Emphasis mine, but the word is yours. They’re old enough to enlist and professionally kill people. They’re old enough to face consequences for sexual harassment and essentially threatening rape.
5 Likes
I strongly disagree that these signs in any way threaten rape. (Or sexual harassment, but again, I’m applying a larger cultural lens to this. They got more of a thrill of hanging the signs than any actual prospects of getting women to walk into their private house. Basically, you’re as much of a target for these signs as the girls on campus.)
It’s not like dudebros are confined to their houses. They’re announcing, during a glut of new students, particularly young and vulnerable students, that they’ll take advantage of them and their inexperience.
It’s like catcalling, except frats have a long track record of gang raping and then covering for each other. If my work colleague of ten years says “you look really nice today”, it’s no big deal. If a random guy smelling strongly of booze runs across the street and yells in my face “You look really nice today” it’s a rather different situation where I feel particularly unsafe.
These guys are acting like jackasses and should be suspended and not allowed on campus, until such a time as the university’s investigation into their conduct comes out with a conclusion.
13 Likes
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/most-frats
The point being that your daughter’s first criteria in school selection is based on fraternity membership. I was pointing out what a superficial and nonsensical data point that is by showing that some of the top schools in the US have very high fraternity membership. By your statement if your daughter was an engineering prodigy she wouldn’t even allow MIT’s website to load because of its fraternity ranking? Or if she wanted to go into medicine John Hopkins is off the list? WOW.
Shouldn’t that be referred to as the Jon Hamm claw hammer incident?
3 Likes
Please pause and think about what you’re doing in this thread. Really – why are you doing it?
8 Likes
It wasn’t a threat of sexual harassment. It was actual sexual harassment. These signs were essentially announcing “we see the young women who plan on attending this college as naive objects to be exploited for our own sexual fulfillment.” How do you suppose that makes a freshman feel about herself, especially one trying to break into a male-dominated field like engineering? How do you suppose it makes the parents bidding goodbye to their beloved daughter feel about leaving her there?
As for the “cultural lens” influencing the behavior of these young men: I submit that we won’t change the culture of sexual harassment unless this kind of thing is met with swift and serious consequences. Dismissing it with a “boys will be boys, let’s just send them a warning” is exactly how the culture got here in the first place.
19 Likes
Hot damn, you’re right! I’ve seen Mad Men once, and I think I saw a headline about him go by, and that was about the depth of my knowledge.
I was expecting a self deprecating humor defense. This scene would fit right into Old School, Neighbors, Animal house, or any other film mocking Greek life.
I don’t think “degenerate” is quite the right word; I think social bonding among social elites has always been their real purpose, and much of this social bonding occurs through the shared experience of binge drinking and crudely predatory sexuality.
My impression, at least at UC Berkeley in the 90s, was that there were three tiers of fraternities and sororities, and they roughly corresponded to class differences among their members.There was an elite, prestigious tier, which tended to be ethnically homogeneous to the point of overt racism; a middle tier, which had the largest and most open parties and was most known for binge drinking and predatory sexuality; and a bottom tier, which was small, staid, and innocuous, and considered only nominally to be part of the system of fraternities and sororities. Only a minority of students were members of these groups, though more came into contact with them through their large open parties on weekends. They were known to be politically conservative, especially the elite fraternities, but they didn’t seem to be much connected to the activist groups of conservative students.
1 Like
Because I abhor ignorance, prejudice, group-think and yammering just to hear the clack of keyboards, from the right or left. So why do you feel the need to call me out? Have I misquoted or purposely misconstrued someone’s position? And before you make an assumption, I never rushed/pledged/joined, I did know guys that did though and a few that thought they were God’s gift to women, but I also knew many more that were just normal people looking to advance their futures. I knew enough to know that sweeping generalizations about them are as ignorant and unfair as doing it about any other group out there.
So, right back at you, think about this, if the statement had been “My daughter looks at colleges and won’t even consider one that is more than 10% liberals/blacks/jews” with howls of “Right! everyone knows that they are…” how would that go over? No really, how would it?
1 Like
I’m not sure how much protection harassing and threatening speech gets.
Seeing as ethnic and racial groups aren’t really a choice, but membership in “elite societies” are entirely a choice, I’d have to say that you’re not offering an analogous argument. All liberals on the other hand are communist fetus eaters /sarc
People choose to participate in the greek system, and the greek system has a lot of problems that participants choose to perpetuate from within. Being black or jewish isn’t a choice, and a lot of the problems they face are imposed by external sources.
It’s not like frats are being forced to rape women by a third party. Whereas systemic poverty within the black community is more often imposed by external forces like overt racism, and the more subtle racism of lowered expectations.
13 Likes
The difference is that fraternities/sororities are formal organizations, with formal relations between each other on campuses and with national organizations, so generalizing about them isn’t mere prejudice – they actually are a coherent social entity, with formal agendas, and there are clear patterns to their activity. Their role in facilitating binge drinking, for instance, is undeniable; it’s the most obvious thing they do, and the most directly disruptive to college environments. That, by itself, is a perfectly valid reason to prefer to avoid colleges where they have a strong presence.
7 Likes
Probably why you never joined a frat. 
6 Likes
Ah, I’d forgotten about having to be 21 to legally drink in the US. I can imagine that’s a pretty big encouragement to join.
For comparison, when I was at uni in (Old) York, we had half a dozen bars, all of which were run by the university itself. York is slightly unusual though, campus bars at most universities are run by the students’ union.
2 Likes
I can highly recommend UC Santa Cruz.
1 Like
OMG. Are you two having an “if you like pina coladas” moment?
Hey man, all love is beautiful.
1 Like
It is a valid reason, however to dismiss a school out of hand for it? I think that is more than a little extreme.
