Quite a long read, with a lot of different topics to unpack, but it’s well worth reading the whole thing. Jia Tolentino, at Jezebel, tells us what happens as “A UVA Alum Goes Back to Rugby Road“:
It’s a blue, cold Thursday in January and I’m walking down Rugby Road on the first night of fraternity rush at the University of Virginia, brushing past groups of identical gossiping boys in matching preppy outfits: fleeces, checked oxfords, khakis, boots. “Excuse me,” they say politely when our coats touch, then turn back to each other and their offhand drawling: “What was that back there, Bronyfest?” “Not enough of a tobacco enthusiast for that house, I can’t just sit around ripping cigs.” “I wasn’t feeling them, dude, they had, like, a serial rapist vibe.”
I am startled at the boy who just threw that out in the winter night to his two friends, because all four of us are crossing the street on our way to Phi Psi, the fraternity whose huge Christmas-lit mansion is a landmark in the middle of the physical fraternity scene in a way that the fraternity itself—until Rolling Stone—was not. But the boys were talking about a druggier, prep-school frat; they’re not talking about Phi Psi.
No one here is talking about Phi Psi, at least not “Phi Psi,” the figural fraternity or the true, unchecked scourge of sexual assault that it was used to represent. (The frat has since been cleared of charges, with “no basis to believe that an incident occurred.”) In fact, if there is a single male interacting with the Greek system—or even one human on campus generally—who wouldn’t rather tuck away last semester as a bad dream, I won’t hear about it over the next five days. It was enough that Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s egregiously misreported gang rape story put everyone at Thanksgiving dinner with Grandma asking about consent mechanics between bites of mashed potato, but there were three undergraduate suicides, too, and Hannah Graham, a first-year girl found dead a month after she went to a party and then disappeared.
It was a lot. Everyone’s ready to move on. Rush numbers are robust and steady, both for frats and sororities, which rope in a third of the undergraduate population: the boys in fleeces on the street are just trying to hurry up, bro, and belong. “Those guys are so Southern I felt racist just walking in,” one says. “That one dude was gay as fuck,” says another. Their elementary language belies both the bigoted underpinnings of the Greek system that are common to every Southern prestige structure—classism, racism, homophobia, sexism—as well as the genuine desire among many participants in these structures to process and transcend the bad blood that stains the corners of their party…
***********
… [I]n a national context, UVA’s Greek system is legitimately low-key. Sororities don’t haze or send 5,000-word emails about coating your person in Vaseline. Fraternities don’t, as they do in other places, force their pledges to beat each other unconscious. Greek students at Virginia are just trying to meet their best men and future maids of honor, just trying to find someone to smoke weed with on a Sunday; they’re just trying to follow in their grandparents’ footsteps (possible only, of course, if said grandparents are white); they’re just trying to put on a neon tank top and hook up with the best-looking rich person they can. “What’s the fucking big deal?” they might say, reading this. It’s just a good time, isn’t it? I met my boyfriend seven years ago at a sorority pre-game; he lived in a frat house and came out much sweeter than me. I, like the majority (but certainly not all) of the current and former UVA women I talked to while writing this piece, never felt unsafe at a fraternity party.
But neither did my college friend Kelly on the night that she was raped. Neither did UVA alum Jessica Longo, forcibly penetrated while unconscious in her own bed, by a guy in a prestigious fraternity who everyone jokingly called “Predator.”
