Fall of the frat house: Students target Greek life amid America?s racial reckoning

But now, inspired by the nation’s racial reckoning and accelerated by the pandemic-induced social isolation, students once affiliated with Greek life have built a new movement calling for its abolition.The movement, however, has met resistance from national organizations, university administrators and some students, who have pushed for change and increased efforts to expand diversity as an alternative to dismantling Greek life altogether.The result is a confrontation increasingly familiar on college campuses: establishment leaders and students who support them believe they can help create change from within, while other students are determined to dismantle the institutions they say have failed them.As students returned to campuses for an unprecedented school year, they got on group texts and inter-school Zooms, trying to figure out how to harness the energy from their summer of activism to take down the fraternity and sorority chapters that still stand.“We are in a climate where traditionally White institutions are being targeted, and there is nothing more traditional and White and elitist than fraternities on a college campus,” said Alan Desantis, author of the 2007 book “Inside Greek U” and a longtime fraternity adviser. They shared anonymous stories of racism and sexual assault experienced on campuses, many of them allegedly involving members of Greek letter organizations.“Once I had sex with a white guy in a fraternity and afterward when we came downstairs everyone high-fived him and say he finally lost his ‘Black virginity’ as if I was nothing more than a box to be checked off,” one post read.At Washington University in St. Louis, more than 300 students joined a July 14 virtual town hall to discuss the future of Greek life. But that was not the case.As they learned, a national Greek letter organization can decide to preserve a chapter by sending one of its own representatives to campus to recruit a fresh class of brothers.Jack Kreman, CEO of the national Delta Tau Delta organization, did not allow American University’s chapter to disband simply because Paye-Reichert and his brothers voted to end it.“No decision has been made regarding the future of the chapter at American University at this time,” he said, adding that “the level of diversity in the local chapters is determined by the choice and preference of the local members.”The national organization’s decision can only be challenged by members of university administration or a school’s Panhellenic or Interfraternity Council — both groups that have historically supported Greek life as a hallmark of campus life and promoted its restructuring rather than eradication.Judson Horras, president and CEO of the North American Interfraternity Conference, said the question of abolition is not worth consideration.“It is not going to happen.