FSU Bans ALL Fraternities and Sororities!!!!

kibitzer wrote:

I think it's an overreaction. I'm sure a lot of the Greeks on campus adhere to the law, and a blanket ban on all frat/sor activity is not fair.

Instead, make the punishment fit the crime. Simply put every FSU student who is under age 21 in jail for a week if s/he drinks alcohol. And put every FSU student who *supplies* alcohol to someone underage (conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor is a felony, remember) in prison for a year and a day.

That should straighten things out, and the law-abiding brothers and sisters would not be unfairly punished.

So punish taxpayers who have to fork over money to keep them up? That seems to be a problem in this "justice" system of ours. In my state it costs taxpayers $28-30K a year to keep a prisoner up (~$76-77 a day). Why should taxpayers suffer?

Why not just kick them out of school, with a healthy fine added in (or lots of community service...think cleaning public toilets...if they can't pay fine) and/or pay back scholarship(s) if they have them. Make the perpetrators pay not taxpayers! But I do agree with cracking down, just not making society pay...make the individual pay.

"Yes, frats are the big problem in society, not the ghetto dwellers killing each other by the dozens daily, selling drugs, coming all manner of crimes, creating countless fatherless children to perpetuate the misery. Nope, focus on the frat boys."

Well, them and angry white guys with guns, as long as we're stereotyping, eh John boy?

John Utah wrote:

Yes, frats are the big problem in society, not the ghetto dwellers killing each other by the dozens daily, selling drugs, coming all manner of crimes, creating countless fatherless children to perpetuate the misery. Nope, focus on the frat boys.

WTF are you talking about? The discussion is about issues on college campuses and the death of a a student at FSU. It had NOTHING to do with ghettos or fatherless children... Try to keep up. If reading isn't your strong suit you're out of luck because we can't draw pictures for you on this site.

We get it you hate poor black people, but that is not the issue of this discussion at this time.

Why do so many people have such childish and negative views about fraternities on this page? It seems to come mainly from people who are not in fraternities, as well. The money that people pay to their fraternities goes towards things that they use, it is not "paying for friendships". If someone were to pay for everything that a fraternity provides on their own (housing, food, beer, etc) they would end up paying close to the same amount on their own if not more than they pay in dues to the fraternity. And don't say that you didn't buy beer in college, that's most likely a lie. Most fraternities maintain average gpa's higher than the average students at many schools, and often come out with better connections and experiences to prepare them for the real world than others. The comments on this board make people sounds so jealous and just pure hateful, and sounds pretty silly.

Why do fraternities bother people so much?

NotPC wrote:

John Utah wrote:

Yes, frats are the big problem in society, not the ghetto dwellers killing each other by the dozens daily, selling drugs, coming all manner of crimes, creating countless fatherless children to perpetuate the misery. Nope, focus on the frat boys.

WTF are you talking about? The discussion is about issues on college campuses and the death of a a student at FSU. It had NOTHING to do with ghettos or fatherless children... Try to keep up. If reading isn't your strong suit you're out of luck because we can't draw pictures for you on this site.

We get it you hate poor black people, but that is not the issue of this discussion at this time.

John can only focus on one thing.

He has made hating black people his thing.

So we can get rid of social organizations with the stroke of a pen because they cause occasional problems, but we can't take GUNS out of the hands of the population even with all this senseless killing? Priorities...

For better or worse fraternities and sororities aren't going anywhere at FSU or any other large campuses. Way too many donors who are affiliated.

singer of one note wrote:

So we can get rid of social organizations with the stroke of a pen because they cause occasional problems, but we can't take GUNS out of the hands of the population even with all this senseless killing? Priorities...

These two things are not like the other so your argument makes little to no sense what so ever.

Guns are a tool used to kill things and shoot targets. They are an inanimate object that can be banned from various places but cannot be out right outlawed due to protection in the 2nd amendment of the US Constitution.

Fraternities are social organizations people chose to join for whatever their reason. They are often found on a college campus. IF the college chooses to ban these organizations that is up to that college. (I would imagine that the frats could move off campus without impunity.) This is much much much different than making frats illegal. That too would be illegal due to rights in that same, aforementioned US Constitution.

Mr. Obvious wrote:

For better or worse fraternities and sororities aren't going anywhere at FSU or any other large campuses. Way too many donors who are affiliated.

The dean will just put them on double secret probation for awhile, and things cool off.

Its always one person who wrecks it for all.

One of the things that I thought was weird about fraternities and sororities was that they keep "test banks". That's old tests from previous members. One could say that it's the profs responsibility to change up the exams and that you could just Google search for old exams, which I did. Or that sometimes professors even post old exams. But these "test banks", and I'm sure they probably had "homework banks", seemed so lame and academically borderline dishonest to me. Are you so lazy that you can't even do your own Google searching for stuff?

I also remember the time when I was in a group project for a management class. One of the members suggested that we study his frat. I don't know, if we're paying a thousand dollars for this class I think that we can come up with a more worthwhile idea than studying a frat.

