This episode originally aired on Oct. 26, 2026.
Colleges and universities have long had a troubled history with fraternities, whether it was hazing resulting in student deaths to allegations of sexual assault.
Allegations of sexual assault at a Cornell University fraternity house and an alleged cocaine trafficking ring at Penn State have been shedding a negative light on fraternities.
This comes at a time when fraternity membership is growing, and schools are seeing them as a means of improving recruitment and retention.
We’ll look at how colleges and universities address the issues surrounding Greek life on campus on this hour of All Sides.
Guests:
- Douglas Belkin, higher education reporter, Wall Street Journal
- John Hechinger, author/senior editor, Bloomberg News
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. A declining number of high school graduates and greater competition for students is having an impact on college campuses, including the closure of some campuses. A possible solution for colleges and universities looking to boost enrollment and retain students is fraternities. They offer a built-in social network. They help develop leadership skills. Many chapters have strict GPA requirements, so they promote academic success. But the positives of fraternities are also clouded by recent national headlines. Cornell with allegations of sexual assault, and Penn State with allegations about drug trafficking. This hour, we are looking at Greek life on college campuses. And joining us now is Douglas Belkin, higher education reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Welcome to All Sides Douglas.
Douglas Belkin: Hi, good morning.
Juravich: So around the time of the Me Too movement protests at American universities, the American universities were demanding tougher oversight and there was a call for abolishing Greek life in general. How has this impacted the number of students joining fraternities? What are you seeing about numbers going up and down of fraternites being popular and unpopular?
Belkin: They're sort of cyclical. They declined for a while. And the number of kids on campuses is lower than it was a decade ago. But as a percentage of students on campus now, it's been rising for a few years since the pandemic. So right now, fraternities in general enrollment is up as a percent of students overall. Kids are looking for community. They're looking to connect. These are kids who spent some of their high school years. Online instead of going to school. So I think that affected them pretty deeply.
Juravich: So, colleges and fraternities have a long and complicated history. As a higher education reporter, have you been surprised by the continued interest in having fraternites and sororities exist? Why don't these schools just, you know, with all the national headlines that come, that pop up every now and then, like, why don't the schools just say no more? Let's not do this.
Belkin: Well, these, I mean, the fraternities are as old as the schools in some cases. So, you know, it would be like cutting off an appendage. These things run deep. The students who go to fraternites generally have better outcomes in terms of engaging, in terms with GPAs. I think you mentioned this in your lead-in. They also give at a much higher number with regard to alumni donations. And that is not an insignificant factor in why schools would be, you, know, slow to push them out.
Juravich: Yeah, what are some of the reasons schools give for bringing more fraternities and sororities to their campuses? Because I read in one of your pieces that schools are actually trying to increase, in some cases, more Greek life.
Belkin: Right, it's this interest by students who, this phrase comes up a lot recently. Kids wanna have this sort of all-American campus experience. They've been through the pandemic and COVID, it kind of shook them. And now they kind of want the classic traditional American college campus and that involves fraternities. There's been a pretty big push or drive to head south, even from the Northeast and such and the Midwest. Where these fraternities are big, where football games are big where that ra-ra enrollment is part of the culture. So this is sort of where kids are and what they're seeking in general.
Juravich: So what role does the actual college and university have to play in that? I mean, can they ask the fraternity and sororities to open a chapter at their campus? Is that what you mean? Like, how does the university control how much Greek life there is?
Belkin: So they do and they don't, right? So the piece of report a couple of weeks ago looked at the schools who have been interviewing fraternities to bring them onto campus because they want them there because the students are asking them. And in some cases, the students say, you know, I'm interested in your school, but if you don't have fraternites, I'm not going to apply because I won't go. Or they've been accepted and they give that as a reason why they wouldn't accept the admissions offer. So the schools are looking at fraternities and proactively going out and finding them so that they will have a presence on campus and help, you know, if that's what the kids are looking for. On the flip side of it, when these fraternites do something that's negative and that happens, you now, pretty consistently, then they'll push them off campus, they'll remove their sort of standing on campus. So they may still exist, but they will exist without standing, they'll exist off campus.
Juravich: Yeah, you wrote about some schools that had never had fraternities or sororities, bringing them in for the first time. Do you know if like, they're trying to set stricter guidelines to, um, you know, avoid hazing or other possible illegal activities, like if they're, if they're considering expanding Greek life and, or bringing it for the first time, are they trying to like get out ahead of it?