It is hard for young privileged Americans to reconcile their good intentions with the violence that has facilitated their lifestyle. Students at UVA love their school sincerely. They remember their founder as a bastion of modern ideas and forget he owned humans as property. They are history majors who’d like to focus on the positive: the gorgeous brick buildings, but never who built them, or the fact that UVA as an institution purchased slaves too. The erasure of suffering exists in every transaction of power, on Grounds as it is in America. In just weeks, UVA has found millions of dollars to fund infrastructure improvements that will satisfy stakeholders who want something to be done about “the rape problem.” The school has also spent a decade ignoring a vocal, sustained campaign for them to pay their hourly employees a living wage…
***********
… The UVA Greek system is segregated, not just unofficially but explicitly. The unmarked but almost totally white system is the school’s default: the Inter-Sorority Council and Inter-Fraternity Council are the largest student organizations on campus, with no mention of race anywhere on their literature. Shoved off to a corner somewhere are the Multicultural Greek Council, for “Latin, Asian and local” fraternities and sororities, and the National Pan-Hellenic Council, for historically black Greek organizations.No broad segment of the American population experiences sexual violence at the rates that black women do. And yet, before and after Rolling Stone’s bombshell, guess which of the above councils were never invited to the Board of Visitors meetings, to national press conferences, even to sit down for a talk? Would it surprise you to hear, after all this exhaustive media coverage, that the first reported rape at the University of Virginia occurred in 1850 and concerned three male students who took a seventeen-year-old Charlottesville slave girl out into the woods?…
Here is the difference between the way UVA treats its black Greek community and its white one. White sororities and fraternities all occupy enormous mansions leased to them in perpetuity for (often) a dollar per year. Black sororities and fraternities don’t have land access at all; not one of them has historically owned a house. White frats throw parties downstairs from their bedrooms and keep the good liquor under their desks upstairs; black frats have to rent spaces every time they want to to party, and they always pay security and often fork out for a staffed bar. The new regulations that IFC organizations are groaning about are nothing compared to the normal way black frats, and black frat brothers, have to carry on.
And, although the black Greek community—like the white one—is stocked with members who are actively trying to address and acknowledge sexual assault in their midst, Sabrina Rubin Erdely didn’t acknowledge them with a mention. Neither, in the aftermath, did UVA. Nor has almost anyone reporting on “campus climate” or institutional changes…
Tolentino talks about history, and mechanics, and potential solutions — again, I’m not reprinting more than little chunks of the whole article, so you should at least skim it before complaining in the comments, okay?
BruinKid
Well here’s an interesting twist in dealing with ISIS. Jordan now says if ISIS kills their captured pilot, Jordan will execute every single ISIS prisoner it is currently holding.
No idea if this is a brilliant or dumbass strategy. We’ll see, I guess.
tofubo
just reading the title, i thought this was going to be about mr oxycontin looking back on his misspent college years and not going to the dominican republic on spring break
Corner Stone
@BruinKid: I’m not sure if it’s a brilliant strategy or not but as all the news pundits have been saying the King of Jordan will look weak if he negotiates for the pilot, and will also look weak if ISIS kills the pilot, I don’t think they have a lot of choice but hardass.
I’m not for that, but when this group is essentially going to get off on killing any of your people it can grab, you gotta be ready for that eventuality.
Matt
I don’t follow that article’s conclusion: it correctly identifies the frats as cesspools of racism, misogyny and homophobia, topped with a dollop of violence and Southern paternalism, THEN makes it clear that literally nobody thinks the new rules will actually be followed.
Why shouldn’t we bulldoze every goddamn building with Greek letters over the door again?
Villago Delenda Est
@Matt:
Money. Power. Reasons.
Pogonip
@Matt: It confused me too.
ruemara
@Villago Delenda Est: Money. Power. Reasons. Those sound perfectly good to me as reason to bulldoze.
And with regard to Jordan’s threat. *shrug*. No offense, but I’m not going to shed a tear for ISIS/ISIL fighters. They’ve signed up to be monsters.
Helen
@BruinKid: Wow. I wonder what Abdullah will do. He’s been the only true neutral Mid east monarch.
He knows where his bread is buttered but he needs to be neutral. He went to boarding school here (Deerborn) and I believe he received his college education in England. His step mother (still holding the title of Queen) is American born.
Will he choose sides?
Corner Stone
@Matt:
#NotAllFrats
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Villago Delenda Est: Mostly money and power of course.
Mike in NC
@tofubo: I, too, assumed this thread would be about Limbaugh advocating college date rape. How else would he have ever had fun on a Saturday night?
Pogonip
@BruinKid: Glad to see at least one regional leader is getting tired of ISIS. They’re a Middle Eastern problem and I would prefer that Miidle Easterners deal with them, rather than our government bumbling in and making things 100 times worse. Our government’s bumbling is a large part of why ISIS exists in the first place.
Pogonip
The honking is tapering off, and a darn good thing because I was running low on Kleenex. I hope all the flu patients are also doing better.
This cold’s Stephen King book is “Salem’s Lot.”. If I’m sick enough to stay home on the sofa, I read Stephen King to cheer me up, because whatever you have can’t be as bad as what plagues his characters. A literal plague…vampires…a murderous hotel…the devil opening a store in your town…”Seasons in the Sun” coming on the radio…
WereBear
Because how else can one build a network of personal contacts which will substitute for the messy, tricky business of evaluating actual performance and potential?
