Going to a Frat Party? Atlantic’s Article Says You May be Held Responsible if Things Go Wrong

The latest edition of The Atlantic should be required reading for all students in or entering college and the people who love them. It features a shocking and powerful article about college fraternities by writer Caitlin Flanagan.

The article opens with a story of a frat partygoer who decided to put a bottle rocket up his behind. Another partier falls off a deck while trying to record this moment. The lawsuit that results brings us to the main issue of the article.

The writer provides a description of college fraternities. They are “as old, almost, as the republic” and they, “emanated in part from the Freemasons.” She notes that many very successful men have been fraternity brothers, and that these organizations have done a great deal of community and charity work. However, they “ also have a long, dark history of violence against their own members and visitors to their houses, which makes them in many respects at odds with the core mission of college itself.”

She relays the history of fraternities from 1825 at Union College to a revival thanks to Animal House in the 80s. When the national drinking age was raised to 21, fraternities became a primary source of alcohol to college students.

Thus, there have been many lawsuits against fraternities for issues such as “manslaughter, rape, sexual torture, psychological trauma” as well as, hazing, and many forms of physical injuries. Ms. Flanagan states that since 2005, “more than 60 people—the majority of them students—have died in incidents linked to fraternities, a sobering number in itself, but one that is dwarfed by the numbers of serious injuries, assaults, and sexual crimes that regularly take place in these houses.”

The writer asks and answers the question, “why don’t colleges just get rid of their bad fraternities?” The answer is that fraternity alumni are good donors, fraternities are a source of housing, and fraternities have become so politically and legally powerful that they successfully fight regulation.

Are kids in jeopardy in frat houses? An eighth of college students live in fraternities or sororities. They generate billions of dollars. Lawsuits provide a public record of the problems. These usually involve one of four issues: binge drinking, sexual assault, hazing, or physical or emotional injury. Ms. Flanagan uses the graph below to demonstrate their frequency:

She spends a great deal of time discussing stories of frat party mishaps. She discovered that, “kids fall—disastrously—from the upper heights of fraternity houses with some regularity. They tumble from the open windows they are trying to urinate out of, slip off roofs, lose their grasp on drainpipes, misjudge the width of fire-escape landings.” Students fall from fraternities far more than they fall from dorms or other buildings.

The lawsuits against fraternities were a, “serious threat to their existence.” First, fraternities established their own self funded insurance system, the Fraternity Risk Management Trust. Then they created a risk-management policy called the Fraternal Information and Programming Group (FIPG). This group publishes “a risk-management manual—the current version is 50 pages—that lays out a wide range of (optional) best practices.” The writer states that, “I have read hundreds of fraternity incident reports, not one of which describes an event where massive amounts of alcohol weren’t part of the problem—and the need to manage or transfer risk presented by alcohol is perhaps the most important factor in protecting the system’s longevity.”

Here is a key idea that college students and their parents must understand: these “risk-management” policies are designed “to establish that the young men being charged were not acting within the scope of their status as fraternity members. Once they violated their frat’s alcohol policy, they parted company with the frat.” Thus they are no longer covered by the frat’s insurance. Instead of the frat or the university being liable, individual kids are held responsible.

Fraternities have lots of rules. If they are violated, the violator stands alone, “’I’ve recovered millions and millions of dollars from homeowners’ policies,’ a top fraternal plaintiff’s attorney told me. For that is how many of the claims against boys who violate the strict policies are paid: from their parents’ homeowners’ insurance. As for the exorbitant cost of providing the young man with a legal defense for the civil case (in which, of course, there are no public defenders), that is money he and his parents are going to have to scramble to come up with, perhaps transforming the family home into an ATM to do it. The financial consequences of fraternity membership can be devastating, and they devolve not on the 18-year-old ‘man’ but on his planning-for-retirement parents.”

There are clear procedures to be followed when something goes wrong. However, “the interests of the national organization and the individual members cleave sharply as this crisis-management plan is followed.” The plan is outlined in the article. However, the author notes that, “the young men who typically rush so gratefully into the open arms of the representatives from their beloved national—an outfit to which they have pledged eternal allegiance—would be far better served by not talking to them at all, by walking away from the chapter house as quickly as possible and calling a lawyer.”

The author does provide a counter point that outlines the benefits of fraternity participation. She speaks with a representative from a Greek organization who presents compelling and powerful reasons to join a fraternity. She quotes a mother who says that her son’s fraternity was critical to his success in college, “Her son had waited until sophomore year to rush, and freshman year he had been so lonely and unsure of himself that she had become deeply worried about him. But everything changed after he pledged. He had friends; he was happy.”

Here is the key question: should college students who make poor choices, usually under the influence of alcohol, be held personally responsible when there are terrible consequences? To what degree should the organization that facilitated that consumption be called to account? Right now, if you step into a fraternity, member or not, there is a chance that those consequences may be laid at your feet.

I have boiled down a detailed article to less than 20% of the whole. I urge you to read the entire piece.

Joining a fraternity in college can help a student make friends, do good work, and have an active social life. It could mean taking responsibility, both personally and financially, for the many ills and issues that plague Greek life.