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Update, Chico State

In light of a student drinking death and other hideous things (background here), the school’s president has just shut down all fraternities and sororities. No Greek life of any kind is permitted. Greek buildings must cover up the letters on their facades.

Addressing a gathering of the Greek community in the Bell Memorial Union Auditorium, he said students don’t get a “free pass” for allowing a brother to drink 21 shots on his 21st birthday, and “pass out in his vomit.”

… Zingg told the Greeks they will not be able to recruit or have socials until the spring semester, at which time a re-education and reinstatement program will be developed.

Having read the sorry history of this shit-faced school, UD isn’t hopeful about the re-education bit. She believes, as she wrote in the background post she linked to in her first paragraph, that all current Chico State students must be told to leave. All must transfer. A new class of students will then be admitted to a campus with permanently shut down fraternities and sororities.

Margaret Soltan, November 15, 2012 7:37PM
Posted in: demon rum

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9 Responses to “Update, Chico State”

  1. Willy Wildcat Says:

    Thank heavens we have people like you. People who have a career in higher education and should understand its values, yet you are advocating the shutdown of an entire university. English teachers, get a new job. Custodians, get a new job. Students, get a new school.

    Most of chico’s students are from its service area (adjacent counties) the next closest state university is Sacramento state. 100 miles away. In the midst of millions of dollars in budget cuts where in the world do you get the idea we can put 13000 more students into our already over crowded CSU system?

    Maybe you’re trying to be funny or tongue-in-cheek; but if you can tell me honestly that we should shut down a public university for isolated incidents of student binge drinking while most of the campus community is not partaking in such activities, I would have to say you’re just plain dumb..

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Willy: Today, Chico’s president shut down its entire Greek system. That’s step one. If his re-education plan works, great. Keep the students, re-open the fraternities and sororities. If it doesn’t, start over.

    Re-read what I wrote, Willy. No one’s shutting down your school. The idea is to remove all of the current students and admit a completely new class of students to a new, non-Greek Chico.

    These aren’t isolated incidents. Read the history of Chico. Rapes, hazing, deaths, riots. An appalling record, and this notorious reputation makes it appealing to drunks. Somehow that culture, that long ongoing sordid story, has to end.

    As for where the students go: There’s always online education. If you can’t be on a campus without tearing it to shreds, you should stay home.

  3. francofou Says:

    Sounds worse than Groucho State.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29E6GbYdB1c

  4. Margaret Soltan Says:

    HA! Never saw that one before, francofou. Thanks.

  5. Mike S. Says:

    It pains me to see UD advocating collective punishment, both in theory and at such a scale.
    Seriously, there are more than fifteen thousand undergrads at Chico State, most of whom had nothing to do with the matters at hand, but throwing them all out is the corrective method you consider reasonable. Jesus Christ on a crutch.

    You might want to remove FIRE from your blog-roll, as you clearly don’t share their values.
    [Also, breach of contract doesn’t even cross your mind…]

    This is the last time I’ll ever read your blog, b/c its now clear that you’re fit to be institutionalized.

  6. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Mike S. – Is Zingg having closed all the fraternities and sororities also collective punishment?

  7. dave.s. Says:

    In your earlier posting about Chico (and it’s durable! When I went to college 43 years ago Chico already had its reputation) you said “recent Chico State presidents have tried, and tried hard. Faculty were almost totally uncooperative (“[F]aculty do not perceive it as their responsibility… to deal with this serious problem.”), despite the fact that, as the two presidents who wrote the article note, “they have tremendous influence on their students.” The presidents suggest shutting down the fraternities.”
    So I’m kind of puzzled why you suggest that the students have to go, but don’t have a similar proposal for firing the faculty? There’s also justice to Willy Wildcat’s remark – Chico is sort of EOTKU for the rest of the state and there are a lot of decent kids from Redding and Mt Shasta for whom it’s the best nearby option.
    My vote would be with shutting down the frats and announcing and enforcing serious penalties for public drinking, etc., to try and change the culture.

  8. Margaret Soltan Says:

    dave.s.: You don’t fire the faculty; they are not the campus group causing its destruction. To be sure, they should take some of the blame for allowing the school’s deep culture of alcoholic violence and self-destruction to take root over so many decades. It would be great to get from the faculty senate a mea culpa, and a pledge to work harder once the new Chico State emerges.

    The frats will re-open next semester. For awhile, the shock therapy of having shut them will improve their behavior. Then the synergy of a town that just wants to make money off of drunks, rampant advertising, and the same old traditions and shitheads, will again start producing dead twenty-year-olds.

  9. Brett Says:

    I sort of took your shut it down and send ’em all somewhere else idea as a little bit tongue-in-cheek. It’s not really possible; a school that tried to expel students who haven’t committed any infractions would soon cease to exist except as a source of revenue for the lawyers hired by student families. And those students exist, along with those who may be guilty of something but who were never caught.

    You mention part of the problem; the town culture that makes money off student misbehavior and the alcohol over-consumption that leads to the misbehavior. That would still exist and the new students would probably become part of it before long. The larger culture of how to “do college” in the U.S. does not focus on academic work. MTV did not air a show called “MTV Study Hall,” but one called “MTV Spring Break.” The new students would come largely pre-primed to care more about their bacchanal than their baccalaureate — itself too often a mixture of classes that don’t teach much of anything anyone needs to know, such a how to communicate ideas, organize thoughts, reflect on life and the human condition and explore the natural world.

    Even were the current student body of Chico State sent elsewhere en masse, the legacy they brought from the culture around them would haunt the campus: Classes don’t matter. Partyin’s fun. He or she is hot, Mom and Dad ain’t here and the dean can’t do a damn thing about it.

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