Alec Ward | Not better together

Talking Backward | Disaffiliation may represent a more sustainable future for Greeks and schools alike

By Alec Ward 04/14/15 9:52pm

Unsurprisingly, there’s been a lot of campus buzz over the past week or so about Penn’s Alpha Chi Omega chapter’s decision to disaffiliate with the University and their national organization rather than sign a lengthy and, by all accounts, severe sanctions agreement. While the sisters have vigorously defended their decision on what I think are largely fair grounds, my sense is that many other Greeks lament the move off campus as a blow to the Penn system’s long-term health.

In what some see as a harbinger of Greek life’s eventual death, however, I see a possible vision of its brighter future. Greek disaffiliation represents, to me, an arrangement which might just be better for all involved.

If you were to ask Penn Greeks about the state of Greco-University relations, I think most of them would tell you that they are not currently at an all-time high. Every semester seems to bring more news of clashes between the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life and this or that chapter, accompanied by a predictable set of gripes about University paternalism.

As I’ve argued before, University paternalism is a problem for everyone, but its origins and motivations are hardly a mystery. In the age of instant mass media and ever-expanding tort liability, for Penn to adopt a “live and let live” approach to students’ risky behavior just isn’t a rational choice. To avoid the monetary losses which might result from parental lawsuits or bad press born of Greek antics, it is simply in Penn’s best interests as an institution not to be tolerant of violations of policies it couldn’t really change if it wanted to.

The rational institutional priorities of fraternities and sororities, on the other hand, are to violate these policies. Though there’s indubitably much more to Greek living than parties, it is simply a fact that Greek organizations live and die by their social calendar. Recruitment, reputation and financial stability all depend to a large extent on a chapter’s success at providing members with social opportunities of a type that just can’t be done in a way that is fully compliant with University rules.

These conflicting institutional priorities leave Greek organizations and the University locked in a kind of mutually unpleasant zero-sum game, where a victory for either one inevitably represents a defeat for the other. So it’s really no wonder that relations between the two aren’t great.

Disaffiliation potentially represents a solution to this less-than-optimal state of affairs. From the University’s perspective, disaffiliation would transfer the legal liability they dread onto the organizations themselves — who would incidentally therefore be incentivized to take risk management a bit more seriously — and if done on friendlier, more controlled terms than was the case with AXO, might mitigate the decrease in alumni donations they may fear from forcing Greeks off-campus.

For the organizations themselves, disaffiliation would provide the autonomy they so desire. An off-campus Greek organization is really nothing more than a private social club of the type that are found in cities around the world, happily governing themselves. There are some benefits, such as automatic coordination of recruitment efforts, which would be lost, but with a little cooperation between them, the best interests of all could be preserved.

This is not a call for all Greeks to tear up their charters and set out on their own tomorrow. I simply propose that, given the current tensions between Greek organizations and Universities nationwide, separation might, in the long term, be best for everyone. At the annual commemoration of my own fraternity’s founding, which my chapter hosts each spring, an alumnus gives a presentation on the organization’s history. He reminds us each year that in 1868, when the first chapter was founded, student social groups were disfavored and banned by Universities that sought to exercise tight control over their students’ behavior and lives. It was in these conditions that students who wished to be the masters of their own fate came together to form the earliest Greek organizations, independent from and unsanctioned by their schools. It seems to me that, as is often the case, history has come full circle.

ALEC WARD is a College sophomore from Washington, D.C., studying history. His email address is alecward@sas.upenn.edu. “Talking Backward” appears every Wednesday.

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