February 20, 2006
Putting
Fraternities in Their Place
How one college is
trying to redefine social life with the (sometimes grudging) help of its
Greek system
By Elizabeth Farrells
- The Chronicle of Higher Education
At Union College's
Sigma Phi chapter, the fraternity brothers have a new Friday-afternoon
tradition. They don sports jackets and ties, pour cups of tea, and sit
down with a different professor each week for an hourlong intellectual
debate.
One Friday in late
January, they welcome Andrew J. F. Morris, an assistant professor of
history, to the dormitory wing that now serves as the Sigma Phi house,
where he leads a talk on volunteerism and an individual's obligation to
society.
Mr. Morris assumes
his place in a wing chair and faces the brothers, who are seated around
their beat-up coffee table. He asks them: "What do you think about
the town-gown relations between Union and Schenectady?"
Hands fly into the
air. Every brother wants to share his thoughts with the group, and some
cannot help but interrupt each other. They argue over the value of their
service projects, the roles of class and race, and the effectiveness of
economic-revitalization efforts. The heated debate continues unabated
until Mr. Morris begs off to walk his dog at 6 o'clock.
Administrators hope
that gatherings like these — as well as the housing changes Union has
forced on three big fraternities here — are beginning to transform the
relationship between fraternities and Union's administration. The shift
began in February 2000, when college officials, worried that the Greek
system so dominated the campus that it was harming Union's students and
reputation, attempted to redefine campus social life. Instead of
dissolving fraternities — a step taken by several other colleges —
Union decided to make the Greek system part of a social experiment,
working with members of fraternities and sororities, among others, to
create a new living-and-learning community known as the Minerva system.
Still, the move —
which involved relocating the three fraternities — angered many students
and alumni. Union also saw a steep drop in donations.
"There was a
lot of animosity," says Stephen C. Leavitt, vice president for
student affairs and dean of students. "Many alums saw this as the
degeneration of some of Union's greatest institutions."
In the last couple
of years, however, the college has managed to recover some of its donors,
and a new $200-million fund-raising campaign has passed the halfway mark,
ahead of schedule. While the jury is still out on whether the Minerva plan
will be a success, most students say it has increased social options at
Union, and even changed Greek culture — somewhat.
A Long
Tradition
The three oldest
social fraternities in the country — Kappa Alpha, Sigma Phi, and Delta
Phi — were founded at Union College in the 1820s, and until recently,
some of the sprawling fraternity mansions, including Sigma Phi's, were the
first buildings prospective students would see when they drove through the
wrought-iron entrance gate.
Their central
locations were more than symbolic: Greek life was the cornerstone of the
social scene here. Before the Minerva houses began opening in 2003,
fraternity parties were mobbed with drunken underage students, and most
weekends were a blur of "dancing, craziness, and fights breaking out
at the doors of the houses," says Nicholas Salvatoriello, president
of the junior class and a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. "There
was no other alternative, so people just accepted that."
But not all students
were happy with the huge beer bashes. In surveys conducted by the college
in the spring of 1995, a third of Union's 2,200 students complained about
the lack of other social options. Even some of the Greeks said they were
bored with the party routine. Furthermore, the very presence of Greek life
was costing Union some of its most coveted applicants.
According to a
survey commissioned by Daniel M. Lundquist, Union's vice president for
admissions, financial aid, and communications, 18 percent of students who
applied to Union had a negative view of fraternities and sororities. Only
8 percent had a positive view, and applicants with high SAT scores cited
Greek life as Union's number one drawback.
Administrators and
faculty members decided that in order to compete for top students, they
needed to lessen the dominance of fraternities and sororities over social
life. In 2000 a committee of students, faculty members, and administrators
submitted their recommendations for a new housing system, named for
Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom who adorns the college's seal.
Union's board of trustees reviewed their proposal and approved the plan in
February 2001.
The broad goal of
the Minerva houses was to blur the lines between social and intellectual
life at Union. At a cost of $20-million, seven buildings on the campus
would be renovated and re-created as places for some students to live and
for everyone to hang out. To provide a viable alternative to fraternity
parties, each Minerva house would have a $30,000 annual budget for
activities.
Each student would
be assigned to one of the seven Minerva houses as a freshman, and each
faculty member would also belong to a house. Activities would be open to
everyone, but students and professors could only plan events at their own
house, and no faculty members or nonmembers could enter other Minerva
houses after 10 p.m. Each house would have an independent governing board
(and one faculty adviser) that approved activities and the general
management of the house. Only upperclassmen could live in their Minerva
house and they must either be active in the governing board or submit
their names to a housing lottery to get one of the 20 to 30 rooms in each
house.
