Fraternities at Lafayette

Franks Tanks · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 532

I understand it is old news that Lafayette College desires to systematically dismantle the fraternity system, but it appears we may have a new victim. I got a letter from the Presidents office stating that Fiji is basically on double secret probation for 5 years and even one slight offense can result in closing the chapter down.

I understand these fraternities must have some responsibility and play by the established rules but the persecution is out of hand. The charges against Fiji are a few incidences of beer in the house as I can recall. A 21 yo-- with Beer-- call the national guard.

What really upsets me regarding the situation with all the frats, past and present, is that over a century of tradition at a school can be abolished by a few random acts of stupidity of a few kids. Once these frats are gone they are not coming back. Fiji has been at Lafayette college since 1883, and the school flippantly sends out threatening letter!

Also Greek life is an attraction to students considering Lafayette and our peer schools. Lehigh has a very active Greek life and Colgate and Bucknell also have strong Greek systems. If the administration continues to attack the quality of life at the school the quality of students will take a hit. We already force nearly all students to live on campus and all the frats will eventually be gone. Who wants to live in a dorm for 4 years??

This isn't just about one Fraternity, but the entire Greek system dismantling and a disregard for the traditions of the college. What do you guys think about this?

65Pard

Back in the day, we had 19 frats at LC.....College tolerated them because there were not enough dorm rooms to house all.

They provide an opportunity to develop social and leadership skills that dorms do not provide....We all know that lifelong friendships are made in fraternities

Sad that a few bad apples can have such an effect.....better to ban the bad actors from the fraternity than ban the fraternity from campus. That would be more in line with accepted practice in the rest of society.

Pard94 · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 762 Location: Weare, NH

Didn't I just read that 97 Lafayette students were recently busted at a bar downtown for underage drinking? If we keep forcing the kids down into Easton expect more of this. I would think the administration would prefer to keep such instances confined to campus where at least they have some measure of control over the ramifications. I mean the colleges themselves recently came out with the study that concluded the drinking age should be lowered to 18. Why then scapegoat the fraternities for these minor viloations? By allowing fraternities to remain on campus at least the college has the opportunity to deal with "the devil they know". I'm sure the Easton Police are just salivating as kids continue to wander down the hill in ever increasing numbers. I think it is going to take some sort of tragic drunk driving incident or violent crime involving a student for the college to realize that The Bubble on the Hill isn't such a bad phenomenon.
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Pard94

TheTruth · Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 485

You have to understand that things have changed. Back in the 70's, 80's and part of the 90's, the college monitored drinking on campus. As long as no one was hurt, they let the fraternities and students have there fun. late 90's, early part of 2000's, the Northampton DA decided he was going to crack down on underage drinking on college campuses. This meant both Lafayette and Lehigh. Waht this meant was if the College did not police the drinking he would. We had several Homecomings, All-college Day, normal fraternity parties where undercover police were on campus arresting students. The College had to knowingly go along.

What else you have going on is the administration, BOT and faculty are fed up with fraternities. It's the drinking, lack of academic seriousness, lack of diversity, entitlement, etc. Pretty much all the stereotypes. Ever since the mid 90's, the college has taken a hands off policy. Yes they have a greek advisor but that position is a revolving door and they all complain about the same thing, lack of instittuional support for their position and the Greek Sytem.

I'm not anti-Greek even though I was an independent. But or fraternities have tried to hold onto the "Animal House" mentality too long and have been slow to change with the times. The fact of the matter is the students are not as interested in fraternities as they used to be. The college has plenty of housing, more eating options and many more clubs and activities for the students. Fewer students want to lock themselves into one group. Heck, even our football and basketball coaches "strongly discourage" joining a fraternity. I just wish the college had the guts to make the decision to eliminate fraternities. Instead they will let them die a slow death so they don't upset the big donors. What they don't realize is we've already lost about 20 years of future donors from the 80's and 90's. Better to cut your losses now, so you can begin to repair wounds.

Yes the drinking age should be 18. For some reason our society seems to think that lowering the drinking age will lead to more drinking. They need to wake up! If a kid wants to drink, they will find a way. Most kids who drink in college started in hgh school.

it would be a shame to lose Fiji. I'm sure the KDR wouldn't mind and feel they won the war. Is Tom padilla still involved with Fiji? great guy.

Franks Tanks · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 532

bison137 · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 206

Pard94 · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 762 Location: Weare, NH

Pard94 · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 762 Location: Weare, NH

I got my double secret probation letter yesterday too. Sure seems like the boot is cocked back and ready to kick them off campus at any moment now.
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Pard94

The Maroon · Joined: 23 Feb 2007 Posts: 459 Location: Bethlehem, PA

The faternities vs. administration war has been going on since at least the early 90's. There were 12 fraternities then but given that the demographics of the campus had changed--like women---it wasn't surprising that some fraternities dies. I felt like 12 was a healthy number--even thouth I was independant.

Who are the casualties? I haven't kept up--but I think Sigma Nu, Sigma Chi, T-Delt, DU, Phi-Delt, Chi Phi, DTD, SAE and Theta Chi have all closed and I don't think they've been replaced.

I wasn't a huge fan of the greek system, but the social alternative was drinking in a small dorm room. Kind of ridiculous. Also the fraternities did some great fundraisers for local charities.

I never bought the "anti-intellectual" argument. The smartest guy I knew at Lafayette was a DKE---and those dudes were as "Animal House" as it got back in those days. I also knew plenty of sharp T-Delts even though their label was the "dumb football players."

Actually, in a nutshell that's what I didn't like about the greek system--all of a sudden you were chategorized. Also, although I never fully understood it, I guess there was a sort of rivalry between the Fiji football players and the T-Delts...

Kinda stupid....I can see why Frank discouraged membership. Although 94 could shed a lot more light on it than I could.

Fraternities are on the decline nationwide---it's not just Lafayette. One of the things that drives the politically correct crowd crazy is they are segregated by gender and that is apparently armageddon.

When they changed it to make it that freshmen couldn't join, that was a huge blow. To me there was no reason behind that except to deal a blow to the knees of the fraternities.

I do wonder what kind of effect this has on giving. I did some alumni surveys and virtually everyone said that their association with a fraternity was the most positive aspect of their college experience.
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I bleed Maroon

Franks Tanks · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 532