The Time article by Lisa Wade dives into the history of Greek life on college campuses, spanning nearly a century-and-a-half. This article connects to our deliberation because the historical context it provides is essential in comparing the landscape of Greek life today with how it was in the past. Particularly, I plan to use this article in the introduction/personal stake portion of the deliberation, in which Mitch and I will briefly summarize the role of Greek life in late Eighteenth- and early Nineteenth-Century campus culture. I felt that this article was effective in explaining the causes and effects of promiscuous fraternity behavior, and more importantly, how this behavior has led to a multitude of governmental and institutional policies to intervene in the functioning of these organizations. This article clearly demonstrated and described the origins for these organizations and why they have been debated long before the Timothy Piazza case, which was closely examined by the second article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The second article focused on the aftermath of the Tim Piazza case, a notorious instance of hazing in which a Penn State student was killed from intoxication. This article, similar to the first, offered historical background for some of the debates surrounding Greek life that will be addressed in the deliberation. However, the historical context presented in this article was largely judicial: it depicted the political and legal landscape of Greek life following the Piazza incident. While we may choose not to discuss the Piazza case in depth, I thought that this article was important in complementing the history of frats in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries with a modern history on the response to Greek life. I will use this article in the third approach, in which the role of the individual brother and the importance of self-accountability will be assessed. In particular, I plan to use the information presented in this article in the introduction of the third approach to capture the audience’s attention and otherwise create a rapport with them by discussing a relevant, recent event on our campus.
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