For the plan to
work, the fraternity brothers in three of the most prominent houses —
Sigma Phi, Chi Psi, and Psi Upsilon — would have to turn over their
houses to Union when their 99-year land leases with the college expired.
For Chi Psi and Psi Upsilon, that meant June 2003; Sigma Phi had to move
out a year later. The other nine fraternities, whose houses are located on
the borders of the campus, could stay where they were.
Minerva committee
members went to great lengths to convince Union students and alumni that
they were not moving the fraternities to punish them. According to
students and faculty members involved in the decision, they chose to
displace the fraternities because they represented gender inequity in
housing.
"The real
estate on campus was really doled out in an unfair way," says Thomas
D. McEvoy, dean of residential and campus life. "We had these three
mansions on the center of campus that were restricted to males only."
Union took a lot of
risk by displacing the Greeks. In addition to the cost of the Minerva
plan, said Thomas C. Gutenberger, vice president for college relations,
the loss of support from alumni — 50 percent of whom were Greek members
— was expected to cost Union as much as $940,000 in donations to its
annual-giving fund just in the first year. And then there was the
likelihood of lengthy legal battles.
At Colgate
University, administrators were on the receiving end of four separate
lawsuits filed by Greek alumni this fall after the college announced its
plans to buy the fraternity houses in order to gain more control over
them. Hamilton College spent four years fighting similar lawsuits after it
decided to make fraternities and sororities nonresidential in 1996. Colby
College, Bowdoin College, and Middlebury College all faced litigation when
they tried to reform or get rid of their Greek systems.
Union escaped such
legal battles. But the college is still recovering from the financial
fallout of its decision. With 75 percent of donations to the college
coming from Greek alumni, it was no surprise that gifts to the annual fund
dropped off. The college received $400,000 less in its 2001-2 fund-raising
cycle than it had two years before, and lost 1,200 donors. And calls came
in from alumni who informed Mr. Gutenberger that they would be writing
Union out of their wills. One caller said the college had lost a
$5-million bequest from him.
A Forced March
The college's
alumni-relations staff members began what some termed a "death
march" in 2002 when they embarked on a road tour to 22 major cities
to explain the transition to enraged alumni. Their biggest challenges were
the older and more influential Union alumni who remembered their
fraternity houses as dignified places where they dined under chandeliers
and hosted wine-and-cheese parties for professors. This group was
particularly insulted to hear that the fraternities they held dear had
become a roadblock to the development of intellectual life at Union.
"It was very
uncomfortable in the beginning," says Dominick F. Famulare, director
of alumni relations. "I'd go to alumni clubs to try and explain what
we were doing, and it was like being up at a firing squad — I took a lot
of shots."
To many Greek
alumni, removing the fraternities from their houses was akin to defacing
historical landmarks. Founding members of Sigma Phi, one of the displaced
fraternities, had built their own house in 1905, and the house was set to
celebrate its centennial.
While some alumni
have come around, their rate of annual giving is still lower than before
— about 40 percent gave to the fund from 2003 to 2004, compared with a
pre-Minerva rate of 46 percent.
"I won't donate
to Union ever again," says Brian Roache, a 2000 graduate and alumni
president of Sigma Phi. "We had been in our house for 99 years and
were an exemplary fraternity, but Union still took our house away from us.
The fondest memories of my life have been taken away from me."
Back on the campus,
students strongly opposed the new plan. An anonymous culprit threw a
Molotov cocktail at the Alpha Delta Pi house after learning that it would
be converted into a college career center. One enterprising student even
made up T-shirts that said, "My fraternity beat up your Minerva
house."
"Foremost in
the minds of the Greek community was that this was a veiled attempt to get
rid of them," says Dean McEvoy. No matter what administrators said,
the majority of fraternity members and alumni believed their fraternities
were on double-secret probation.
The Greeks who
served on the Minerva committee were also criticized. Kate Stefanik Barry,
a 2001 graduate and a member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority, found that
after a year of spending hours in committee meetings, her peers were more
resentful of than grateful for her efforts.
"I was really
surprised that a lot of my classmates made it personal," says Ms.
Stefanik Barry. "One friend in one of the houses came up to me and
said, 'Thanks for signing my house away.' It was definitely hurtful."
Stretch Hummer
Limousines
As new classes of
first-year students came to Union with no memory of the former glory of
Greek life, the hostilities began to die down, and the Minerva houses
gained popularity.
Unlike at Bowdoin,
where officials had decided that their version of a similar house system
could not thrive without the elimination of Greek life, Union counted on
fraternity and sorority leaders to help make the Minerva houses work.
"We realized
that the Greek system was full of students who knew how to run an
autonomous group," says Suzanne Benack, a psychology professor who
served on the Minerva committee. "We knew that a bunch of hippie
faculty members weren't going to be able to come in and tell the students
how to run" the Minerva system.