Belkin: Yeah, I mean, when they're interviewing fraternities, they're asking them about what they do to build community, what they do. A lot of these fraternites have philanthropic orientations, and they're connected to that. Hazing's broadly illegal, so they can't do that. But, you know, there are sort of rites of passage that fraternitites do very well. And folks are interested in joining those things and being part of a club that You know, has, I guess, a bar to entry.
Juravich: You recently contributed to an article about Cornell's past efforts to reign in fraternities. Why has that school come up short when it was trying to reform its Greek system at Cornell?
Belkin: Well, we spoke to a really interesting attorney about this, and his take is that unless there are, if a bunch of 18, 19, 20-year-old boys are allowed to live by themselves, things are kind of likely to go haywire at some point, unless there's a mature, steady presence there. And you know, sometimes there is and sometimes there isn't. So his take was that schools need to have an adult in the house in order to curb these excesses that are happening consistently. And they've never been willing to take that step because the alumni of the fraternities went to these fraternites, had a good time, support the school, support the fraternalities, didn't have that presence, think it would ruin the fraternity experience and aren't interested in seeing a change. So the schools have sort of nibbled around the edges and... I should, in some cases, they have mandated that folks are in there living with the young men, but they have very limited roles and responsibilities. So to some extent, it's just a degree of how much authority they should have within the house.
Juravich: Yeah, I've heard of the term like a house mother for sorority, but I've never really thought about whether that person actually exists or lives there or if that's just something in like in books and on TV.
Belkin: No, that's the real thing. And now there's like, I don't know if they call them house. I actually don't the name is a good question, but they have, you know, younger men, a lot of times graduate students living at the fraternity houses too.
Juravich: Oh, because a 23 year old is so much more mature, right? Something like that. Maybe, maybe. This is All Sides on 89.7 WOSU NPR News. We are talking about colleges and their continued and sometimes growing embrace of fraternities. We're talking with Douglas Belkin, higher education reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Can you tell me about what you found out about insurance when it comes to fraternites? Because this is something I had never considered. One of your stories says, Insurance companies determined fraternities had become such a risk that they were ranked just behind hazardous waste disposal companies and asbestos contractors. So I guess, talk to me about insurance. Like, who has insurance here? The fraternity itself? The university has insurance related to the fraternity? I don't understand the insurance part.
Belkin: So a lot of the big insurance companies dropped coverage for fraternities in the 80s and the 90s because it was just too problematic. There was too many problems happening. So some universities are self-insured. I think you're going to have John Hechinger on. He's sort of the national expert on the insurance fraternity. Yes.
Juravich: Yes, yes, we are, he's in the next segment and I will ask him about insurance I just want to yeah, if you could give me a top line what you know, yeah
Belkin: Yeah, he literally wrote the book on it. But the insurance right now, I think that one of the thesis of John's book is that there's a little bit of a Ponzi scheme happening in that fraternities pay to get insurance, but they don't actually get much out of the insurance. And so it ends up with the schools can end up paying and the national chapters can be protected but the houses themselves may not be. So it creates some perverse incentives for bad behavior with regard to who's held responsible and who you can sue. Now that said, this is beginning to change, I think. There was a case nine months ago or so where I think a judge said there was liability. Among fraternities which hadn't, which was something new. So it is shifting.
Juravich: And does the university at all have, because you're mentioning, I guess, the fraternity having insurance, but the university, and I can talk with John about this in the next segment, where the university is connected to the fraternities or not and how culpable they are in bad acts.
Belkin: Yeah, well, the Jane Doe case is a good example. She names the fraternity as a defendant, so they're going to have to deal with this. That's a civil suit. It's not a criminal suit, obviously. So they'll be on the line potentially for damages in that situation, as could be the fraternities and the individuals.
Juravich: She names Cornell as, yeah, so basically, do you know, would Cornell have any insurance related to having fraternities exist or that it's kind of like a separate thing?
Belkin: You know, it's a good question whether they're self-insured or they have their own policies. I imagine that they would, and it's significant. These are multi-billion dollar institutions, so their liabilities is a significant part of their financial calculus.
Juravich: So while Greek organizations do make positive contributions to their institutions, I mentioned earlier that they have GPA requirements, they build leadership skills, they're great social networks for people. Why do you think negative incidents are the ones that make all the headlines? That's the world we live in, I guess.
