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The Drinking Is Killing, and
Fraternities Should Be Banned
Mike
Gallagher |
My Answer to His Column: |
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Another kid dies from
alcohol poisoning, an 18-year-old who apparently downed a pint of whiskey.
It happened last week in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, just the latest in an
ever-growing list of senseless deaths of young people who think they’re
doing the adult thing by drinking like, well, only a child would. But
what’s most infuriating about these deaths is that they occur at
fraternity houses all over colleges and universities in America. And we
still resist endorsing a nationwide ban of fraternities. The
only people who would challenge my belief that it’s time to ban college
fraternities are those who are proud, glorious alumni of Tappa Kegga Brew
or some other goofy frat. They’ll try and argue that fraternities really
do a lot of good in the community, that they’re social groups that
encourage membership in the local Big Brothers chapter or the American Red
Cross. But
we all know what fraternities REALLY are: places where underage kids are
encouraged to drink heavily. Animal houses that thrive on wild keg parties
and strange, homoerotic activities that are conducted under the guise of
"pledging" ("Thank you, sir, may I have another?").
They are just generally lousy environments for impressionable young kids
who are supposedly trying to get an expensive college education. Our
culture has a strange double standard when it comes to alcohol. We have
numerous activist groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving who want a
"zero tolerance" policy toward the deadly combination of
drinking and driving. And yet thousands of parents cheerfully and
willingly watch their 18-year-old sons pledge to a fraternity, a group
that will encourage binge drinking by way of never-ending keg parties and
beer bashes, any kind of excuse to get a bunch of 18-, 19-, 20- and
21-year-olds together to get drunk. There’s
a family in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, this week faced with the unthinkable
task of burying their terrific 18-year-old kid. A young man who figured he
was supposed to guzzle a pint of whiskey while watching a basketball game
on a Saturday night in a frat house because that’s what 18-year-old kids
in frat houses do. It’s
time we wake up and realize what fraternities are all about. Shame on any
college or university that allows them on campus. And maybe it’s not too
much to hope that the death of this 18-year-old boy will get the attention
of other parents who are faced with the prospect of allowing their son to
join a fraternity. They need to just say no. Mike
Gallagher’s talk show is now heard on nearly 200 radio stations.
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Mr. Gallagher, Generally I agree with
the points of your columns - however the current rant that you have
released is not worthy of your talents.
When you rail against the fraternity system you do so as if all
your research was accomplished by watching reruns of National Lampoons
Animal House on Comedy Central or is colored through glasses that may be
fogged with personal animus that seems as if you may have been
“black-balled” by a fraternity in your own past. When I first read your
column on this subject I called my wife into the room and read it to her
as an example of a "conservative" columnist practicing what
“liberal” columnist routinely do – talking out of both sides of
their face and trying to use emotion rather than logic to make their
argument. In your case, that would be absolving an adult (the
unfortunate 18 year old in your column) of any personal responsibility.
Nowhere in your column do you say that he was forced to drink this
bottle of alcohol, you do not even try and make the case that peer
pressure (which I think is just a cop out for doing something that one
knows to be wrong) was brought to bear. The Fraternity system has
indeed had its ups and downs over the nearly last century and a half but
to blame binge drinking on it is quite disingenuous and intellectually
dishonest. I would venture to
guess that less than 20 campuses in the US still allow kegs to be consumed
at campus parties and very few Fraternities (if any) allow their
consumption on fraternity property. Binge drinking is a
problem that plagues the entire college system (even campuses without
fraternities – how do you explain that phenomenon?), not just the
“frats” as you pejoratively called them, and is in fact helped along
with the seeming willing assistance of University administrations.
To see the real problem I would ask for you to do two things. #1
Conduct a simple survey of campus newspapers (which are controlled and
funded by the University) for a period of two weeks.
What will strike you is the amount of advertisements for bars and
other purveyors of alcohol related activities. Universities have shown a
disturbing willingness to control editorial content in campus newspapers
(in violation of the 1st Amendment) when it suits their
purposes but they do not show the same restraint in which businesses they
allow to purchase advertisements (which they can reject without
constitutional infringements.) Now accepting that
college students are like other people (a difficult proposition at best) I
think we can accept that Monday through Friday should be relegated to the
pursuit of “constructive” endeavors.
Be it study and learning for the student or increasing productivity
for those in the work force. We
can also accept that beginning on Friday night and proceeding across the
weekend that other legal pursuits are appropriate.
We can attend parties, go to sporting events and movies and even
attend the Church of their choice (although “liberals” may take issue
with that last one). As part of your
examination on item one you will naturally find yourself wondering about
item #2. Which is the amount
of advertising in campus newspapers and on campus property for “Thursday
Late Nights”. These are
advertisements from local bars to draw the “kids” as you call these
young adults into their legal establishments to begin the weekend early.
If the “kids” are out in the bars on Thursday you have to
wonder how they are functioning in class on Friday.
Well the answer is that many Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes
essentially have become Monday-Wednesday classes with even the Professors
taking Friday off or having surrendered to this new reality by never
having tests on Fridays if they do show up for class. I am the Chapter Advisor
for the Sigma Chi Fraternity at Arizona State University (a traditional
“party” school) and I can attest that while some of what you say is
true the thrust of your column has no basis in our reality.
While alcohol consumption on campus and in the Fraternity system
does occur to levels that many of us find unacceptable (I personally have
never had a single alcoholic drink in my entire 36 years) and would
venture to guess that you would be surprised at what most of the guys in
the House drink during the week. For
meals you do not see bottles or cans of alcohol but rather kool-aid and
most evening while the guys are studying (yes it does still happen
occasionally) you will see guys swigging gallon jugs of spring water that
has never been through a moon shiners still. You pooh-pooh the efforts
of Fraternities to raise money for charity (the ASU Chapter donated almost
$3,000 to the Children’s Miracle Network last year in addition to other
organizations), but I challenge you to find another campus organization
that does as much. Additionally you miss the biggest benefit that these
young adults learn through their apparent alcoholic haze and that is
responsibility. How many
other “kids” their age are responsible for running a $250,000
business. That is the typical
budget. You have to keep the
lights on, pay the telephone bill, pay the mortgage, repair the property,
buy the food, hire the cook, pay the cable company, make sure the trash
man is collecting the garbage and the hundred other things that have to
get taken care of on a weekly basis.
The men in a fraternity have to deal with all of this while still
maintaining grades – oh did I forget to mention that the fraternity
grade point average at ASU (remember we are a party school) exceeds the
All Men’s Average for the entire campus. If you think that almost
all campus organizations do not have “social” activities involving
alcohol you are sorely mistaken. To use your logic the
parents should “just say no” to sending their kids to college because
we now know that the University itself encourages the consumption of
alcohol. As a Chapter Advisor
and a Father my heart goes out to the family of the young man in your
column, however it appears that this “terrific” young man did not
learn much in the way of personal responsibility or restraint during the
18 years he spent living with his parents. David W. Riddle |