Mike J
@Pogonip: I just recently read that one. I wish I had started reading his stuff earlier. They’re fun.
Pogonip
As I reflected, maybe one reason the article confused me was I know nothing about campus life. I’ve only been on a campus twice in my life and one of those was to see a show. So maybe those who know that environment will clear the fog.
I have been young, though, so I have some suggestions for girls on campuses.
–Buddy up. Don’t go to parties without a friend or relative.
–Don’t drink around men you don’t know well, and never leave your drink unattended anywhere.
–Don’t go to parties with rich guys or football players. You will not marry up as a result. Rich guys and football players are likely to believe, often correctly, that as long as you aren’t rich they can do as they like with you.
Good luck.
Mike J
@Pogonip:
Mungo Jerry had a song about that.
Pogonip
@Mike J: I liked all his books except the sequel to The Shining, and The Stand. The premise of The Stand is great, but about 400 pages in, everything comes to a screeching halt as King realizes he’s written himself into a corner; after you kill off 99.99% of mankind, where do you go from there? Also, I couldn’t stand Frannie, the heroine, and unfortunately she was in about 75% of the scenes.
Oh, I didn’t like the dome one, either. All his others are at least worth one read.
Pogonip
@Mike J: I hated that song. I was in a vanpool where the driver would only listen to an oldies station and they played that crummy song every morning and every afternoon.
Mike J
@Pogonip: The Shining sequel was ok but just had too, too much about being an recovering alcoholic.
WereBear
Oh, you made me hurt myself laughing. That’s exactly why I read Stephen King when I’m sick, too! Well, at least my undead brother is not knocking on the door…
David Koch
Jerome Bettis and Charles Haley have been voted into the Hall of Fame.
Pogonip
The other time I was on a campus, pre-Internet, was to buy a book needed for a class. Something needs to be done about that textbook racket. Seems to me it might fall under RICO.
Buddy H
@Pogonip: I didn’t much care for “The Cell” (it seemed like he was just going through the motions) but “Bag of Bones” scared the poop out of me
Pogonip
@WereBear: If you’re really sick, try H.P. Lovecraft. “I may be in the hospital with a lumpy pillow and the elevator bell dinging all night, but at least crabs from space aren’t besieging my farm.”
Pogonip
@Buddy H: I classified both of those as one-reads.
TheMightyTrowel
@Pogonip: i believe you mean well with your advice for young women, but i want to point out that there is literally no woman who made it to 18 years old in the us without getting an equally well meaning and usually much longer list of ways to protect themselves in public. You know who isn’t getting important advice? Teenage boys. Instead of holding women fully responsible for our own safety, boys need to be taught over and over that is not OK to initiate sex with someone who’s drunk. That it’s beyond the pale to separate a girl from her friends so you can push her to have sex with you. That when your bro is aggressively hitting on girls who aren’t into it you need to stop him. You know what young women don’t need? Another list of ways to protect themselves that can be used by boys, cops, lawyers and pruriant members of the public to argue that it wasn’t really rape.
Glidwrith
@Pogonip: I suppose there is campus life and then there is frat/sorority life. At the behest of my father, I did try the Rush thing. When I found out they were eliminating us if we politely accepted the offer of a tiny snack (when there had been no opportunity for dinner), I walked away. Seeing someone so falling down drunk he had to rely on friends to even make it to his room pretty much turned me off any thought of frat parties. I was there to learn, thank you very much. There was a huge division between the serious students and the partiers, which were always the frats.
Pogonip
@Mike J: I didn’t understand the plot of that one at all. At the end of The Shining, Wendy had a job and double-indemnity life insurance money–what happened to put her in dingy apartments? Why would Danny take to drink–after what he’d been through, you’d expect him to run screaming from the room every time a beer commercial came on. King’s ” like father, like son” explanation really didn’t make much sense. And if the True Knot has been around a couple of hundred years, wouldn’t Dick, with his powerful shine, have run up against them and have warned Danny about them? I would have understood the plot a lot better if I hadn’t read The Shining.
Culture of Truth
I was so naive I thought the term “Greek system” had something to do with actual Greeks. To this day it seems odd.
Pogonip
@TheMightyTrowel: Gentlemen are taught these things. The problem is rich guys and football players are likely not to be gentlemen, and girls need to be aware of this and plan accordingly.