Belkin: I mean, you know, seven Cornell fraternity brothers accused of gang-raping a sophomore. That's horrible. The headline. You know, you have elitism. You have all of the isms, the misogyny, the patriarchy, all the things that people get upset about with regard to sort of elite university campuses and the wealth there. This touches that nerve, and so that's why I think this exploded.
Juravich: Yeah. And I mean, the, you know, the negative headlines come up every few years or so, and then different states do different things. I mean have you looked into at all, you know, um, the idea that different states have, have passed different laws whenever it comes to hazing and that kind of thing.
Belkin: There's national laws now that prohibit it. There's been a movement over the years to marginalize this. It's really hard to root out. There's a lot of academic research that say young people, but young men in particular crave rights of passage. And this country doesn't do a particularly good job of giving young men ways to become men, to have a right of passage and fraternities fill that void. Sometimes they do it positively, and sometimes they do it negatively, and it curdles. But just because it's illegal doesn't mean it's not going to happen, and continues to.
Juravich: Yeah, I mean, related to that, I can talk about Ohio. In 2018, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a law called Collin's Law, and it's an anti-hazing act. It's named for Collin Wiant, who died in a hazing incident at Ohio University. 44 states and DC have similar laws. So this law, particularly in Ohio, it expands the definition of hazing. It increases the minimum penalty. It expands the list of officials required to report hazing It also requires fraternities and sororities to offer or have hazing awareness and prevention training. So in your reporting, have you seen things like this be successful? I don't know how to even track whether this 2018 law has helped anything in Ohio.
Belkin: Well, that's to the criticism coming out of Cornell is that, in the wake of this case, is that the way universities are handling this thing are education and training, and they don't do diddly. That these kids kind of do what they want because they have the autonomy within the fraternities by themselves. And unless that's addressed, it's really not gonna change. And I think there's a lot of evidence to support that. Um, sort of. The answer has been more training, more education, more seminars, and I think it's a pretty limited impact.
Juravich: Well, with the hazing deaths, lawsuits, suspensions, new laws getting passed about fraternities, but fraternites and sororities remain popular and in some places, as you mentioned earlier, they're growing. Why do you think it is that students are not scared away?
Belkin: Well, there's some anecdotal evidence that they are. Right now there's been sort of stories of young women who were intending to apply to Cornell who are saying, no, I'm not gonna do that. But I think the draw of fraternities for young men far outweighs any kind of vague concern that something could happen. What they see are young men who are having a lot of fun or have a sort of cohesive identity. There's built-in for loneliness and sort of social ineptitude as part of this generation's burden right now and it alleviates a lot of that because you Walk into a situation and you've got built-In brothers built- in friends That's seductive that's powerful and that's what's right in front of them
Juravich: And since you've been covering the sexual assault allegations at Cornell, are you seeing any ripple effects the national attention has had on the campus? I mean, what are you saying at Cornell? You just mentioned maybe decreased enrollment for women.
Belkin: Well, Kotlikoff, the president there, is kind of on the spotlight right now. The faculty is debating whether or not to issue a vote of no confidence if they voted in. He seems to right now have the support of the board of trustees. The way this tends to work is you have the full support of the Board of Trustees until you don't. If the faculty... Try to cut him loose, that's going to be a very powerful inducement for the trustees to do just that. But it's not clear what's gonna happen, but right now he's sort of fighting for his career.
Juravich: We have been speaking about the present and future of fraternities on college campuses. We've been talking with Douglas Belkin, higher education reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Belkin: Amy, it's nice to be here. Thank you.
Juravich: And coming up, we're gonna take an in-depth look at the culture of fraternities with a person who wrote a book on the topic. That is when All Sides continues on 89.7 WOSU NPR News. You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Greek life, as depicted by movies and television, is often portrayed as a raucous celebration fueled by alcohol. Despite this reputation, Greek organizations positively contribute to the philanthropy and alumni networks of their schools. They offer a built-in social network. They help develop leadership skills, and many chapters have strict GPA requirements, so they promote academic success. But the positives of fraternities are also clouded by recent national headlines. Cornell with allegations of sexual assault and Penn State with allegations about drug trafficking have shown the spotlight on the dark side of Greek life. We're joined now by John Hechinger, a senior editor for Bloomberg News and author of the 2017 book, "True Gentlemen, The Broken Pledge of America's Fraternities." Welcome to All Sides, John.
John Hechinger: Thanks for having me, Amy.
