Across the nation, we’re repeatedly seeing both calls and actions to end Greek life when unfavorable incidents occur. 

Just last month, University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan announced that all fraternities at the university were suspended until January, following a Rolling Stone report that a pattern of sexual assault exists among fraternities at the university. The month prior, The Dartmouth, a student newspaper at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, called for the abolishment of the Greek system on its campus. This all follows last spring’s article in The Atlantic titled “The Dark Power of Fraternities,” a piece that in more than 10,000 words describes instances of physical accidents at fraternities and efforts by their national organizations to avoid paying on lawsuits and taking responsibility for them.

While incidents no question do occur in Greek life, these efforts unfortunately take a simplistic approach to dealing with them, calling for the removal of a system that does immeasurable good, as opposed to targeted efforts to deal with the issues that exist amid the Greek system in a constructive way.

At my university, The University of Texas, for example, university statistics show that last year alone 29,148 hours of community service were completed by members of the Greek community and $654,101 was raised for philanthropic causes by them, this along with them awarding $98,875 in scholarship money and 61 percent of them achieving above the average undergraduate GPA. On the national scale, UT statistics tell us that 85 percent of Fortune 500 executives belong to a fraternity, 76 percent of U.S. senators belong to a fraternity or sorority and two of the four women that have served on the U.S. Supreme Court were in a sorority.  

Unfortunately, these statistics rarely make it into analyses of the Greek system. Those spots are too often reserved for the bad that is going on within it, along with calls for the simplistic and detrimental solution of ending it.  

It’s easy to see why ending the Greek system would be an easy move by university administrators. Without this great system that has been overtaken with stereotypes, there isn’t something on campus that can constantly be criticized and blamed for university issues. However, instead of this simplistic, easy and detrimental approach, university administrators would be much better off looking deeply into the issues that exist within the Greek system and coming up with constructive solutions to them. 

I don’t believe that the Greek system in itself -- a system that prizes unity, good works and success -- is inherently bad, and to act like it is robs students across the nation of the opportunity to be part of something that can help them succeed in immeasurable ways.