How greek life chapters seem to never be held accountable.
Universities face an overwhelming issue that greek life has become more powerful than the institutions that they reside within. These campuses rely on organizations like greek life to entice students to come attend their schools. Up to 40% of these students may not ever even graduate from some schools. Colleges have become a lifestyle in order to squeeze every penny out of their consumers.
Greek life initially became large because it grew the pleasures of going to college. Fraternities put forward that they could not be shut down due to their right to assemble. Lobbying in Washington has worked very well to help ensure that greek life continues to have these rights at universities, legislation like this prevents institutions from making permanent moves like banning certain groups. One in eight students lives in a greek house today, this is due to greek life enabling colleges to grow by buying up structures around the colleges when they were first put in place.
Colleges aren’t very hard on greek life because they don’t want to anger wealthy donors from greek life or deal with legal fees. A lot of the policies for greek life are set in to protect them from legal issues. Most chapters are self-governed to prevent responsibility from the college or the overall fraternity. Many Student affairs administrators can’t get responses from national higher-ups of Greek life organizations.
People from greek life often take up powerful political careers, which can be worrying for colleges. Because greek life typically has privately owned property, it’s more difficult to have inspections. When they are on campus owned property, there often isn’t enough staff to supervise them. Most greek life related deaths happen around their housing and since these are privately owned it is difficult for colleges to apply supervision.
The abolishment of in loco parentis is a major cause of Greek Life not being held accountable. In the ’60s students didn’t want colleges breathing down their backs. It was in loco parentis that allowed colleges to keep a better eye on the students in the first place, but once this was abolished, students were allowed more freedom in their private life. The insurance of fraternities was moved from the local chapters to the vast higher up organizations in order to enable them to be held less accountable. Fraternities have a system of self-insurance set in place, it involves strict alcohol rules since most incidents occur while these alcohol rules are being broken, in turn, the fraternity is not held accountable, instead, it is the individual that is held accountable, even when there is repeated behavior.
The alcohol rules often never come into play since the people who police these rules are often themselves underage and sworn brothers to each other, the only time someone ever gets in trouble for alcohol is in the case of the crisis management protocol. To ensure that fraternities are not held responsible, there is a crisis management protocol in which all members are encouraged to immediately congregate in a time of crisis and divulge all the facts to each other and get their stories straight. Realistically it would be in a defendant’s self-interest to find a lawyer before the fraternity throws them under the bus. The fraternities offer a lawyer to entice people to divulge all the details to them, but if the person has broken the alcohol rule, then they are no longer self-insured by the fraternity. Payment for the court cases will come from the parent’s insurance fees, often ending in large sums of money.
Comentarios