Juravich: And I think we have some noise from our newsroom. So if we could tell, I think that the noise is from not being muted. Okay, there we go. All right. Sorry about that, John. So listeners, we'd also like you to join us. What influenced your decision to pledge or avoid pledging a fraternity? Give us a call 614-292-8513. That's 614 292-8513. Or email allsides at wosu.org. John, let's begin with the subtitle of your book. So the book is True Gentlemen, but then it's The Broken Pledge of America's Fraternities. What is The Broken pledge?
Hechinger: Well, part of the reason I was interested in fraternities is you have this unbelievable chasm between what their professed values are. And I focused on the book on Sigma Alpha Epsilon or SAE, and their creed is the true gentleman, which is a person who acts with integrity and with whom virtue is safe and honor is foremost. And the broken pledge is that they so often aren't living up to those words. So, you know, in your first segment, I think, you really looked at all the positive things that fraternities contribute, and those are often very true, but I think if you talk to any of the national fraternity members, they're just as horrified that men are not living up to these standards. And I mean, part of the problem is that, you know... Basically saying that they're offering all of these things in schools and they're also sort of offering values for men who are sort of desperate for guidance. But then you have this long history and repeated, you know, problems with hazing and out of control drinking and sexual assault. So that's really the broken pledge that I'm talking about.
Juravich: Yeah. I mean, you wrote your book back in 2017, but there's been headlines here, there, and everywhere about, you know, fraternities doing bad things. What did you think whenever the recent headlines like the sexual assault allegations at Cornell seems to like have, has definitely seemed to have crossed a different line as someone who wrote the book on it, what did you think?
Hechinger: Well, I mean, this, the particulars of this were so horrifying to so many people. I mean you have an allegation of a gang rape, you have this, in particular this Snapchat message essentially inviting other. Members to have what he calls free sex in a much cruder way with this incapacitated young woman, those specifics are very hard for people to see. And I mean, what I found both I've found in the book is that every these kinds of things are happening behind the scenes or in a very sort of low boil all the time. There are many allegations of sexual assaults at fraternities. There there are deaths from hazing every year. There's a national database that tracks how many people died in hazing episodes, five a year since 2000, most of those at fraternities. A lot of those don't get that much attention, but every so often there's one where there's enough documentation where the allegations are so specific that they can't be ignored. And I think that's what happened at Cornell. But, you know, it's not like, it is sadly not surprising to me that that you have something like this happen in an environment that sort of Cornell has accepted over many years of sort of out of control drinking of largely unregulated fraternities. A lot of the experts that I talked to said that sexual assault is basically a predictable result. The research is pretty clear that fraternities can be a very dangerous place for women.
Juravich: Well, and one that kind of caught me off guard, you know, we've heard about the hazing, you mentioned the sexual assault, but then there's the drug trafficking at the fraternity at Penn State, right? And they're having pledges package the drugs and deliver them. Was that a new one for you too? I don't know, or just me.
Hechinger: They're actually in the book. There were some other cases of drug trafficking at fraternities. I mean, not of this scale. I think that also caught people's attention. And it's a combination of drug abuse and drug trafficking, but also hazing. I mean what really caught my attention is that part of the initiation ritual, part of the pledging process at Penn State was allegedly that they asked. New members to cut drugs. So, I mean, asking new members to commit a felony, that is, shows the power of suggestion when you have these secret pledging rituals that are often, I think this is unusual, they're usually pledging involves and hazing involves asking young men to drink until, you know. To test the limits of their tolerance for alcohol, to ask them to drink a handle of liquor, which is extraordinarily dangerous. And that's what typically leads to the deaths that you see at fraternities. And one thing that's really striking about Penn State is the episode that I think really caught people's attention around the time my book in 2017 was at Penn State. You had a young man who was asked to drink until he basically almost lost consciousness fell, had traumatic brain injuries. And it was caught on video because they had surveillance cameras. So you could actually see members see this young man suffering and dying before your eyes while these young men didn't do anything and he died. That led to felony charges, manslaughter charges, which were later reduced to misdemeanors. So it also shows that at least criminally, it's very hard to hold people accountable even in the most egregious cases. And even more so that, you know, Penn State cracked down on fraternities, basically restricted the recruitment of young men in their first semester, which is the most dangerous time for joining fraternity. They lifted those restrictions this year. So fraternities complained, there's a huge amount of pushback. So you see the power of fraternities to kind of keep people from them in.
Juravich: Well, from our political leadership to online influencers, we're currently immersed in what many are calling the manosphere performative masculinity. Would you say some of this fraternity behavior falls into that category too?
