Column: End Freshman-Year Rush

Either the Interfraternity Council should adopt this rule, or the University administration should actively impose it. Why? Let's first take a look at social life at the University -- especially for freshmen. Fraternity parties are dominant. Where else do you get to hang out with a lot of people (especially people of the opposite sex) in a social setting? Where else can you drink beer? Where else can you get a sense of establishment, a sense of bonding with your classmates (albeit not necessarily based on qualities of your individual personality)? Keep in mind that the State Police need to reach their quota of underage drinking arrests, and that University bars are an easy target (many of the bars are already going out of business as a result). Remember that using a fake ID carries a felony charge and a thousand-dollar fine. Also, you can't advertise for a party in your Hill House room, and you can't fit many people in there anyway -- not to mention that if you get caught, you'll be evicted from the Residential Living system. How about the fact that most of your favorite bands only play at bars and clubs, or that SEPTA subways shut down at 12:30 a.m. -- even on weekend nights. But fraternities are an easy social outlet. It's not the quality of fraternity parties themselves, but rather the structure the social environment of the University, that makes the student body, especially first-year students, dependent upon them. (At least many people are made to feel that way.) Because of their control over the social life, brothers may lose, or never acquire, the sense of respect they should have for their guests and for themselves. You see, they don't need that respect. People just keep coming to the houses anyway -- in droves. And partygoers are encouraged to act within the context of the fraternity's attitudes rather than vice-versa. "Remember, this is my house, my party. I'm inviting you. Hell, I'm even asking you to pay!" Potential rushes try to impress the brothers, often with wild tales that tell more about what they think the brothers want to hear than about the rushes' true feelings or opinions. One obvious and unfortunate situation is that women are made to feel like second-class citizens: "Oh, thank you so much for inviting me to build my social life at your house!" "I'd better watch what I wear. After all, I know what I'm getting myself into by going to a frat party -- and it's not up to a brother to control his behavior once my dress tells him something." "Hmmm, why don't I have to pay as much at the door as a guy?" Now, all-male living is not necessarily bad. But in a collective, such as a fraternity, people start acting with a group-based attitude rather than with their own. Locker-room talk becomes more than just talk. Brothers may live vicariously by watching a fellow brother through a window have sex with a random vagina. And a popular activity in my friend's fraternity at a different school involves going into the attic and sliding ceiling tiles out so as to watch a brother fool around with someone in a bedroom below -- then talking about it at the designated time in a weekly brothers meeting. Or brothers may rally in their collectivity by exercising their authority to intimidate a woman and then throw her out of a party because she doesn't fit in with their attitude, as in the Theta Xi incident (DP 11/15/91). (Once again, she obviously knew what she was getting herself into in the first place.) But clearly all of these attitudes do not pervade the entire Greek brotherhood. We all know brothers who are amazing individuals -- they would never encourage such closed-minded behavior, nor would they act in such an insensitive manner. Let's take a look at who does encourage such disrespectful behavior. The Greek structure itself emphasizes rites of passage and power-control games in many pledge activities and in rush. Freshmen who are looking to fit in at the University are all of a sudden being ritualized into a prepared identity. Through "line-ups" involving quizzes and punishment, through forced consumption of Ex Lax, and through "challenges" and "conquests," pledges in certain houses bond with each other. They assimilate with the attitudes that are implicit in such activities. The University administration, which is in some weird way supposed to represent student interests, encourages fraternity parties as the only allowable social (read "alcohol") resource. If students are so mad about local bars closing, why doesn't administrative action reflect our opinion accordingly? How much of this institution's energy has been spent voicing student views to our state legislature regarding alcohol laws that were supposedly designed to curtail drinking and driving? Individual brothers like myself do play a part though too. We have aligned ourselves into a power game that we aren't always even conscious of -- one that we may subtlely reinforce just by being brothers. We have placed ourselves in the same boat as the guys who really don't have a clue about what their actions mean -- or those who act maliciously on purpose. A Sophomore year rush would not solve everything. But getting rid of the fraternity system entirely, even if the student body were to make that decision as a whole, will not happen any time soon. After all, the Trustees are quite committed to their old chapters. And their track record in caring about student interests has not been a glowing one anyway -- take Smith Hall, ROTC and Spring Fling for example. But with a later rush, men would be encouraged to establish lives for themselves before deciding whether a fraternity is right for them. I pledged as a sophomore, and I knew exactly how I wanted the fraternity to fit into my life as an individual. I knew what sort of attitudes and behaviors I would not tolerate. As a result, I wasn't dependent upon the house for my existence. A freshman rush, however, provides impressionable people with easy answers (often bad ones) before they really even understand the questions. With the new policy, first-year students would learn about other social avenues, as all of their male friends wouldn't necessarily be found at a fraternity party trying to become part of the house. Students would incorporate fraternity parties within a wider framework of social activity, or they wouldn't even go to them at all. Chapters themselves would gain pledges who really want fraternity life. And in their desire to improve the Greek image, a non-freshman rush would be an extremely visible first step in the right direction. Stuart Sperling is a senior Communications major from Rye, New York. Oh, The Humanity! has appeared alternate Tuesdays.

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