Pogonip
@Glidwrith: So are any of these organizations actual clubs, affable communities of like-minded souls? Or are they all dens of depravity? If the latter, colleges should not allow them on the premises.
Major Major Major Major
@Pogonip: the Phi Psi chapter at my alma mater was full of affable gay dorks. We had some fun :)
We also had rapey frats and everything in between.
Pogonip
@efgoldman: Gentlemen. Which you no longer find among the rich, it seems. They were rare among the rich to begin with.
In Columbus, Ohio, at least, it’s well known what’ll happen if any girl who’s not rich hangs around the football players. They’re Demi-gods. And I’ll grant that’s a lot of power to hand to a kid–but gentlemen still do not rape. The ultimate choice lies with the man and what he was taught as a boy.
Pogonip
@Major Major Major Major: OK, glad to hear it. So keep the good ones and boot the bad ones off campus. They’ll still operate, but won’t have obvious university approval.
I have no idea what should be done about THE Ohio State University football idolatry. What was fun in the late ’40’s, according to my uncle who attended their law school, has become a cult. I heard stories from Columbus parents, who heard them from their kids, that’d make your hair stand on end.
Pogonip
@TheMightyTrowel: You think U.S. campuses are bad–there are places where a woman cannot safely go outside to the toilet at night. It’s a mean old world. We can only stick together as decent folk.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I read The Shining last winter for the first time. I love the movie and have seen it about a dozen times. The book puts the movie to absolute shame.
Pogonip
@Old Dan and Little Ann: I only got as far as the blood coming out of the elevator on the movie. Jack Nicholson might as well have had I’M CRAZY tattooed across his forehead. People who’ve seen the whole movie tell me Kubrick also trashed the character of Wendy.
Did anybody else like The Tommyknockers? Even King says he didn’t like it. Perhaps if I had spent more time on campuses I would not have such execrable taste, but I enjoyed The Tommyknockers.
Pogonip
@Old Dan and Little Ann: P.S. make sure to watch The Simpsons version of Kubrick’s Shining. “That’s strange–the blood usually gets off at the second floor.
Glidwrith
@Pogonip: I wouldn’t know. When they confirmed to me that a Greek function would take precedence over any academic obligations I might have, that was enough to reason to furthest disqualify them in my eyes. I’d already had a bellyful of kids that thought they were God’s gift to the Universe, just because of who their parents were. I wasn’t interested in being near more of the same. Shallow, caring for nothing more than how you looked or who you knew? Nope, not for me.
FlyingToaster
@Pogonip: Fails on the “O” part; the textbook racket is anything but organized.
Having worked as a contractor in that industry (cough bunch of incompetents cough), it’s really, really sad. The publishers are trying to lock in campuses to their offerings by wining & dining chancellors and emeriti, and offering the lowest-common-denominator books, often on their 17th editions. Trying to get a new textbook through the system is a freaking nightmare, and trying to get anything other than a searchable PDF onto a disk in the back has gone from horrendous to nearly impossible. Try to put a language practice program or a molecule builder into the back of a college-level text. Just try.
And the salespeople are universally smarmy.
Glidwrith
@Glidwrith: urrgh, FYWP. “Enough reason to further disqualify”
Omnes Omnibus
@Glidwrith:
My graduating class in my fraternity had two PBKs, a Fulbright, and a Wats0n out of 18 people. Outside my graduating class, we had a couple of other Fulbrights and a concert pianist. All this aside from the usual gaggle of PhDs, MDs, and JDs. Toss in a funk bassist – just for fun. Anecdotal evidence works both ways.
Pogonip
@Omnes Omnibus: What is a PBK and a you-know-Wat?
Omnes Omnibus
@Pogonip: Phi Beta Kappa – a very prestigious national honor society. The other one is this.*
*FYWP eats posts that mention the name of Holmes’ companion and memoirist, hence the odd spelling.
Scott Peterson
If you’re just getting into Stephen King, I cannot recommend highly enough his short story and novella collections. I’m a fan of his, and for a long time was pretty much a fanatic, but I think throughout his career he’s always been at his very best when forced to work inside the constraints of shorter forms. You get everything that’s good about King—incredible imagination, believable characters—and far less [fewer?] of his foibles—bloat—as a writer.
Read the collections in order, starting with Night Shift and continuing on to Different Seasons, Skeleton Crew, Four Past Midnight and so on. I think even his collections start to go a bit downhill in later decades, but not as seriously as his (much) longer works.
