A word of thanks to Katherine Tullos and Josh Camp for their Op Ed article on the misguided rumor that SMU administrators are out to eliminate the fraternity system and to Josh Powell for his well reasoned follow-up. Anyone who has been part of the SMU community for even a short time, much less several decades, has to chuckle at that observation. Nothing could be farther from truth, at least if one looks at the millions in construction costs SMU has either spent or approved being spent on properties occupied by Greek letter houses on campus. If anything, the fraternity system has enjoyed the protection of the institution that houses it — for decade after decade.
The threat to the fraternity system is, categorically, not from the SMU administration. Not by a long shot. Let’s be absolutely clear, however, about threats. The system is at risk and that risk is major, clear and persistent. It emerges, however, from within the atavistic system itself, not from administrative oversight or external intervention. What did Pogo say? “We have met the enemy and he is US!?” Mr. Powell is right on.
It’s disingenuous and blatantly hypocritical for Greek group participants to label critique of their anti-social and often dangerous behaviors by those who observe them as the source of endangerment to their system. As kids growing up in New Orleans when one of our cohorts complained unduly about some putative hurt or injustice, we’d often hear, “a kicked dog barks,” and then look closely at the complainer. Closer inspection of the anti-social behaviors of SMU Greek letter organizations and their members over the past few decades might prove instructive to folks today who rush to defend a system that has yet to be singled out even for precise critique much less elimination by University authorities.
There are commendable elements to the Greek system at SMU, and as a former fraternity member myself, I acknowledge them. I hope the beneficial elements of fraternity membership still obtain for those in the system. Clearly it’s not those benefits that compromise the institution. It’s the system’s liabilities that occasion concern and render the enterprise anachronistic.
If memory serves me, in 1980 the SAE fraternity was placed on social probation (henceforth, SP) for hazing. Professor Deschner (some will still recall that name), a highly respected and thoroughly credible faculty member observed a shivering SAE pledge doing pushups in a frozen mud-puddle in the dead of winter on the SAE front yard. A year or two later a former Lambda Chi pledge sued the that fraternity and the University in civil court following a Lambda Chi SP awarded to Lambda Chi actives for tackling him in their front yard and hauling him back inside where some held his head a toilet while another flushed — aka “the swirly.”
In the 80s the Fiji’s, that’s Phi Gamma Delta, I think, took SP for inter-house rivalries involving the mauling of a student from another house on the Fiji front lawn. That young victim happened to be the son of an SMU administrator. I can’t recall which house produced the “shooters” hidden in a float at Homecoming, but their BB stings nearly blinded a child along the parade route. Pot smoking on the roof of the Kappa Sig house hardly even counts nor do the abundance of closeted kegs back then along SMU Boulevard, but those “incidents” did earn sanctions.
In an earlier DC article we noted the alcohol-poisoning-hospitalizations of KA pledges that have since 1986 occasioned annual Family Weekend celebration of “Milk and Cookies” down at the House of the KA Order. But it’s been more than a decade since the parental accusations against the house on the other corner have been publicly discussed, probably because no one would give or name names, just allegations: “pledge golf” where blindfolded pledges served as targets; “duct-tape symphonies” where pledges were body-wrapped in tape and placed in closet with stereos blaring. But those are old urban legends without the SP sanctions. No one came forward. I keep the parental thank you notes as historic reminders of those “old days.”
Institutional history, not simply personal memory, indicates that in significant concentrations of wildly dangerous anti-social behavior are required to remove a Greek letter organization from the SMU community. Take the ATOs for example. Their social disintegration was vouchedsafe long before they violated their third-strike SP sanctions.
Memory fails at the specifics but certainly includes recollection of first year students abandoned in Oklahoma after an ATO weekend welcome party; doors kicked in by drunken ATO actives (doors of apartments in Dallas not residence hall doors on campus — that tends to upset neighbors and create fearsome and unseemly first impressions); assault; drug possession and sales in the ATO house; multiple sexual misadventures, and the ubiquitous prohibited possession of quantities of alcohol copious enough to be easily mistaken as a commercial stash. President Turner, that year new to our community, read the three-year ATO rap sheet, studied their voluminous judicial record, and decided not to reverse the collective wisdom of the third level judiciary’s decision to put them out of our misery. Although they have never thanked him publicly, he probably saved some of their lives with his decision.
We’ve not talked about the mid-week bus culture that has grown rich along Binkley Avenue or the attendant challenges of walking drunk from bus to dorm: navigating corners and negotiating street crossings, dodging-campus-cops, inserting/swiping door keys, evading-the-RA — each an ordeal in itself for some. Nor have we mentioned one of our most famous and thankful near-misses, the student who, after partying with the Fiji’s all afternoon and evening several years ago, walked home alone from the Green Elephant without the benefit of the Yale Avenue Bridge across Central. After falling 20 feet, he hung inverted for six hours, impaled on construction re-bars until discovered, cut away, and Care-Flight-carried to Baylor the next morning. The good news is that he graduated a couple of years ago, partially blind, nearly deaf, requiring a guide-dog, but totally committed to sobriety.
I won’t belabor the cocaine-and-other-drugs issue associated with last year’s overdose death at the SAE. After all, their national organization certified that that overdose death was an isolated incident. Some report the SAEs have become a drug free house, and that’s all to the good. No commendations needed. That should be the absolute minimum this community requires.
Yes, as Mr. Powell clearly argued, kicked dogs tend to bark. If the leaders and members of the fraternity system at SMU see the fraternity system as threatened, perhaps it’s time to consult resources on campus who specialize in self-inflicted endangerment. The future of the system really does depend on Greeks themselves, not on externalities. At the heart of the problem is a matter of spirit, a matter of meaning beyond the moment, a matter of personal and group decision-making and maturity. The real threat to the SMU fraternity system is every bit as real as some sense it, but it comes from within, not without. If the system hopes to survive, it will need to be reformed from within. At present, the prospects of such drastic change remain unresolved.
Wuff. Wuff. Hear that?
About the writer:
William M. Finnin, Jr., Th. D. is the Chaplain and Minister to the university.
