Disciplining the Drinking Degenerates: Keeping an eye Penn States Frats.

Intro

It’s a stain on almost all college campuses in America, and it is certainly a large one on big state schools like Penn State. It’s not the drunks you can find stumbling around on gameday, or the fights that break out in front of the bars, you can see these things in any city. There is something that is unique to college campuses alone, something that a lot of Penn Staters know about through unfortunate circumstances. Drinking at Frat parties is the cause for so much crime, and shame here at Penn State. Every weekend, you can hear ambulances wailing around state college, usually come to and fro from a rager at a frat. Its almost every weekend that we receive another alert that there has been a sexual assault that occured at a frat. How much more? How many more unnecessary atrocities do we have to let occur before we do something to stop people from being raped and killed right here at Penn State? I for one am sick of hearing about another brother of mine being forced to drink until they pass out, and am mortified when I heat another one of my sisters who had been groped from someone who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word no. I don’t know how Penn State has allowed these criminal institutions to go unchecked for so long. It’s about time we did something about it. In order to combat the crimes that occur at these Frats, we need to implement stricter regulations and punishments on frats, as well as have law enforcement agencies close by to try and deter and stop any crimes from occuring at Frat Parties.

The Drinking Culture

Does fraternity membership encourage such behavior, or simply enable it? In other words, are hard-drinking, groping-prone guys attracted to fraternities, or does fraternity life shape them in that unfortunate direction? New research suggests the answer is: probably both.

A study, in the journal Psychology of Men and Masculinity, analyzed the results of a large-scale survey of undergraduate members of a major fraternity (which is unnamed in the paper). Altogether, 2,678 members from 76 colleges or universities participated. They also filled out a detailed questionnaire designed to discover the extent to which they conform to traditional masculine norms. These norms include emotional control (“I never share my feelings”), winning (“In general, I will do anything to win”), sexual adventurousness (“If I could, I would frequently change sexual partners”), and violence (“I am willing to get into a physical fight if necessary”). One group of questions focused on “heterosexual self-presentation,” or the perceived need to emphasize one’s macho qualities. Participants noted the degree to which they agreed with statements such as “I would be uncomfortable if someone thought I was gay” and “I try to avoid being perceived as gay.”

The journal reports that members of chapters with a strong affirm-your-straightness culture were more likely to drink heavily than those in less-homophobic chapters. As noted earlier, this effect was quite large, explaining 44.2 percent of chapter-to-chapter variation in alcohol use.

“Alcohol consumption may serve as a mechanism for members of chapters with homophobic climates to maintain and prove their masculinity,”. Drinking may also increase “their willingness to be intimate with their peers, and engage in other perceived ‘feminine’ behaviors that would otherwise be acceptable in homophobic chapters.”

The journal emphasizes that this atmosphere is just one factor that contributes to heavy drinking. “Individual differences in conformity to traditional masculine norms may better explain the drinking behaviors of fraternity men than collective masculine-norm climates,” he writes.

So, it seems some male students who love beer are indeed drawn to fraternities—and the sexist culture at some fraternity chapters apparently exacerbates this proclivity. It’s hard to “just say no” in an atmosphere where you’re expected to assert your masculinity, and drinking is a conspicuous way to do just that.

Cases In State College

Tim Piazza was a sophomore at Penn State University and before his death, he had been in the kind of raging good health that only teenagers enjoy. After He had fallen down a flight of stairs during a hazing ritual, he had a lacerated spleen, an abdomen full of blood, and multiple traumatic brain injuries. The members of the Beta Theta Pi Fraternity noticed his fall, but the members had waited nearly 12 hours before calling 911, relenting only when their pledge “looked fucking dead.”. Tim underwent surgery shortly after arriving at Hershey, but it was too late. He died early the next morning. The fraternity was only suspended.

The parents of Timothy Piazza visited Capitol Hill to gain support for the federal END ALL Hazing Act. The bill seeked to prevent hazing incidents on college campuses by calling for more accountability and transparency for Greek organizations. The bill was eventually passed, but that didn’t stop tragedies from occurring at Penn State.

This past October, Penn State let another person fall victim to the unchecked atrocities that are allowed to happen at the Frats at Penn state. On October 23, Emergency responders were called to the Chi Phi fraternity at around 9:30 p.m. that Saturday for a 17-year-old male who was unconscious and had shallow breathing, State College police said. He was in full cardiac arrest and died at the scene. That boy was John “Jack” Schoenig, another victim of the dangerous drinking habits that surround frats. It was discovered that Jack had been forced to consume a large amount of Alcohol in a short amount of time during a hazing ritual.

It’s apparent the END ALL hazing act did not do enough to prevent tragedies at Penn State, which is why tighter restrictions and policy changes need to be enacted on frats.

Approaches

Clearly Frats are unable to adjust to the new regulations that have been placed on them, which is why more policies need to be put into place in order to keep them in check. Since Drinking is such a normality in college, let alone at Frats, It is not wise to outright ban drinking at frat parties. Young adults should learn how to drink responsibly. Adding on to that, we need to make sure that the young people who are drinking are at least of age. One thing that we can do is to prevent people from rushing frats until their second semester of junior year. By creating this policy, we can rest assured that those who rush frats are either close to, or already twenty one, which would nearly eliminate underage drinking at frat parties, since members would already be of age of legality. This would also prevent underclassmen from being peer pressured into joining a frat, and have them perhaps find a healthier outlet to relieve stress.

Now we know that Frats may not follow this rule, or people may try and sneak into a frat. How do we combat this? Simple, there will be a two step ID verification process that all Party goers must go through before entering a frat. First, If a frat wishes to have a party, they must first contact Penn State Police to notify them. Penn State Police will then check everybody who wishes to join the party with a computer that reads a person’s Penn State ID, assuring that the person is both a member of the Frat (or invited by the frat), and at least twenty one years old.

Any failure to meet any of these requirements will result in an immediate suspension of the frat, and possible expulsion of the students who violate the rules.

Conclusion

I will admit that I am a bit biased when writing this, I’m not a big fan of frats, however that does not mean that people who wish to join them should be denied that privilege. I understand that the policies that I suggested are a bit extreme, and will receive huge amounts of backlash from fraternities. But I do not wish to punish the Fraternities, I only wish to make them safer. At the end of the day, can you really put a price on the safety of a person?

Sources

[1.] West, Lois. “Negotiating Masculinities in American Drinking Subcultures.” The Journal of Mens Studies 9, no. 3 (January 2001): 371–92. https://doi.org/10.3149/jms.0903.371.

[2.] Workman, Thomas A. “Finding the Meanings of College Drinking: An Analysis of Fraternity Drinking Stories.” Health Communication 13, no. 4 (2001): 427–47. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327027hc1304_05.

[3.] Heideman, Paul. “Alcohol Consumption and Expectancies Among Fraternity Members.” PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1037/e348732004-001.

[4.] Jacobs, Tom. “How Fraternity Culture Encourages Excessive Drinking.” Pacific Standard, October 3, 2018. https://psmag.com/education/how-fraternity-culture-encourages-excessive-drinking.

[5.] Wechsler, Henry, George Kuh, and Andrea E Davenport. “Fraternities, Sororities and Binge Drinking: Results from a National Study of American Colleges.” Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice 46, no. 3 (2009): 763–84. https://doi.org/10.2202/1949-6605.5017.

[6.]Quintana, Chris. “Another Death at Penn State: Chi Phi Fraternity Suspended after Teen Dies off Campus.” USA Today. Gannett Satellite Information Network, October 25, 2019. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2019/10/25/penn-state-fraternity-chi-phi-frat-death-jack-schoenig-psu/2456897001/.