Hacker News Reader

This might be a slightly more trenchant critique if Stanford weren't simultaneously declaring war on houses devoted to everything from French culture to cooperative vegetarian meals.

But, as little as I liked the frats, I'm not going to throw them under the bus and push the idea that they were some kind of dens of misogyny and rape. They're not. If Stanford really wanted to combat those ills, perhaps it should focus more on the more general culture of binge drinking.

In my sophomore year, my roommate came back at 7am after being out all night with his thighs literally purple from paddling. He couldn't stand up for a day - I had to bring him meals.

He was in the professional society for international relations students.

It's not just frats.

Originally you were critiquing

> the un-fucking-believably fraught legacy that the Greek fraternity system has

And now it seems you've expanded to every independent student organization, which apparently are all too brutalizing to students and must be abolished, to be replaced by the perfect all-seeing vision of university bureaucrats and administrators.

I can say that my house (which admittedly was explicitly themed around nonviolent activism) never beat or hazed any member of it in the three years I was there. And yet it still has fallen under the eye of Sauron.

Not all. Not even most!

I was in a fraternity, and we never laid a hand on a person. Extremely strict zero-tolerance towards even suggesting that someone was required to drink. The worst hazing that we ever allowed was asking new members to go get us some coffee -- if they had time.

But just because your house is ostensibly "devoted to French culture" or whatever doesn't mean you can't get up to some horrible shit. It doesn't give you a free pass just because you're missing the Greek letters.

I mean, do you think fraternities are "devoted to" hazing? That it's on their mission statement?

Hazing happens anywhere in college. Your own roommates could haze you in your dorm, you don't need a student org or an off campus house. I'm not sure there is much of an easy solution. You ban all the student orgs you want and force people to live in a dorm for 4 years, and people will still party and get drunk and do stupid things and be terrible people at times.

This is not true. I was in college and there was no hazing.

Your own roommates could bully you and then you can ask to change rooms. You might not be able to get new one, but it is not nearly the same institutionalized hazing.

You could also willingly leave any fraternity whenever you want even easier than the room change process. You just walk out and never show up again. Hazing can happen in all sorts of student orgs, thinking its limited to greek life is shortsighted. I've heard stories from everything from club sports to professional organizations. There was even a religious cult that arranged marriages between members all living in the same overcrowded home.

This is a characterization of fraternities that reeks of stereotype. What can you offer to substantiate the list of negative claims you're making about Stanford fraternities? Eitan Weiner died due to fentanyl laced drugs. This death occurred in the new year, outside of the rush time frame so hazing is not a likely cause.

Furthermore, it also ignores that plenty of other theme houses outside of greek life were also eliminated.

To be clear, these are all things that I personally watched happen and had happen to friends in fraternities. Not technically any Stanford ones, so I guess you got me there - maybe they were all squeaky clean.

Google "hazing death" if you want to learn about the fun-time rituals of drinking, drugs, and abuse.

Google "fraternity sexual assault" to learn why girls I knew avoided the "handsy house" -- careful, your computer might not be able to handle that many search results.

As for institutionalized discrimination -- what exactly do you think goes on at rush deliberations? Why else would fraternities be so overwhelmingly white and rich?

And Greek houses aren't the only ones who do these things. See my other comments.

> To be clear, these are all things that I personally watched happen and had happen to friends in fraternities. Not technically any Stanford ones, so I guess you got me there - maybe they were all squeaky clean.

Not technically any Stanford ones? Can you elaborate on what you mean by "technically"?

Because it sounds like those statements you wrote are not based on any experience whatsoever with the fraternities and other group houses covered in the article. Just your own personal experiences with other fraternities, and an assumption that they're all the same.

"technically not Stanford" meaning I have heard horror stories from 15+ fraternities at 5+ schools -- but not Stanford.

So hopefully you'll forgive me if I generalize. Especially when one of the most widely-storied campus sexual assault cases in recent years happened at the Stanford Kappa Alpha house [1] -- the first fraternity house mentioned in the linked article.

[1] https://archive.ph/hxcgw

Please read your sources, Turner did not carry out the assault at KA. He and the victims met at a part at KA and Turner assaulted after leaving the fraternity. The article writes that it was "just outside" but it was out of sight of the fraternity house, some ways away.

This is a distinction without a difference.

The fact that the rape didn't occur at the fraternity makes no difference? The previous commenter makes it sound like a rape was perpetrated inside the fraternity in clear view. In reality no one at the fraternity would have been able to observe the crime.

Imagine someone says, "a man was murdered at your house and you did nothing!" when in reality the murder took place a couple minutes walk away, where you had no ability to observe the crime. Seems like a very big distinction to me.

Turner allegedly tried to sexually assault other people AT the frat house party. It’s also where they both consumed large amounts of alcohol (isn’t turner under age in the Us?).

Also, you argue that didn’t take place at the frat house but as far as I can tell, it took place behind a dumpster RIGHT next to house, and maybe still on the house’s property (hardly a couple of minutes walk away)

And, in response to your last point (“no one at the frat would have been able to observe the crime ”), he was literally stopped by two grad students cycling by.

Regardless, I agree with the other commenter — distinction without difference.