Hechinger: For sure. I mean, you see. A lot of the more outrageous episodes happen when some internal documents surface or something is caught on video. So one of the most, one that sort of jumps to mind is that in 2010, you had young pledges at Yale from Deke, the fraternity that was founded there, going onto the freshman quad chanting, no means yes. And this was so horrifying to people that there was a federal investigation and there was kind of a crackdown back then. And time after time you see what, you know, I think a lot of times fraternities will say, oh, it's a joke, or, you, know, it is not serious. But the research that I have found is that people who go to fraternity parties run one and a half times the risk of sexual assault. And sorority women who are most exposed to fraternity parties run three times the risk of rape. Cornell's own research showed that more than half of people affiliated with sorority life said they'd experienced sexual assault. So this is, you know, it's a serious problem.
Juravich: And then there's that old phrase, boys will be boys, where women are blamed for drinking too much or looking too attractive. I mean, in the research for your book, how does that boys will-be-boys contrast with the title of your book that True Gentleman? I mean tell me about that.
Hechinger: I mean, that's one of the biggest issues is that according to their own creed, their own promise, women should be safer at a fraternity house than anywhere else. But the opposite is largely true. And I think that, you know, what. The public health researchers I interviewed for the book told me is that a lot of fraternity parties are kind of tailor-made for this behavior. You have dark houses with loud music where often they have very sexualized themes where women are sort of asked to come and dress in a sort of a provocative way. And then, many of the women are freshmen, they're away from home for the first time. And then they're sort of plied with liquor as was alleged in this case, in this also with drugs. And an environment like that is just tailor-made for risky behavior, and also very hard to prosecute afterwards. So that's, if anything is to be done about this, it has to be to basically restrict the serving of alcohol and obviously the serving of illegal drugs in these fraternity houses. And I mean, what you'll find is that if you walk around as I did on Friday and Saturday night at a place with Greek life, I mean you can see these parties in the campus police drive right by. And you know, three quarters of the men who belong to fraternities are underage. A lot of seniors by that time are kind of tired of fraternity life. They're not even at these parties. So it's underaged men serving liquor to underage people. In excess and you know, it's not surprising that you have bad outcomes.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 WOSU NPR News. We're talking about the culture of fraternities with John Hechinger, senior editor for Bloomberg News and author of the book, True Gentleman, the Broken Pledge of America's Fraternities. Listeners, we'd like you to join us. What influenced your decision to pledge or avoid pledging a fraternity? You can tell us your story at 614-292-8513 or email us at All Sides at wosu.org. Universities can suspend or revoke recognition, but national fraternities and local chapters still exist outside of university control. So who is actually responsible when something goes wrong? Like talk to me about the university versus the national chapter.
Hechinger: Well, if a university is most fraternities want the national organizations, they want their chapters to be recognized student organizations. It helps with the recruitment, it helps with regulation, and it helps ensure some kind of oversight because the national organization, they don't have huge staffs. So what the national organizations do is they will authorize a chapter or maybe they'll do some training and visit, they'll help with a new chapter. But they leave. The running of the fraternities to the young men themselves. Part of the ethic of being a fraternity is self-governance. So they expect the fraternity men to sort of organize themselves, and they leave the policing to the universities. So if you can see a situation like that, when something really bad happens, the national organization will usually say that this was a violation of our policies. We don't permit underage drinking. Um, we don't permit hazing and they'll kick that, kick them in out of the fraternity. Um, so the universities are in a position where they're really asked to be the, the, the police force for the unit, for the, for the chapters. And they don't really want to be in that position. And, you know, often they'll, as I said, they'll they'll look the other way for sort of small infractions. So maybe they'll if you look at the Cornell website or anywhere, you'll see like usually a history of underage drinking, allegations of noise, complaints, and there's not really much of an investigation, but only when someone dies or there's an allegation of sexual assault does anyone really start taking the behavior seriously.
Juravich: So if the university is left to police it, why do universities want these so badly? Because we did talk about that in the previous segment where universities are increasing Greek life. There's a demand for Greek life, students want to be in these and they are asking their universities to have them. Our previous guest wrote about a couple of small colleges that just added Greek life within the past year for the first time. Yeah, so why do the universities want all this bother?
