Everywhere you look in the media these days, there's another unfortunate event happening within the realm of Greek life; the death of a pledge here, the assault of a young woman there. While I am very pro-Greek life, I recognize some changes need to be made before we as a community can be defensive about the assertion by others that Greek life shouldn't exist.
Over the weekend of February 8-11, I was able to attend a conference held by the Association of Fraternal Leadership and Values. The conference, called AFLV Central, was three and a half days' worth of informational speakers whose topics ranged from risk management and sexual assault to networking and racism. I learned so much over this weekend, but I was more overwhelmed at how much about Greek life that I didn't know. I had preached that the Fraternity and Sorority Life at my campus was not like other campuses. "We don't haze," I'd say. I'd even argue with people that tried to say Greek life was inherently bad.
The conference opened not only my eyes but those of my colleagues, about the problems perpetuated by Greek life. Many of us were bothered by the things going on, and so we met on the last night of the conference and boiled down the greater issue into more manageable segments. The segments included increased focus on community service, increasing community involvement, ending the part of Greek life's culture that creates a space for sexual assault and working to end hazing.
In our eyes, the Greek community spouts off something along the lines of "We're so tired of everyone saying that Greek life is bad. We raise so much money for philanthropic causes." The problem with focusing solely on philanthropy is that once we raise the money for the cause, we compartmentalize it. After the end of our philanthropic events, we don't think about the causes again until it's time to explain them to a potential new member at recruitment. This has to stop. By focusing on community service, we can better connect Greek life with the causes close to us. This will help to create a better awareness within our community about the importance of what we do.
Along similar lines, my friends and I believe that we need to increase community involvement. We need to reach out to area police, churches, and schools to say "This is Fraternity and Sorority Life. This is what it means to us. We are your allies. We want to better the world." We feel as though many people in the community don't understand why we do the things we do. Reaching out to them and showing them the best version of ourselves will help with the perception of the Greek community in our area.
A behemoth of a problem that needs addressed is the culture of sexual assault that is permitted, whether voluntarily or subconsciously, by certain parts of Greek life. With the rise of the #MeToo movement, women's stories of sexual harassment and assault are being heard. We must not forget that sexual assault affects our male counterparts as well. In order to increase awareness and decrease ignorance, we must have conversations with the members of our community about the behaviors and consequences that constitute sexual assault.
We should also reach out to other organizations on campus that work closely with Title IX. It's no secret that the Title IX resources on our campus aren't readily available for students. Up until recently, the university's Title IX resources website was just a list of resources, without any real stance on the policy. Reforming this can help our students understand the policy and how it can help them.
Finally, we need to end the culture of hazing that affects some organizations in Greek life. I'll admit that for a very long time, I was ignorant of it happening. When I first joined my chapter, I didn't believe that anyone hazed. I thought it was all just a plot line from a movie about college. When my friends and I discussed possible solutions to this, we kept saying the same thing: "How could anyone haze someone that is supposed to be their brother/sister? How could they not value their safety above all else?" It was brought up that hazing is a culture that is perpetuated by the statement "I haze because I was hazed."
How do we change that? It starts with digging very deep into the psychology of group hierarchy and breaking down our old ways, followed by renegotiating the way we engage with not only our new members, but each other as well. Hazing is a very complex problem and will take every single member of fraternity and sorority life being actively engaged in the process to grow out of hazing. While this is a daunting task, I think that we can do it.
I don't claim to have the answers to everything, but I do know one thing is for sure: Greek life is a beneficial experience, but right now the issues with it are too strong to ignore and must be fixed collaboratively.
