A couple weeks ago, we talked about Greek life on campus and the habitually poor behavior of a few in regards to parties and scandals. President Barron mentioned he is pulled in many directions. He receives letters regularly from residents of The Highlands, the neighborhood part of “Frat Row,” asking him to “do something” about the Frats near their homes.
As I mentioned in my blog last week, many problems can appear easily solvable . However, Barron demonstrated how multifaceted the Greek problem really was. There was the option to shut down Greek life on campus altogether. But, this wouldn’t work because a large number of sponsors, alum, and board members are alumni of these fraternities. However, he also had people from those same groups who hated the bad PR Fraternities continued to bring to the university.
After about two hours in class, we all spoke about different solutions that could lead to a better and more well-behaved future. Barron mentioned he put together a committee with members of the community, alumni, students, and faculty. Ultimately, a report card turned out to be the best way to hold fraternities accountable without doing irreversible damage. I found the solution to be pretty fool-proof because it’s win-win. Pledges are able to see what fraternities really stand for and prioritize. Additionally, report cards will incentivize fraternities with poor gpa numbers and conduct marks to improve. No one wants to be affiliated with the “idiotic” or “delinquent” fraternity.
The past two weeks of class, I’ve been impressed and interested by President Barron’s input. He’s calm and approaches decisions rationally while keeping everyone in mind. He doesn’t seem to make rash decisions based off of the minority or majority but off intuition and advice from everyone that will be affected. I think that’s one of the best qualities a leader can have because it requires other great characteristics to precede it such as humility, pragmatism, open-mindedness, good decision making, impartiality, and morale. I look forward to knowing the inside of many issues at Penn State and how Barron has taken it upon himself to fix them in the best way he knows how.
I respect President Barron and think the class we had with him was really fun…but his report card doesn’t do anything to address the problem, in my opinion. If I’m correct in assuming that this discussion was prompted by Tim Piazza’s death, how would a report card stop this? Frats are always going to be having parties with drinking, especially during bid acceptance night (which is the night it happened). The man’s death was totally accidental, yet partially caused by he amount he had to drink. This death could have happened at any house party where someone had too much to drink and fall down the stairs.
What I’m saying is that while I think more Frat oversight is 100% a good thing, this does nothing to address the specific issue that arose from Tim’s death. As tragic as it was, an accident like his could have happened outside of a frat to someone who had had 3 drinks, or to someone sober.
So while I still think it’s a good thing, it just seems strangely disconnected in my eyes.
I always enjoy participating in conversation about Greek life, and I find its roots and traditions extremely intriguing. I personally am not a member of Greek life, but I have several good friends who are, so I am able to hear a lot of what goes on on the inside. I am never afraid to confront my Greek friends about the wrongdoing of sororities and fraternities. I think that a report card is a good idea, however, there definitely needs to be more transparency regarding what actually goes on in the Greek world.
I must admit that I have never been involved with a fraternity, so I’d be interested to see what fraternity members think about this issue. From a random bystander’s perspective, I think that a report card is a great start, but the criteria for the report must be carefully chosen so as to ensure that a true picture of each Greek organization can be made. To be honest, I don’t think it would be too much to acknowledge any fraternities and sororities that are already doing well (one thing that has been emphasized by my conversations with many members of the Greek community is that the stereotypes placed on them by most is only a very shallow picture of those actually involved with Greek life, and that a number of really great individuals get lumped in with “those frat/sorority people”).
Also, the board that grades the organizations would need to be carefully chosen. Greek organizations have a major impact on our campus and it is in the best interest of everyone that this new system would make a positive change on the current culture.
One of the coolest things about our discussion on Greek life was that we got a lot of glimpses into what actions were taken after the Beta incident. At the time we thought that many of the actions were too drastic, but after a drastic event drastic actions were taken. These were not ideas that were just conceived after this event. They were preconceived and are now in place for all of the IFC.
It really is a complex issue, I remember we had a Greek Life conversation during my sophomore PLA class as well. Glad to hear you are enjoying the discussion…being in President Barron’s class was such a thought provoking experience for me as well.
This has definitely been a difficult past few weeks for the university as a result of the situation surrounding Beta. I think the university has taken wise precautions, however. It will be interesting to see what happens moving forward.