Hechinger: Well, there's a few issues. One is, I mean, I think that it's true. They're very popular, probably as popular as ever. And people are looking for in-person social interactions, getting away from social media. And, you know, a lot of, I talked to a lot fraternity men for this book. It spent a lot time with the national organization for SAE and many, many of the people in the organization felt they made valuable connections. They met their spouses and they, you now, got their first jobs and they launched political careers and they got jobs in business. So it's certainly helpful to them. And universities, they market Greek life pretty heavily. Cornell still does because it's attractive to have this kind of social life. And one of the things that's really important to remember is that fraternities are very, very ingrained in higher education. They've been around. In the book, I talk about the first fraternity was you know, founded in 1776 was the Phi Beta Kappa, which was started as a social club and now is better known as an honor society. They kind of switched their focus, but so the social fraternities that were, you know always writing about started in the early 19th century. And they were, they helped create the kind of college experience that we all think about, the residential college experience at the time, you know colleges were training, training the clergy. And fraternities pushed to teach modern subjects like literature and history and to prepare people for jobs in the professions. So they have a very powerful impact. And, but from the very beginning, college presidents saw that at the same time they were pushing for that, they were also, they were rioting, they we're drinking, they were accosting young women. And then when young women were finally led onto campuses, they were sort of excluded from fraternities and also treated rather poorly. So they have these two strains, which again, you mentioned in the book, the sort of these lofty ideals and then these serious problems. The other issue is that in public universities, they often house a lot of students. So in the books I found that they own $3 billion in real estate and they house more students than any other group other than the universities themselves. So if you were to ban them, you'd have to find a place for all these people to live. So they're in this kind of relationship where they're at odds with each other a lot of the time, but they also kind of need each other. Yeah.
Juravich: Well, we talked to it with our earlier guest about insurance, because I was mentioning that it had never occurred to me that a fraternity would need insurance or that a university would have insurance for having fraternities. How are fraternities able to get insurance, especially after the chapter either is banned from campus or has a hazing incident, has broken a law? They still sometimes they have insurance, is that right?
Hechinger: That's true, starting in sort of the 80s and the 90s, fraternities found it very hard to get insurance because of all the hazing deaths and all the allegations of sexual assault. And so what happened is that they developed a different strategy along with the handful of insurance companies that actually provide policies. What they do is they exclude from coverage anything involving underage drinking or sexual assault or any any kind of violation of the very specific code that the national fraternities
Juravich: have so So then why do they need insurance? Do they just need insurance because it it sounds good on paper where they tell the parents that you're you're we're fully insured Your son your son will be fine. Like what is that?
Hechinger: The insurance protects the national organization, which has significant assets. OK, it does not protect the young men, because if it's found, for instance, if you're a if you are a fraternity, let's say you're president of your fraternity and someone in your chapter hazes someone and they're they're they're killed or hurt. What the what the national chapter will say, you violated our policy so you don't have any coverage and you're on your own. So one of the things to really think about when you join a fraternity is that you are now personally exposed to litigation and there's been a lot of litigation. And the Cornell case is a perfect example that it will go on for years. And essentially, if you have any money of your own, you'll lose it. And typically the parents homeowners insurance policy provides the defense coverage for the kids and the payments. So there have been a lot of successful lawsuits against fraternities and colleges and the young men who haze or commit sexual assault. Most of the settlements are secret, but some of them are believed to be quite large. And they're paid out often by homeowners insurance policies of multiple men. So there are consequences. And it's something to think about if you join a fraternity that you sort of have exposure.
Juravich: That is very interesting. It makes me, I feel like I need to do a show on homeowners insurance, because I would not have thought my, like so my homeowners insurance policy would cover if my kid was in a fraternity and got sued.
Hechinger: That's right, that's right.
Juravich: Because because he lives in the house, is that why or?
Hechinger: Well, because he's a dependent of yours and get some kind of coverage.
Juravich: Apparently I don't understand insurance very well. All right. We are.
Hechinger: That was news to me that that was part of it. But yeah, that's kind of how this works. But you know, that a significant consequence of bad behavior and it's not just the people who, I mean, one thing to think about is if your kid joins a fraternity, even if your kids doesn't engage in the behavior, if the kid's an officer, and I shouldn't say kid, these are adults at this time.
Juravich: Yeah, true.
Hechinger: The young man is an officer, they're gonna face years of litigation if something like this happens.
