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No hard liquor? No female overnights? Mizzou frats up in arms over proposals
A proposal to ban women from fraternity houses during peak party hours and other recommendations meant to cut down on sexual assaults have provoked a sharp backlash at the University of Missouri-Columbia from critics who call the suggestions overreaching and demeaning, especially toward women.
The anger is both about the content of the proposed rules — which would also ban all alcohol other than beer at frat houses — and the process by which they have come forward.
Critics say the university has put sweeping changes on the table before seeking the opinions of students and key groups.
Late last year, Mizzou Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin asked the Mizzou Fraternity Alumni Consortium advocacy group to come up with recommendations to improve student safety within Greek organizations, specifically related to sexual assault.
A draft of those proposals leaked online this year, touching off an outcry from both Greeks and non-Greeks.
Ted Hellman, a spokesman for the consortium, said it was unproductive for anyone to be upset over ideas that had not been finalized.
“People are getting all riled up over old and incomplete information,” Hellman said. “Student safety is a significant issue, and the chancellor is trying to be proactive. I think he should be applauded for that.”
The tension could soon come to a head as students will get a chance to weigh in on the proposals on June 20 during an invitation-only summit that Loftin has organized with administrators and members of Greek organizations.
Hellman said critics should “stay calm” before representatives head to the summit to talk through the proposals, which include:
• Prohibiting women at fraternity houses between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturdays.
• Banning alcohol except beer from fraternities.
• Drug-testing students who live in fraternity houses.
• Forbidding fraternities from hosting social events outside of Columbia.
Hellman describes the four recommendations merely as proposals. And, in fact, the plan to drug test in-house fraternity members is no longer being pushed as a requirement but rather as an option, he said.
Still, criticism of proposals involving restrictions — particularly regarding women in frat houses — remains strong.
Laura Palumbo, a prevention campaign specialist at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, said restricting women from fraternities at certain times “misses the mark” of creating a fraternity system based on respect and encouraging community standards of consent.
Palumbo said that looking at the consortium’s proposals, it was clear the group had considered some of the risk factors associated with sexual assault.
But if their idea is to create a new culture, the ideas fall short, she said. “The backlash from students to the policies shows that disconnect.”
LIMITED SUPPORT
Both the university’s Panhellenic Association, which governs sororities, and the Intrafraternity Council, which oversees certain fraternities, have offered support for certain proposals — the alcohol restriction, for instance — while pushing back at others.
The Panhellenic Association was particularly hostile to the idea of restricting women from visiting fraternity houses at certain times.
“The goal is to address the safety of women students in fraternity houses, but the proposal was written by men who are not entrenched in daily campus, fraternity and sorority life,” the Association states in a letter to the chancellor.
It goes on to say that “restricting women from certain locations under the guise of safety, lends itself to the notion that women cannot make choices for themselves about their own safety.”
Panhellenic Association spokeswoman Carolyn Welter said students were initially upset because they didn’t think they would have any input into the proposed changes. Now that Greek organizations have been invited to the summit, some of the tension has lifted, she said.
“These are conversations we need to have on university campuses,” she said. “I would not be opposed to any conversations that would help stop sexual assault on our campus.”
Parker Briden, a spokesman for the Intrafraternity Council, said fraternities were already taking greater steps to police themselves, including a plan to establish a peer education system to help fraternity members better understand sexual assault.
He said that any new rules the university adopted should not be unreasonable to the point that people would want to break them.
SOCIAL SPACES
Rob Fox, a Mizzou graduate and a Delta Sigma Phi fraternity alumnus, was highly critical of some of the proposed changes in a blog posting on the Total Frat Move website.
In an interview, Fox said certain changes would drive down Greek membership, and transform fraternity houses from social spaces into “just living spaces,” in effect killing Mizzou’s Greek system.
Fox said that although he supported limiting the types of alcohol available inside fraternity houses, some of the other ideas were unworkable.
“Eighty percent of the problem with alcohol is that you have younger students, who are 18 and 19, and they don’t know how to drink yet,” he said. “You kind of have to learn how to drink, so limiting alcohol to just beer, I think, is a good idea.”
But Fox said drug testing fraternity members was a nonstarter.
“Why would I want to join an organization that drug tests me? Obviously you don’t want students tripping acid, but weed is legal in two states,” he said. He said it was not a drug that would make anyone go insane.
Fox said he felt fraternities were being unfairly singled out.
“They’re trying to hold one group responsible for sexual assault, when it’s a campuswide issue,” he said. “It goes on in the dorms, and what about the athletes?”
Sexual assault has been a focal point at Mizzou since early 2014, when ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” reported that swimmer Sasha Menu Courey committed suicide in 2011 after alleging she had been raped by university football players.
Since 2010, 22 sexual assaults and rapes have been reported to the University of Missouri Police Department, according to information supplied to the federal government under the Clery Act. Of those, one allegedly took place at a fraternity.
Mizzou spokesman Christian Basi said the safety proposals related to the Greek system were part of an overall effort on campus to increase student safety.
“No one is being singled out,” he said. “An alumni group says they know the Greek community well; the chancellor asked them to come up with some proposals.”
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