In addition, I think that once you get out of high school, you should try to hang out with people that you have stuff in common with. Not people that you are coincidentally grouped together with because of school and work. I'd like to see universities move toward Euro style university. Just a different feeling, where school is school and there aren't so many alumni license plate holders and window stickers. Take sports and frats out of the university. But that would be a big culture shift.

Given I attended school on a Division 1 scholarship, a fraternity was unthinkable for me, as the dictates of the scholarship made priorities obtain in the following descending order: 1) athletics, 2) academics, and 3) social life. 3) was an incredibly distant third, especially since I came from a poor single mother home and couldn't afford a shirt with a collar, much less fraternity dues, a challenge at a school that was one of the nation's wealthiest. And really, the shibboleth about being a student athlete was absurd - athletics was the foremost priority for a scholarship athlete, especially if you wanted to return the next year (I only studied my senior year in a tough honors program because I could then commit fully to academics without penalty).

Some fraternities were little more than venues to drink to great excess, endure abuse during hazing, get high often, and obtain a better but fleeting social status with women. There were a few that were reasonable in their behavior, and I really do think the guys benefited from learning to get along with different types of people and show some degree of commitment and friendship to them. So I think it neither fair or balanced to condemn all Greek organizations. But I like what the FSU President did here. Making all suffer for a fraternity's reckless and stupid act can cause peer pressure to come into play later on -- peer pressure being something that works with young people.

GDI!

FSU president is probably a skinny wuss who got no puss

lol

It feels like an overreaction to me. I attended a small, engineering-heavy university (for that who are curious, CMU) where there wasn't much of a social life to be found outside of the Greek quad, at least when I was there. I too had the same stereotypes of fraternities that a lot of you do, but it took about ten minutes to realize that the Greek life at a school like CMU is vastly different than say, Florida State. The school is so insanely stressful with the workload and the Pittsburgh weather that a release is needed - and it's marginally better to have it happening on campus, under the purview of the University as opposed to off-campus where there are no polices in place for things like alcohol poisoning and the like.

I do agree that they're a huge liability for the University though; it is true that the fraternity I was in was basically an underage drinking and intramural sports club. It was certainly a blast and I'd absolutely do it again (and a lot of those friends are my best friends to this day), but it was an obvious exploitation of a legal loophole and the lax standards of campus police.

Meant to add a few things, submitted too quickly.

None of the fraternities that I knew of at CMU hazed in any meaningful way. Pledges in my fraternity had to get the door if someone rang, clean the dishes if someone forgot, that sort of thing. Big whoop. I wouldn't have put up with some of the stories I've heard elsewhere and I sort of doubt anyone at a school like CMU would.

I'd also say that in addition to partying my face off and leveraging a very useful network of people post-graduation, I did learn a ton of real-time leadership responsibility through our various projects (philanthropy, on-campus competitions, etc.) and just generally speaking having a support network for the tough times at a school like CMU is always helpful. Can't speak to the test bank that others speak of - we didn't have one of those, although at times it certainly would have helped.

Long story short, it's not a great idea to paint a super broad brush of all Greek life like some of you are trying to do. It was great for me; it might not be for you. You have to recognize that not all schools are the same, not all people are the same, and not all organizations are the same.

Sorry for the helpful and earnest post. Please go back to trolling.

Not in a frat wrote:

Given I attended school on a Division 1 scholarship, a fraternity was unthinkable for me, as the dictates of the scholarship made priorities obtain in the following descending order: 1) athletics, 2) academics, and 3) social life. 3) was an incredibly distant third, especially since I came from a poor single mother home and couldn't afford a shirt with a collar, much less fraternity dues,....

If I were a coach and one of my runners joined a frat I'd seriously have reconsider whatever scholarship he was on the next year. I know coaches have much much less power in those matters these days, but it seems like coaches always find way to rid themselves of an athlete if they put their mind to it.

If I'm giving you $$ to run I expect your priorities to be school, running, school and more running. If you have the time and money to waste on frats there are plenty of runners that would be a better use of my scholarship dollas.

Greek life at small schools is a complete joke and nothing like Greek life at large southern universities like FSU. Completely different cultures. apples to oranges

@John Utha wrote:

"Yes, frats are the big problem in society, not the ghetto dwellers killing each other by the dozens daily, selling drugs, coming all manner of crimes, creating countless fatherless children to perpetuate the misery. Nope, focus on the frat boys."

Well, them and angry white guys with guns, as long as we're stereotyping, eh John boy?

Angry white guys listen to Rush and post here. Pretty sure that's not doing a lot of damage.

Ghhkkk wrote:

Greek life at small schools is a complete joke and nothing like Greek life at large southern universities like FSU. Completely different cultures. apples to oranges

Absolutely! That's why I think it's particularly ridiculous for people to make the broad generalizations that they're making in this thread.