Juravich: We are speaking with John Hechinger, senior editor for Bloomberg News and author of the book True Gentlemen, The Broken Pledge of America's Fraternities. And coming up, we're going to hear more about fraternities and Greek life on college campuses. Listeners, if you'd like to join us, what influenced your decision to pledge or avoid pledging a fraternity? You could give us a call 614-292-8513 or send us an email at All Sides at wosu.org. All Sides continues in a moment on 89.7 WOSU NPR News. You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. In the wake of the sexual assault allegations at Cornell's fraternity, the school has banned parties at fraternities. Colleges and universities have a complicated relationship with Greek life on their campuses. From attracting students to alumni donations, the Greek system makes large financial and social contributions. We're continuing our conversation about fraternities and Greek life in college campuses. We invited the North American Interfraternity Conference to take part in today's show, but they were not able to join us. Still with us is John Hechinger, senior editor for Bloomberg News and author of the book, True Gentlemen, The Broken Pledge of America's Fraternities. Thanks again for joining us, John.
Hechinger: Thank you for having me.
Juravich: And listeners, if you would like to join us, what influenced your decision to pledge or avoid pledging a fraternity, you can call 614-292-8513 or email All Sides at wosu.org. John, we did get an email from Mark in Lancaster, Ohio. He says, there are no faculty members at Greek events because the school would be held liable for any alcohol-related injuries. It would make it a school event. So he's asking, he's basically commenting, but also that leads me to ask. Who are, like, are faculty members mandatory reporters? Like, if they would go to an event and see something? Like, talk to me about that connection between, like university staff in Greek life.
Hechinger: Well, I don't think they're mandatory reporters, but I mean, this is one of the issues is that. About looking the other way. And it's also whether fraternities themselves are looking the way. I mean, one of the, in the book, I sort of looked at fraternities that tried to address some of these problems and what was helpful. And I looked at Phi Delta Theta, which is a big national organization that had several really horrific deaths years ago. And decided that they were connected to alcohol and they decided to ban alcohol from chapter houses. They did this in 2000. It was very controversial, but their point was that they had become, as in most places, the chapter had become sort of the unofficial bartender for the campus, and they wanted to get out of the bar businesses, they called it.
Juravich: Who polices that? Does someone from the national chapter come and knock on the door and say, let me see your fridge?
Hechinger: They'd be the first to say that it's not perfect and there's probably alcohol in the chapters, but it makes it much harder to fight discipline. If they say that you can't have alcohol in the chapter houses, it's very hard to officially have a party at a sanctioned event with lots of alcohol. And if it happens, they don't have to argue, well, you know, people weren't underage. It's just not allowed. And what they did find is that they, They used to have these enormous numbers of alcohol-related hospitalizations and it went down dramatically. Their insurance rates declined, I think, 90% or something like that. And so it made a big difference. So that's really the sort of public health authorities that I talked to talk about. That's really, the answer here is to try to change the environment. You can never get perfect compliance. You don't have perfect compliance against drunk driving, for instance. But the drunk driving laws have made a huge, You know have made the roads a lot safer. And this fraternity, they did it, they tried it, and it seemed to work. And it makes some intuitive sense. They get a lot of pushback.
Juravich: Well, I don't expect you to know the laws of every state, but to use Ohio as an example, in 2018, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed Collins Law. It's an anti-hazing act named for Colin Wyant, who died in a hazing incident at Ohio University in 2018. Forty-four states and Washington, D.C. Have similar laws. Do you know if these laws, having a state law is effective? I can tell you, like, Collins law, as an example, expands the definition of hazing. Increases the minimum penalty for hazing, it expands the list of officials required to report hazing and it requires the hazing awareness and prevention training. So do you have any experience with whether a state law is effective?
Hechinger: I mean, I think it seems to be effective in terms of a deterrence. And what I do know is that one of the most effective forces against hazing and excessive drinking have been the family members of fraternity members who've died. So many of them have banded together and formed groups to push for anti-hazing laws. And that's why you have them in most states. Part of the problem is that hazing in most states when I was looking at it was a misdemeanor punished by as little as $500. So when it's that small an infraction, there's not much incentive for the police to prosecute. So the tougher you can make that haze laws, the more it makes sense for, you know, it makes a sense for the place to try to prosecuted. And hazing is really difficult to prosecute in general, that the ones that do go to a jury, part of the problem is that juries hear, well, you know, the defense is, the guy voluntarily drank. And so, you now, he's not, he shouldn't be held accountable. And most of the hazing laws say that the willingness to engage in the behavior isn't an excuse. That's really important. Otherwise, people tend to walk away scot-free.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 WOSU NPR News. We're talking about the culture of fraternities with John John Hechinger, senior editor for Bloomberg News and author of the book, True Gentlemen, The Broken Pledge of America's Fraternities. We're taking about Greek life on campus, but hazing isn't limited to fraternities or sororities. I mean, there's other groups, there's marching bands, there're sports teams. Did you look into that at all?
