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Do Bans on Fraternities Violate the First Amendment?
Right of free association is cited in attempts to
restore Greek groups, and to bar them
By BEN GOSE
Colby College has clubs for all types of students,
including environmentalists, homosexuals, and
Republicans. But try to start a fraternity and you'll be
suspended for a year, or expelled.
Colby is
among a small group of private liberal-arts institutions
-- Bowdoin, Middlebury, and Williams Colleges are among
the others -- that have abolished Greek systems and have
vowed to quash any attempts by students to start
off-campus, "underground" fraternities or
sororities.
David K. Easlick, Jr., national
executive director of Delta Kappa Epsilon, which had a
chapter at Colby until the mid-1980s, has argued for
years that a ban on fraternities denies students the
constitutional right to associate with whomever they
choose. Courts generally have sided with the colleges,
but Mr. Easlick thinks that a resolution recently passed
by Congress will give the upper hand to the
fraternities.
The non-binding "sense of
Congress" resolution, which was in the Higher
Education Act legislation signed into law last month,
expresses lawmakers' belief that colleges should not act
to prevent students from exercising their freedom of
association. It was sponsored in the House of
Representatives by U.S. Rep. Bob Livingston, who had
belonged to Delta Kappa Epsilon at Tulane University. In
floor remarks, Mr. Livingston -- who in January will
become Speaker of the House -- said the resolution would
"put Congress on record defending the rights of
students who face expulsion and other severe
consequences by daring to enjoy their most basic
constitutional freedoms of speech and association, often
off campus and on their own time."
In a
letter this month to the presidents of Bowdoin, Colby,
and Middlebury Colleges, Mr. Easlick cited the
resolution, noted that alumni and students on each
campus would soon be preparing for fraternity rush, and
asked the colleges not to interrupt the process.
"We trust that it is your intention to obey
the law," wrote Mr. Easlick, whose fraternity is
based in Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich.
"We're
not asking for recognition, a subsidy, or a meeting
space," he says. "We just want these kids to
be able to be Dekes or Kappa Kappa Gammas or whatever
and not be thrown out of school."
The
executive director of Delta Phi, another national
fraternity, mentioned the resolution in a letter this
month to the president of Williams, in which he asked
the college to comply with "federal law" by
permitting the return of fraternity chapters --
including Delta Phi -- that the college had abolished in
1962.
Colby and Middlebury abolished their
fraternity systems in the mid-1980s. Bowdoin announced
last year that it would phase out its fraternities by
2000. Two other private liberal-arts institutions --
Denison University and Hamilton College -- forced
fraternity chapters to abandon their houses in 1995.
(Four fraternities are challenging the Hamilton move in
federal court, arguing that the policy violates
antitrust laws.)
Officials of Bowdoin, Colby,
Middlebury, and Williams say they have no plans to
change their policies. They note that the Congressional
resolution is merely an expressed opinion, and not
"federal law," as some fraternity leaders have
called it. Even Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican
and a sponsor of the resolution, acknowledged that fact
in a memorandum seeking his colleagues' support. He
wrote that the resolution "would not limit any
school, public or private, in any way."
The
four colleges say that they have been able to recruit a
greater number of highly qualified students since
phasing out fraternities, and that there appears to be
little interest in Greek life among currently enrolled
students. They also point out that three lawsuits
brought by fraternities challenging the bans -- two
against Colby and one against Middlebury -- have been
won by the colleges.
"Many students have
chosen to attend and associate themselves with the Colby
community precisely because it does not have
fraternities," wrote Justice Donald Alexander of
Maine Superior Court, in a 1986 decision upholding
Colby's policy. "A court order authorizing
fraternity activity at Colby would violate the rights of
these students to associate with each other and gain an
education in a fraternity free environment."
William R. Cotter, Colby's president, sent a
two-paragraph response to Mr. Easlick. "The law has
clearly been interpreted to uphold Colby's own
associational rights," he wrote.
While
judges have ruled for the colleges, the fraternities
have some support in the court of public opinion. The
American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, supported
the recent "sense of Congress" resolution.
Robert E. Manley, a lawyer who has represented
fraternities, says "there's something fundamentally
wrong" about the bans on fraternities. "The
colleges are telling students that if you go to a
meeting off campus of a private association that happens
to use Greek letters as its name, you will be expelled
or punished, but if you go to a meeting of the Ku Klux
Klan, you won't be thrown out of school," says Mr.
Manley, whose Cincinnati law firm publishes a journal
called Fraternal Law.
"It's amazing
that in this day and age, when everything is
tolerated," says Mr. Easlick, "that these
colleges won't tolerate a mainstream social
organization."
The colleges maintain that
fraternities are not like other student organizations.
When Colby abolished fraternities, in 1984, it cited a
variety of reasons: The fraternities were
"anti-intellectual," encouraged narrow social
and academic experiences for members, had restrictive
membership policies, practiced hazing, discriminated on
the basis of sex, and were hampering the recruiting
efforts of the admissions office, the college said.
What's more, at a time when many of the recent
alcohol-related deaths on college campuses have occurred
at fraternity events (The
Chronicle, November 6), Representative
Livingston may not be the fraternities' best advocate.
In a recent profile, The Washington Post noted
that his "Deke" chapter at Tulane in the 1960s
was "notorious for wild, Animal House-style
behavior." The chapter painted a warning on the
street in front of the house that said "Slow --
Drunk Zone," the Post reported.
Moreover, it's not clear that many students at
the colleges that have banned fraternities would be
interested in joining one anyway.
Stu Gittleman,
executive director of Delta Phi, based in Athens, Ga.,
declines to comment on whether any students at Williams
have expressed an interest in Delta Phi. He says he
simply has a "gut feeling" that plenty of
Williams students would be interested in Greek life.
But Scott Moringiello, a Williams sophomore and
news editor of The Williams Record, the student
paper, says he has checked with almost every classmate
he knows and has found no one who favors the idea.
"It is something that students are very hostile
to," he says. "It's not something that people
come to Williams for."
Mr. Easlick says
there's a simple reason that students aren't expressing
interest in fraternities: "It would put a young man
in jeopardy of being thrown out of school." He has
not spoken this fall with any Bowdoin, Colby, or
Middlebury students who are interested in joining Delta
Kappa Epsilon, he says.
Many students at the
colleges that have abolished fraternities say the campus
social scene is thriving without them. Middlebury, for
instance, has six "social houses," similar to
fraternities but co-educational. The houses are
selective (current members pick new ones) and have
"initiation" periods. At least one, Kappa
Delta Rho, has kept the same name and building that it
had as a single-sex fraternity; in fact, it is still
loosely affiliated with the national fraternity.
But the social houses have restrictions that
some fraternity systems at other colleges do not:
Students can't join until their sophomore year;
"pledge activity" can last no more than 15
hours per week; and all parties must be open to all
Middlebury students.
John Felton, a Middlebury
senior and a member of Kappa Delta Rho, says most
students would not want fraternities to return. The
social houses "don't overwhelm your life like I
hear that fraternities do at other places," says
Mr. Felton, who is president of the Student Government
Association.
At Colby, committees in the
residential areas, known as "commons," plan
campus-wide social events. Bands from Boston that play
salsa and funk music have performed on the campus in the
past month. In mid-November, one commons area threw a
"semi-naked" dance party, at which students
danced in white clothing beneath black lights. "We
were slightly less clad than we normally are,"
explains Walter Wang, a senior and a member of the
student government.
"The social life here
is pretty good," he adds. "We don't really
need fraternities or sororities."
http://chronicle.com
Section: Students
Page: A37
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