"It's a program to control every aspect of Colgate life," said David Horowitz, an author and free-speech advocate, from the steps of the Delta Kappa Epsilon house. "This isn't a battle just about this house or the houses along this row. It's a battle for independence of every student at this school."
Horowitz said this Tuesday at a rally at Colgate University in upstate New York. University officials have announced that the school will purchase the fraternity and sorority houses, and around 300 students (on a campus of around 2700) protested.
Horowitz is trying to frame this as noble college students in search of free expression in one corner, the evil PC campus administration invading student privacy in the other. Animal House vs. Dean Wormer, if you will. I'll tell you why he's wrong after the break.
Some relevant background: In November 2000, a first-year Colgate woman student and her two high school friends from neighboring colleges left a party at Colgate's DKE fraternity house, the very site where Horowitz tossed down the gauntlet the other day. A male partygoer offered them a ride, which they accepted. Heavily intoxicated, he promptly crashed the car, killing the three women and a fourth passenger.
The deaths of four young people at a 2,700-student campus registered deeply, and grieving administrators developed strategies to combat student drinking. They've admitted that purchasing the Greek houses is a go-for-broke, Hail-Mary option, but the administrators insist that they can better reduce binge drinking and raucous parties if the school owns Greek houses, and requires fraternities and sororities to abide by the same campus policies as non-Greek students.
Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. But if colleges have any basic obligation to their students, it's to ensure they don't wind up in a morgue. If buying up the Greek houses blows up in Colgate's face, it wouldn't be the first time a college administration screwed up. But this ain't totalitarianism either. By any means.