The Frat's in the Fire

CAMPUSES The Frat's in the Fire

College fraternities, which have been fading in influence ever since World War II's returning G.I.s failed to blush when not rushed, are newly under fire. At Amherst College, for example, they are the subject of a tough report by a committee of deans, faculty members and alumni. Amherst fraternities, says the report, "have become an anachronism, the possibilities for their reform have been exhausted, and they now stand directly in the way of exciting new possibilities." It urges a shift to more broadly based residential societies to "wean students into more mature forms of independent expression."

Fraternity members and alumni of Amherst are fighting back, hoping to prevent their school from following the lead of Williams College, which has been gradually abolishing its 15 national fraternities; only two are left. Williams President John Edward Sawyer was bitterly condemned by some alumni for the change, but Assistant Dean Donald W. Gardner insists that the changes "made this campus come alive."

Decisions on Sigma Chi. College administrations are also losing patience with fraternities that still refuse, after some 15 years of pressure, to broaden their membership selection. National officers of Sigma Chi were to decide this week whether to kick out its Stanford chapter, which was suspended last year after announcing that it intended to pledge a Negro. The trustees of Brown University ordered the Brown Sigma Chi chapter to disaffiliate on grounds that the national organization was discriminatory. Sigma Chi has filed a federal suit to force the University of Colorado to end the probation of its Boulder chapter. Officials of eight Eastern colleges recently met privately in Syracuse, N.Y., to agree on how to handle their Sigma Chi chapters.

Nationwide fraternity membership is up from 162,000 in 1962 to 200,000 today (out of 3,600,000 male students), and the number of chapters has risen from 3,600 in 1962 to 4,000 now. But the percentage of students who join Greek societies is shrinking steadily. Fraternity membership has declined at the University of Illinois, despite an increase of 4,000 more undergraduate men in the past ten years. Similarly, at the University of California's Berkeley campus, Greek societies lost 20% of their members in five years, while undergraduate enrollment rose 13%. On some campuses, fraternities are numerically as strong as ever, but everywhere students take Greek membership much less seriously. "For the first time a student can feel he neither should--nor should not--belong to a fraternity," says Ohio State's Dean John Bonner.

The Durable Blackball. Critics of fraternities contend that they are anachronistic because today's college students tend to be serious about scholarship, scoff at any pretentions to status, consider secret rituals something for Klans or kids, resist togetherness, applaud all moves toward individual equality. Despite official pressure against racial discrimination, the blackball system, which forfeits membership control to the most prejudiced among a chapter's members, still keeps most fraternities segregated. In the 42,000-enrollment at the University of Minnesota, not a single Negro belongs to any fraternity except all-Negro Alpha Phi Alpha. There are no Negro fraternity members at all among the University of Wisconsin's 39,000 students.

Also working against fraternities are plush new dormitories, which often offer swimming pools, libraries, billiard tables and rooms with baths, and often cost less to live in than fraternity houses.

Less Rah-Rah. Some Greek societies are reforming to meet the new student mood. University of Texas fraternities have set up a system to tutor their new freshmen members. Social services of many types have long since transformed the Greek "hell week" to "help week." At Rutgers, ten of the 27 campus fraternities have Negro members. There is a growing movement by local chapters to break from their nationals and to dilute alumni influence. "We insist upon local autonomy," says Colgate Dean William Griffith. Many colleges insist that fraternities still improve student life, offer them financial help in return for more institutional control. M.I.T. stoutly encourages its strong fraternity system.

Berkeley's Assistant Dean of Students Lewis Rice argues that fraternities and sororities still meet "a basic social need," particularly on a large campus, in giving students "a sense of belonging and identification with a peer group." If the rah-rah pledge-or-die appeal of the Greek groups is fading, it may well be to their benefit, enabling them to mesh more naturally into the diversity of today's campus life.

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