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Sunday, January 09, 2005
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UD at NU: FRATERNITY-MOCKING ENGLISH MAJOR
Throughout last year, University Diaries noted the demise of quite a few alcohol-poisoned American college students, especially students attending school in states like Oklahoma and Colorado, whose universities and university towns are death-traps for the unwary alcoholic (see UD, October 20, 2004). In response to the problem, a number of universities - among them, UD’s alma mater, Northwestern, which is featured in a long article about the problem in today’s New York Times Magazine- are banning alcohol from campuses, or dorms, or fraternities, or parties, or whatever. (The NYTimes writer doesn’t note that Evanston itself, home of NU, is home also to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.) Some schools, like Alfred University, have banned fraternities and sororities altogether: “The Greek system is beyond repair,” says the chair of Alfred University’s board of trustees. Fraternity membership is in any case down 25% since 1990; and it’s possible that these new constraints upon their raison d’etre will naturally diminish them over time until they are no more…. The Times article helps UD understand why she, a “fraternity-mocking English major” (as the NU grad who wrote the Times piece calls himself), has always found fraternities and sororities pretty rank. Like a lot of people who become professors (see UD post dated February 11, 2004), UD is both group-averse and kitsch-phobic. Life in frats, judging by the Times article, represents a distillation of her dreads: it’s about sloppy sentiment in large gatherings. So, for instance, in place of the pissed-boy bonding at the heart of frat life, reformers have inaugurated equally embarrassing alcohol-free campaigns: frats, according to the Times, are now about “Brotherhood - Our Substance of Choice,” and “Balanced Man” programs. Ick. |