Today, I attended the deliberation, “A Greek Tragedy: Should Greek Life Live On?”. The group featured ten very enthusiastic students seeking to uncover a solution to the ongoing issues with Penn State Greek Life. I thought that the group performed very well, they were active in discussion with the entire audience, and they had enough information prepared to allow the audience to make a stance on their preferred solution. This group advocated for three different approaches to solve the stated problem. The first option was to keep Greek Life in its current status. The second option is to exterminate Greek Life entirely, and the third option is to keep Greek Life but make it much more strict.
I’m heavily in favor of the first option. There are plenty of restrictions that are currently in place on Penn State Greek Life, and I believe that these restrictions are enough to contain the rugged “party culture” that fraternities encourage. For instance, each student must have a minimum 2.5 GPA and fourteen credits in order to rush. Fraternities are limited to ten socials per semester, and each social can only serve beer and wine. Many fraternities that break rules are either suspended from all Greek Life activity or they are restricted from serving any alcohol at socials. Amongst the many rules, fraternities are very limited in what they can do, which is a much different case in comparison to Penn State social life one year ago. For these reasons I believe that Greek Life should be left alone.
I completely disagree with the second option that Greek Life should be abolished. Greek Life, though fraternities condone a seemingly unhealthy lifestyle, provide more good than bad. Over $10 million was raised at THON and most of those donations were received with the help of fraternities and sororities. If Greek Life is removed then Penn State will have to find some other way to generate such extensive funding for THON, which would be nearly impossible without the help of the Greek community. Fraternities and sororities also take part in a tremendous amount of community service. Each fraternity house has required GPAs for its members and a house GPA that each member works very hard to maintain. Contrary to public opinion, frats actually possess high standards when it comes to grades.
Many people believe that the source of everything bad that happens at Penn State, whether sexual assaults, underage citations, or hospitalizations, is fraternities. The fact is that whether frats are here or not the party culture will continue to be prolific; college students will always find ways to drink. When a student dies, it’s almost always a pledge going through his initiation night, which only proves that hazing is the problem. I’m also a firm believer in punishing the frats that are guilty instead of the Greek community as a whole. However, I think that Penn State is better off with the strict regulations that are in place. For these reasons I also disagree with the third option, just because there are enough regulations in place as it is. The next step wouldn’t be to add more rules, but it would be to remove frats.
Overall I enjoyed being at the deliberation and I feel confident that we made some ground on a possible solution. It’s not easy to lead a discussion on such a volatile topic, especially when most of the people in the room are pro-Greek Life.
