the student body. (Thank God.) But I think they reveal an undercurrent of resentment held by some on this campus for members of Greek organizations.

Unfortunately, I fear that this series of articles will serve to reinforce such attitudes among those who hold them. Let’s not forget that the hazing horror stories we hear from John Burford ’12 are, by his own admission, representative only of his experience in Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and it’s incredibly unfair to extrapolate his account to other fraternities or to the sororities. Further, for all we know, Burford’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon pledge brothers may disagree with his characterization of the circumstances of his experience, but they’re not free to speak out.

(Full disclosure before I move on: I participated in rush this year, but I didn’t pledge a fraternity.)

I don’t think that the recent articles’ one-sidedness — necessitated by the unavoidable constraints on potential sources and not a fault of the writers — is the only reason we’ve seen people pile on the Greek organizations. The haughty attitude inspired by the series is fueled in part by the administration’s own stance on the groups.

Here’s one of President Tilghman’s many criticisms of the Greek organizations, as reported in the ‘Prince’: “ ‘Those [students] who made the decision to participate in the Greek system were essentially engaging in organizations where they were going to meet people very similar to themselves,’ President Tilghman said. ‘It looked and felt a lot like self-segregation. And that was a problem for us.’ ”

I take issue with the use of the term “self-segregation” instead of “self-selection,” since the former falsely implies that members of Greek organizations don’t associate with those outside the system. But more importantly, the phenomenon President Tilghman is describing, where students join groups to meet “people very similar to themselves,” exists for lots of student groups. Student groups are founded to help like-minded students associate with each other. In political groups, that basis might be ideology. In performing arts groups, that basis might be talent or interest in music. Fraternities and sororities are organized on the basis of a variety of shared social preferences. There isn’t anything inherently bad about that.

What’s dangerous is the implication that any socioeconomic homogeneity within fraternities or sororities is the result of some impropriety. Surely President Tilghman understands that there are likely major confounding variables at play here. Ethnicity and class may somehow relate to the deeper factors that lead a person to rush a fraternity or sorority, but surely they’re not the direct causes.

Nassau Hall’s attitude has persisted since President Tilghman’s negotiations with the fraternities and sororities six years ago. As described in the third article of the series, President Tilghman demanded that the Greek organizations push rush to the spring, got an unfavorable response and decided, as a result, never to engage with them again. I’m hardly an expert negotiator, but in my eyes, a sincere effort to communicate with the fraternities and sororities would not begin and end with an absolute demand for unconditional concessions on the students’ part.

But it’s when President Tilghman characterizes rush as “preying on very vulnerable freshmen, at a moment when they are feeling most vulnerable,” that she really misses the mark. This gets to the heart of the problem with the vitriol from the people who generally resent those in Greek organizations: It’s clear they either don’t understand or refuse to acknowledge the benefits conferred on students. It’s precisely because freshmen are so vulnerable that fraternities and sororities are valuable. Just like athletic teams, they give freshmen a network of friends in a place where they know almost no one. Some might argue that freshmen would be better off making friends in their classes, residential colleges and student organizations, but there’s nothing to stop members of fraternities and sororities from making use of all the other social networks the University provides. Further, these networks, particularly the residential colleges, are often not nearly cohesive enough to compete realistically with Greek organizations.

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Extreme hazing is an important concern, and it’s great that we’re seeing some valuable dialogue on the topic right now, but we ought not let the worst stories about Greek life dominate our entire thought process on the subject. Nassau Hall may want to maintain its moralistic stance forever, and there are certainly some students here who would like to do the same. But the holier-than-thou act is really wearing thin.

Jacob Reses is a freshman from Linwood, N.J. He can be reached at jreses@princeton.edu.