Hechinger: You know, that's an argument that the fraternity groups make, which I find kind of disingenuous. I mean, the best study on hazing, the big national study that I looked at, found that 75% of members of fraternity say they've been hazed, which is more than any other group, except, you know, maybe athletic teams is maybe the other group that's a bit, that's up there. You know, when they say, oh, hazing happens in all groups, it's not, I don't think you'll find too many like hazing episodes at student government, you know? I mean, there are plenty of groups that don't haze. And the other really striking statistic to look at, which I think I mentioned earlier, is there have been, there's been a death every year since like the 19th century from hazing, according to this national hazing database. And almost all of them are from fraternities. There've been five deaths every year since 2000. Almost all of them are fraternities. Yes, you can look at, you find another group. There may have been a swim team hazing or a football hazing episode and there may have one been marching band but it's nowhere near the prevalence. So I think that's a little bit of a, you know, you know if you want to take aim at hazing you have to take game at the organizations that do it more commonly. And they have a, you know they have this pledging program and a pledging is often kind of an institutional institutionalization of hazing. And one of the SAE, which I wrote about in the book, or that was the main focus, they had lost 10 men to hazing, to drinking and hazing-related episodes. And they decided to ban pledging completely. And so, at SAE now, you're sort of immediately a member of the group, and it was very controversial. But it made actually a pretty big difference, at least initially, you know, they didn't have anywhere near the kinds of dangerous episodes that they had before. So they recognized that hazing was a big problem and they took some action. And I think often it's the fraternities themselves that have to decide to change the behavior.
Juravich: And did you look into at all the myth, one of the myths about hazing is that only men do it. But, I mean, did you looked into it all? I know your book is about gentlemen and fraternities, but sororities do it too.
Hechinger: They do, but you don't find nearly the, I mean. They do it, but the fraternity hazing is much more prevalent and the deaths tend to be of fraternity men. There are some sorority women who've died, that's true too, but it's not quite as prevalent. Sororities and fraternities are run extremely differently. So sororities tend to have much more adult oversight. So usually there's an adult living in the campus And sorority is actually have a rule that you can't have alcohol in the chapter houses. So you're not gonna find, you know, again, I'm sure that's not honored completely, but it means they're not going to have an official fraternity party where they're serving liquor.
Juravich: Yeah, we talked about that earlier where, so a sorority will tend to have an adult living in the house as a supervisor, but fraternities, there's talk of fraternities needing an adult in every house, but they don't do that.
Hechinger: Some do. I mean, there have been some that, and that's another that, but if you're going to have an adult in the house, they're going. You know, they are going to, if they look the other way at this behavior, which we've seen.
Juravich: That adult is going to need a lot of insurance.
Hechinger: Yeah, I think that's probably true.
Juravich: Well, just as we're running out of time, do you think the news that we've been seeing about Cornell will make a difference in how colleges and fraternities deal with fraternities, or is it just a headline and eventually it'll become yesterday's news?
Hechinger: Well, I mean, sadly, as I said, every few years, there's one of these episodes that leads to some kind of reckoning and fraternities for many of the reasons that you mentioned are very popular and resilient. So I don't see that they're going anywhere. I think the most that we can hope for is that the colleges and students and the fraternities themselves decide that they need to change the environment around fraternities. There's really. No reason why they have to be the bartenders on campus. And if they can get away from the drinking and the drugs, as I think their nationals would say is important, then I think that they could be safer organizations that could provide the kind of leadership and the opportunities that you talked about in the first segment. And in the book, I found cases where there were individual chapters that really changed. It is possible. But I don't see, I don't even see Cornell, Cornell's not talking about getting rid of fraternities at all, you know, the president even whilst, you know, talking about this case and that he, he's still talked about how, what a positive influence they are. So, you, maybe he's shutting down parties for this year, but next year they'll be back and unless somebody takes action, something else is going to happen.
Juravich: We've been speaking with John Hechinger, senior editor for Bloomberg News and author of the book True Gentlemen, The Broken Pledge of America's Fraternities. Thank you for your time today.
Hechinger: Thank you. Thank you, Amy.
Juravich: And you've been listening to all sides on 89.7 WOSU NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich. Thanks for joining us.