I never much cared for dealing with fraternities. They are in the news, now, for plenty of reasons.
As a professor and academic advisor here at our university, I really had no choice. The so-called Greek system is everywhere, and more so than at many institutions on this small, expensive campus with a more disproportionately privileged student population than any other institution I’d even encountered.
As an undergraduate, I personally witnessed drunk women who, as they were about to be scooped away by frat guys, were rescued by their friends and removed from frat parties. I’ve seen not merely boorish behavior from these frat man-children, violent young males with an entrenched sense of privilege, but seen it in action as part of their rites of passage.
At the University of Iowa, I frequently walked past frats on my way back to Mayflower Hall.
They often — and I do mean often — stood on their balconies, thinking themselves hilarious as they shouted Eddie Murphy’s the lines of Billy Ray Valentine from “Trading Places”: “We can make it baby! Me and you!” and then, after not getting the acknowledgment he wanted: “You BITCH!”
They’d yell them at any woman who dared walk past. It was really the only way to get back to the Mayflower dorm, too, when the campus bus system wasn’t convenient.
The frat guys thought they were hilarious, doing that — sexually harassing women as they walked past. They laughed their asses off. They high-fived and congratulated one another for each such puerile, sexually aggressive act
It was paint-by-numbers: The frat guys circle like sharks after a shoal, winnowing down a woman’s circle of friends until they can isolate her.
I witnessed it time and again.
In the meantime, these emotionally childish, morally bankrupt boys, who insist on calling themselves men, enjoy broad, organized support and protection.
As a professor, I learned that because of the money they throw around and they influence they wield through their networking, my advocating to have the entire rapist culture removed was never going to bear fruit.
To my current university’s credit, they did, finally, unable to deny the constant stream of evidence against on frat house, banish it from campus.
Temporarily. A four-year punishment.
In an independent poll among the students, that frat house was voted the place where a woman was most likely to get roophied.