Union administrators
also took steps to convey to the Greeks that they wanted them to stay and
thrive: Each displaced fraternity received its own private wing in a
dormitory, with large common rooms and $50,000 for relocation costs.
Without their houses, and with the most irate of the fraternity members
having graduated, the Greeks became more involved in making the Minerva
system work. The Interfraternity Council at Union even agreed to refrain
from throwing parties on the night of an all-Minerva ball in late January
this year — although few fraternity and sorority members attended the
event. Still, more than 300 students came, along with large numbers of
faculty members.
According to Brian
Selchick, a senior and a member of Sigma Phi, the Minervas have forced the
Greek system to prove that their houses are more than places to party.
Events like the afternoon teas are part of an effort to show prospective
pledges that a fraternity is a place for intellectual, as well as social,
activities.
"It's harder
for us to compete housing-wise," says Mr. Selchick. "We have to
embrace other types of events now because the future of Union and the
Greeks lies in the success of the Minerva system."
Renovations to each
of the Minerva houses included pool and air-hockey tables, wide-screen
televisions with satellite hook-ups, cushy leather couches, and even
massage chairs. First-year students are assigned to introductory courses
that take place at one of the seven houses, in the hope that students will
start hanging out there.
The generous annual
budget for each house gives students the resources to do almost anything.
In the first year, students spent lavishly on events that were hardly
intellectual. One house even rented a stretch Hummer limousine for a trip
to a pumpkin patch.
"We're still
deciding what is okay to spend money on," says Emily Clarke, a senior
and a member of the Minerva Council, which approves expenses over $1,000.
"It's very much in the experimental stage."
Problems and
Progress
Along with purely
social events like speed dating and an annual Erotica Night, complete with
pornography-reading contests and condom giveaways, Minerva houses also
feature lectures by Broadway directors and performances by classical-music
groups like the Emerson String Quartet. Faculty members are starting to
lead more activities, too. Every Friday at noon at the Green House, for
example, a group of students and professors grab their guitars, mandolins,
and violins and gather around the piano to jam.
In the spirit of
keeping the houses informal and relaxed, there are no residential advisers
or faculty members in residence. Alcohol is allowed in the houses with
little monitoring: Wristbands and ID's are not required at most events,
including the wine-and-cheese parties with professors and dinners that
students sometimes cook in the newly renovated kitchens. When alcohol is
served, small cards on the tables reminds students that the drinking age
in New York is 21 and asks them to obey the law.
Ms. Benack says
administrators would be disappointed if students did not consider the
houses a place to drink and socialize. "Part of the goal of this
whole thing was to change alcohol culture. ... We just want it to be done
within the laws and in a civilized way," she says.
But social life at
Union has not magically transformed into a series of subdued cocktail
parties. Many students consider the Minerva houses to be havens for
"dorks and geeks," says Mr. Salvatoriello, the Sigma Chi junior.
He also says the houses cannot compete with the weekend social scene at
the fraternities.
"What's cool at
Union College is still frat parties, kegs, the whole deal," says Mr.
Salvatoriello. "And that's mostly because underage kids still want to
drink and see where the hot girls are."
Indeed,
fraternities are still causing their share of headaches. In one week in
January, campus police were called to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity
three times for crimes including vandalism, harassment, and assault. Not
all partnerships between the Greeks and Minervas are working, either. When
the Theta Delta Chi fraternity teamed up with one of the Minerva houses to
throw a party, the end result was destruction: One student tore up a
kitchen countertop and another broke a window.
And despite the
impressive display of academic engagement at Sigma Phi's afternoon tea,
happy hour still immediately follows teatime, even for the under-21 crowd.
Binge drinking
remains a widespread problem at Union, according to James E. Underwood,
the college's interim president. There are, however, small signs that the
college may be turning a corner: In the fall, six freshmen had to be taken
to the hospital for intoxication, but that was down from 10 the previous
year.
The quality of
Union's applicant pool has also improved remarkably, according to Mr.
Lundquist. Since the Minerva houses opened two years ago, the average SAT
scores of students who decide to come to Union has risen 30 points, and
close to 70 percent of this year's freshmen graduated in the top 10
percent of their class, compared with 55 percent before.
Was the money and
the ordeal behind the Minerva system worth it? Union administrators are
hesitant to say yes just yet, but they are optimistic about the future,
and so are the students.
"We're in the
middle of a culture war," says Mr. Salvatoriello. "A lot of the
upperclassmen remember the old way and liked it better. ... But when I
walk around campus now, I feel that this school is headed somewhere
special. It has a lot of potential."
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