Aside from the factual problems here, which others have pointed out, I can't help thinking that the unfocused, angry, self-righteous tone of this post is related to the problems described in the article. It's as if people and organizations have bent over backward to appease the loudest, most furious, least reasonable zealots. I mean, OP has been made fucking sick! How can we not listen?

To be explicit about this: I think many people have discovered how to progress through life by being as angry as possible. I very much doubt this anger is real, and when it is, it more often reflects the writer's personality than the flaws of the world around them. This is bad, and has seriously harmed society and culture in the past 10 years. We should develop social norms that very clearly and pointedly discourage it.

From what I've seen a lot of this comes from two trends; a fall in popularity of frats and sororities, and a sharp rise in reported on campus rapes. I don't know if you recall, but there were stories about this just about every week a few years ago. If your biggest argument is complaining about that makes me sound shrill and self righteous, then I guess that's what I am. But there are some real problems that have for a long time been excused by "its just kids being kids, don't ruin the fun".

That's not even getting into the fact that it's only certain groups of people who even have the ability to engage in such shenanigans and get away with it. I may not sound like much fun, but I don't know why everyone would be expected to overlook these things for the sake of someone else's fun

If you'd written in this tone originally I wouldn't have complained. I have zero knowledge about the prevalence of campus rape and no experience of frats - I'm in England and there were similar things called drinking societies, but much less developed. So, you may very easily be right. I absolutely wouldn't dismiss campus rape, and I'm pretty sure that there has been a lot of obnoxious, entitled behaviour by rich young men over the past many years.

Agreed, OP's comment is a perfect example of moralizing that saps energy and interest from generic everyday life, the exact type of conservativism that would rather live in a safe, boring world than an interesting but flawed one.

Even if OP's comment is made in good faith (which I don't think it is), it shows a growing trend in the position that everyone shares collective responsibility for all wrongs committed.

1500 college aged kids die per year due to alcohol related injuries

https://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/statistics/consequ...

> 29 dead in the U.S. in the last 12 years.

That's less than 3 students per year, nationwide? If that's at all representative of the scale of the issue, universities would be better served promoting physical activities or healthy eating so as to reduce student fatalities due to heart disease (~2 deaths/100,000/yr in the 20 to 24 demographic).

These sort of incidents are possible in any student org or group of young people in college. Going after fraternities is just a knee jerk reaction because it seems right to go after fraternities given the notoriety we've given them in the culture, but I can tell you that some of the worst examples of hazing I've learned of when I was on college took place in orgs like the club rugby team. Those sorts of student orgs also have like zero oversight over any social activity from the university. There is no IFC checking these parties, the parties aren't registered with anyone. The university doesn't even know of the off campus houses where these groups live and party in.

Its easy to react emotionally, but rationally, there is no reason for fraternities to be inherently worse than any other student org or even just a random group of people living off campus and hosting parties. The problems you cite are really broad college problems, and if we continue to just assume that they are solely fraternity problems I don't think we will ever make meaningful progress on any of them.

It's like mass shootings are possible in any country. Well, they are, The Onion is right that there is no 100% way to prevent this. However, all countries but one can prevent 99% of them.

How does 29 dead in 12 years (across the whole US) compare with the increase in suicides mentioned in the article?

> You lost your privileges after killing a fucking kid.

If a person is in a frat and did none of these things you mentioned, then that person can absolutely not be held responsible for any of the ACTUAL COGNIZABLE IN LAW CRIMES that you have mentioned no matter how dramatically. "You lost your privileges?" WHO the F are you?

> - forced people to consume dangerous amounts of drugs and alcohol

Forced, really?

> Yeah, sorry, you don’t get to pull Animal House-style pranks any more. You lost your privileges after killing a fucking kid. > > https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Family-sues-Stanford-ro...

Hmm, did they kill a kid, or did the kid OD'ed THEN declined medical attention?

> According to Weiner’s family, the sophomore overdosed two days before his death. Paramedics were called to the frat house, but Weiner declined medical attention. Two days later, he was found unresponsive in a bathroom by a janitor

> And the author makes this out to be some fucking stick-in-the-mud administrator trying to take away their toys. Makes me fucking sick

I don't know, but you certainly did a ninja-fast edit of your post to find more chopwood for the axe you're grinding.

Life is dangerous. Unfortunately, given the glacial pace of research, odds are you may even die in the end.

If you can't accept the risks, don't ruin the fun for the rest of us.

> Forced, really?

Lol. No friends at SEC schools, huh?

Do we really need Lord of the Flies to tell us that in certain environments, at certain ages, around certain people, people can be pressured into doing things that they would never do otherwise?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-...

Lord of the flies is not an argument for or against anything. Its pessimism is unwarranted, it does not reflect reality, just the mind of a depressed man

You’re ultimately responsible for your own actions. Blaming the people who told you to is scapegoating at its finest.

29 dead in 12 years is not bad at all. What's the issue here?

People have no idea what a base rate is. And they don’t realize that the world for young people who didn’t go to college is even sketchier - those numbers just don’t get held up as a spear to attack institutions with.

> 29 dead in the U.S. in the last 12 years.

How does that compare to the number of student deaths falling off ladders, slipping on ice, or bathing over the same time periods?

(or drinking, which I know would be orders of magnitude larger...)