Get the Keg Out of the Frat House

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/opinion/frats-college-partying-pledging.html

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Fraternity initiation season has just begun and already an 18-year-old freshman is dead. An investigation into the death of the student, who had been drinking at Louisiana State University’s Phi Delta Theta house, will most likely point to a familiar culprit: the toxic brew of alcohol and hazing.

The Louisiana case is only the latest example in a horrifying but persistent trend. At Penn State, 14 Beta Theta Pi members will soon face a criminal trial because a pledge, or new member, died of traumatic brain injuries in February. They are accused of ordering him to drink until he could barely stand.

Alcohol is the wellspring of most fraternity vice, and evidence shows that reducing drinking at chapters makes them safer — and not just for fraternity brothers. According to the National Institute of Justice, women who frequent frat parties are more likely to become victims of “incapacitated sexual assault.” Many fraternity brothers and alumni maintain that fraternities shouldn’t be blamed for excessive drinking — that it is just a part of college life — but the numbers tell a different story.

Study after study has shown that fraternity men are the heaviest drinkers on campus. According to Harvard public-health research, considered the most definitive, 86 percent of men living in chapter houses binge on alcohol, twice the level of those who live elsewhere. A University of Maine survey found that three-quarters of fraternity members report they’ve been hazed, including being forced to drink into unconsciousness.

In the 1990s and 2000, Phi Delta Theta — the same fraternity as in the L.S.U. case — lost three members to alcohol. One died in an initiation ritual, another while driving drunk on a motorcycle. A third died during a house fire; he was so drunk that he didn’t flee. The fraternity banned alcohol at its chapter houses, and since 2000, injuries and sexual assaults have become much less common. Insurance claims plunged 90 percent.

Phi Delta Theta has mostly stayed out of the headlines until now, but as the death at L.S.U. shows, efforts to cut down drinking require constant vigilance. The success of public health campaigns provides an apt comparison: They haven’t eliminated smoking or drunken driving, but they have saved millions of lives.

Banning pledging, the dangerous monthslong initiation period, also helps. For about a decade, Sigma Alpha Epsilon had more hazing and alcohol-related deaths than any other fraternity; it banned pledging altogether in 2014, and since then insurance claims have dropped from an average of 13 a year to two, and no one has died from hazing or drinking. Enforcement has been key: More than 30 chapters have been closed for alcohol violations.

Measures that cut down on hazing and drinking don’t just protect students from danger, they can also shield their finances. When lawsuits proliferated and insurance premiums soared in the 1980s and 1990s, fraternities risked losing coverage for their considerable wealth, which includes more than $3 billion in real estate. They, with their insurers, created plans that excluded claims related to underage drinking, hazing and sexual assault.

It makes sense that fraternities didn’t want to provide insurance that, in effect, subsidized bad behavior. But few undergraduates seem to know that their chapters’ insurance policies won’t protect them when the worst happens. Chapter presidents and other officers — even if they didn’t participate in hazing — can become defendants in hazing claims. Plaintiffs will go after their families and seek to collect on their homeowners’ policies.

Even with all their bad behavior, fraternities are more popular than ever. Undergraduate membership in the North-American Interfraternity Conference, which represents most of the oldest and largest fraternities, has soared by 50 percent over the last decade. As many as one in six men who attends a four-year college full time belongs to a fraternity. This year, more than 100,000 young men will pledge. Compared with their peers, members of Greek organizations report greater well-being, a stronger sense of community and better preparation for postcollege life. Fraternities’ vast alumni networks help catapult them into successful careers.

Reforming, not abolishing, these powerful organizations represents the best hope for confronting their dangerous legacy of drinking, hazing and sexual assault. Fraternities celebrate their values of friendship, honor and leadership; alumni must force young members to live up to those principles. Colleges can also do more to hold fraternities accountable, starting with collecting and making public any information about alcohol-related hospitalizations associated with local chapters.

From the outset, fraternities have struggled with a kind of split personality. In 1776, the first Greek-letter group, the Phi Beta Kappa Society, was born in a tavern. It has since transformed itself into the pre-eminent organization for college scholars. Fraternities have a choice: They can do nothing about their original sins, or they can honor the nobler side of their traditions and work toward reform. With privilege comes responsibility.