Enjoy—especially two stories in his first collection set in Jerusalem’s Lot…
Pogonip
@Omnes Omnibus: Pfft. I should have figured out that PBK stood for Phi Beta Kappa, which I had heard of. Must be the cold pills. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Pogonip
@Scott Peterson: “1408” was the second scariest thing I ever read. The scariest was “The Colour Out of Space.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Pogonip: In any case, I am just offering another view. Not that we were angels by any means….
opiejeanne
@Pogonip: the Colour Out of Space gave me the willies.
Glidwrith
@Omnes Omnibus: I never once said all Greeks were what I observed. Both you and our esteemed blog host demonstrate that the system can harbor good eggs. We have also seen numerous examples of frats indeed being cesspools. I won’t make any claims either on what should be done with such systems as a whole.
I will, however, make sure if my children express interest in the system, that they are aware of how badly the system can go wrong.
Omnes Omnibus
@Glidwrith: I think it depends on the school and what it expects of its Greek system. Mine expected decent behavior and, by and large, it got it. The fact that some odd financial arrangements in past meant that the school owned the frat houses and leased them to the frats certainly gave the school a degree of leverage not available elsewhere.
Cervantes
@Helen:
Deerfield, in Massachusetts.
In the UK, Sandhurst, more or less analogous to West Point.
Lisa Halaby (daughter of Najeeb Halaby — will mean something to those who remember him from the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, or ’70s).
Cervantes
@TheMightyTrowel:
I’m reminded of what Golda Meir said about a proposal that young women keep to a curfew in order to protect themselves from rape: let’s curfew the men, said she, because, after all, they’re the ones doing the raping.
Cervantes
@Pogonip: Well, perhaps it was not exactly “bumbling,” which implies far more innocence than the US (or any) government could ever muster!
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: “Bungling,” perhaps?
Cervantes
Undergraduate fraternities are one locus but hardly the only one.
At Harvard Law, which was recently found to be in violation of Title IX, new procedures are being discussed. Because of efforts made by faculty and others, these procedures are now set to include new confidential resources available before and after a complainant talks to a formal Title IX coordinator; as well as more due-process protections for those being accused.
Micherr Markin
>worth reading
>Jezebel
WRONG! Please try again.
Omnes Omnibus
@Micherr Markin: Just off hand, did you stop by just to post a poorly formatted bleat or did you have an actual point?
JR in WV
Isn’t the Color out of Space an H P Lovecraft story? I think I read it when I was like 12 or 13. I (and me little brother varmit) would stay with my Grandma on weekends, to give my parents a little time to be adults together.
I could stay up til any small hour reading, and then I would turn off the big cast iron radiator, open the window a crack, and cuddle up under 4 or 5 quilts. But if it was H P Lovecraft, I might have trouble falling asleep!
King is good, and excepting a few novels (Dome) I enjoyed most of his stuff. Scary!!!!
Is anything more scary than a bunch of rich kids with no moral compass, run amok on a college campus? I managed to avoid most frats both times I went to college, except for GDI (gamma delgta iota, goddammed independents) the first, less serious college enrollment. I got drafted into the US military middle of the second year of that try.
Frats seem to me to have no saving grace at all. Perhaps excepting those at small colleges like John Cole’s local school…
Omnes Omnibus
@JR in WV:
I’ll just point you to my comments above. Rubbing elbows with accomplished people does tend to make one want to have accomplishments of one’s own.
SRW1
@Helen:
Seriously? There’s a Jordanian fighter pilot in captivity because his plane crashed during a bombing run in ISIS-held territory and Jordan has a neutral stance? I might go out on a limb here, but I’d wager a fiver that’s not how the ISIS dudes see this.
Goblue72
@Omnes Omnibus: There’s a reason why when someone says “frathead”, we all know what they mean.
BruceFromOhio
@TheMightyTrowel: THIS TIMES EIGHTY JILLION. I have two daughters in the risk pool, and I’M FUCKING SICK TO GAIA-DAMNED DEATH of the all the advice aimed at them. How about some chirpy checklists for teen-age boys and young men?
– When the other person says No or Stop, then cease what you are doing.
– When the other person is too drunk or stoned to speak or walk, help them get home safely.
– Remind your friends and brothers if you see them forgetting these first two.
BrianM
@Pogonip: You are not alone. I like The Tommyknockers