If I may quote myself. It’s not just the notorious cases, like Cal Poly and San Diego State. More and more frats are discovering that their secrecy, their clean cut college guy front, and their ability to form themselves into tight loyal gangs, means that organized crime of all kinds can flourish in-house. The drug trade is simply the organized crime of choice.
Problem is, drugs bring another crime: the crime of violence. These frat boys pack guns. There’s their drug gang and your drug gang and… you know. Maybe you even live in Chicago.
Serious university drug markets almost always center in and around the frats. Unserious university drug markets, like those at preppie schools like Wesleyan, tend to be a bunch of unarmed deadhead friends making a bit of money selling stuff to their roomies. But serious university drug markets, like the one at the Delta Chi fraternity at Northern Arizona University, do not fool around.
Why hasn’t Northern Arizona University shut down Delta Chi, with its history of drug sales? Some of its members, according to reports, were involved in some way in the shooting (one person dead, three injured) that took place yesterday on NAU’s campus. It’s too soon to know if the shootings were drug-related, but let’s say that they were. Why was Delta Chi still in operation?
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Correction: In the original post, I mixed up the University of Arizona in Tucson and Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. I’ve now corrected that, thanks to a reader who noticed the error.
October 12th, 2015 at 7:08AM
University of Arizona is in Tucson
University of Northern Arizona is in Flagstaff.
Different institutions… but your point still holds.
October 12th, 2015 at 1:08PM
john: Thanks for the correction! I’ve changed the post. UD
October 12th, 2015 at 2:55PM
that the University of Arizona has shut six frats down is fascinating.
October 12th, 2015 at 3:10PM
john: It’s possible that with every shut-down you get a new one – a substitute. That may be how you keep the numbers up – although I suspect there’s a pretty steady attrition….