Do Fraternities Breed Disrespect for Women?

Now that the Rolling Stone has disgraced itself with shoddy journalism reporting a gang rape at UVA that either did not occur or occurred quite differently than reported, we have to ask why the story was initially received as completely credible.  Is it because it fits a pattern of sexual assaults at fraternity parties across the nation?  When my classes read Ross Douthat’s opinion column this fall in which he suggested a correlation between campus sexual assaults and fraternity culture, most students said he had no proof, it was just a myth, just a stereotype that gives fraternities an unfair rap.  

I’m not so sure.  Some of my evidence is hearsay, girls at SMU joking about what the letters SAE mean to them.  Some is newspaper stories about SMU, such as this one about the alleged assault in 2013 of a woman at a fraternity party. 

Or the more recent reports of a Phi Delt party at Texas Tech that had a “Rape Theme” where a cardboard “vagina sprinkler fountain” of a woman’s spread legs greeted guests as they arrived at the party.  Or the recent Yale pledge class chant: “No means yes. Yes means anal.”Or a “doorman” at a fraternity house granting admission to women based on the curvature of their rear ends:  “Turn around and show us your butt.” Sorry, I lost the link to that story.  But I'm sure you don't doubt that it happens.  And it has been happening for a long time.   In  1857, a Sigma Phi member, Jenkins Holland, wrote a letter to one of his fraternity brothers showing that even back then,  fraternity members saw women as instrumental objects for sex and bragged to their brothers about sexual conquests. Holland wrote with surprisingly modern language, “I did get one of the nicest pieces of ass some day or two ago.”
 

Now, I know what you are saying: “That’s anecdotal evidence.”  In response, I say, that’s why academic research exists.  Research may not prove, but it strengthens the claim that a correlation exists.  For example,  Nicholas Syrett, assistant professor of history at University of Northern Colorado, wrote a book based on his research, The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities.  He did a longitudinal study that shows

over the past 30 years psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists and educators have continued to document alarming trends in pressure to have sex among fraternity men, coerce it from unwilling women through the use of alcohol, and report about it afterward to the assembled brotherhood.

Also, two studies in 2007 and 2009 published in the Journal for NASPA* reported that fraternity members “are more likely than non-fraternity members to commit rape” and that "women in sororities are 74 percent more likely to experience rape than other college women.”  Why? Because they socialize in a hostile environment for women.

Everyone needs to recognize that a gender gap still exists, an uneven playing field in the workplace dominated by men.  Women still make only 77cents for every dollar earned by men.  I hate to see the progress made by feminists such as Gloria Steinem being dismantled in, of all places, higher education.  Women still need to fight for equal rights and equal respect in the workplace, the home, and, unfortunately, in the Greek social scene.  Fraternity men need to step up their respect for women.  College women need to step up their respect for themselves.

*National Association of Student Personnel Administrators