The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/greek-life/page/2/)
I of course have benefited from Greek life: I’ve made my best friends, I’ve met incredible people who I might never have met otherwise, I’ve expanded my professional network and I’ve had a lot of fun. I don’t have any regrets about my time with my fraternity, and I’m grateful for my experiences. But Greek life is a deeply flawed system founded on elitism and sexism, and still it often perpetuates prejudice.
The Sigma Phi fraternity will operate under a deferred suspension until the end of the fall 2023 semester because an investigation by the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards found that they had violated Cornell’s policy against hazing.
The IFC president and the director of sorority and fraternity life sent an email lifting the ban on social events while implementing new measures for students’ healthy and safety.
To claim, as Kevin Cheng and Aaron Friedman did, that I attacked “the personal and academic integrity of students in the Greek system by implying that students in Greek life cannot be trusted to manage their own time” combines hyperbole with reductive nonsense and has no relation to what I wrote.
On Wednesday morning, IFC announced that the ban on social events would last through the Fall semester.
We would thus like the opportunity to provide our own views on Greek life, with the hope that we may help both Prof. Schwarz and our fellow Cornellians to better understand why fraternities and sororities still have their place on campus today.
Why are these organizations tolerated by universities? We know from studies that alcohol abuse is more common among those belonging to the Greek system than among other students and that membership in residential Greek organizations is associated with binge drinking and marijuana usage through midlife. As if that was not bad enough, a recent New York Times article on the University of Alabama’s sorority rush highlighted the superficiality and frivolity of this system and the significant cost in dollars that membership entails.
In 2018, as a junior at Cornell, I wrote an opinion column in response to the University sanctioning Zeta Beta Tau for conducting a “pig roast,” or a game where members would have sex with women for points. The name came from the tiebreaking rules: whoever had sex with the heaviest woman would win.
Following the release of a police report citing incidences of drugging and possible sexual assault at frat houses associated with Cornell University, Cornell IFC has temporarily suspended all frat-affiliated events.
People throw parties to have fun, but they require a detachment from each of our personal identities that makes the whole affair seem impersonal. Out on the dance floor and in the fraternity and sorority houses, everyone is looking out for themselves, only interested in making their night as memorable as possible. At a school as competitive as Cornell, I spend too much of my time battling the curve to have to fend for myself at a party full of strangers.