May 22, 2015 04:11 PM
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm...iness-8167
EXCERPT: [...] Though writers like Flanagan and Lohse, as well as faculty members—who have historically stood against fraternities and still do—are quick to blame fraternities for many of the problems of campus social life, the issues we see on today’s college campuses are not the fault of the fraternity system, which has produced many great leaders in business, politics, and beyond, and which continues to contribute to college communities in positive ways. The problems on campus arise, rather, from a warped ideal of manliness to which fraternity brothers today aspire, an ideal radically different from the one that inspired the original founders of Greek organizations and that guided fraternity behavior until recent years.
The fraternity system is as old as America. [...] These organizations [...] fashioned themselves with the model of ancient Greece in mind. They were named after Greek letters [...] “To be Greek,” [...historian Nicholas L. Syrett ...] goes on, “was to hearken back to the ancients, to the ideals of the founding of Western civilization; it was also to subscribe to notions of self-improvement through literature and oratory.”
Like the band of friends in Plato’s Symposium, fraternity members came together around two common interests: fellowship and intellectual cultivation.
[...] By the 1920s, the ideal of masculinity changed from the more genteel manliness of the antebellum period to one grounded in physical prowess, athleticism, sexual virility, and aggression. Drinking had occurred previously in fraternities, but the fraternity brothers tried to drink “gentlemanly” quantities—that is, in moderation. But by the post-World War I period, excessive drinking—not self-control—became a mark of masculinity. The more manliness and drinking became intertwined, the more college men drank themselves to the point of oblivion.
Part of the reason ideals of manliness changed, Syrett points out, is women. As women started attending colleges that were traditionally all-male, men not only responded with hostility, but they felt compelled to assert their manliness in new ways. Women, after all, were now equal to men in the eyes of the college. They could engage in the same intellectual exercises as the fraternity men of the antebellum period. But what women could not do was rival men in their physicality, which included their drinking prowess. Another dividing line between men and women was the act of sex itself. For men, sexual prowess became a signature of manhood. “It was in the twenties,” writes Syrett, “that it became popular—indeed, commonplace—for young, middle-class men, fraternity brothers among them, to discuss their sexual exploits with each other.”
Even as the cultural tide continued to turn [...] there were still glimmers of gentility in fraternity life. [...] “When I was a fraternity member in the ’60s, we wore coats and ties to dinner every night. There were interfraternity debates.” [...Cal Mackenzie...] went on to say: “But it was a much more civilized lifestyle in the ’60s. That changed for a lot of reasons.”
One reason, Mackenzie told Newsweek, was the “Animal House” ideal that emerged in the 1980s and washed away, in the words of the Newsweek journalist, “the romantic fraternity culture of the 1950s and ’60s.” Animal House, which is based on fraternity life at Dartmouth College in the 1960s, came out in 1978. The hero of the film is an intellectually apathetic character named Bluto who is impervious to pain and can chug a fifth of whiskey in less than one minute. He, in other words, represents the new ideal of manliness, which many students today admire.
[...] What they need is a higher and better standard to strive for—an ideal worthy of them. In the antebellum period, that ideal came from ancient Greece and was firmly grounded in virtue. [...] Rather than giving fraternities new rules that they will surely break, college administrators and faculty members might encourage them to rethink their values and ideals. The problem with Greek life today is not Greek life itself; it is that the masculine ideal the fraternities currently celebrate is depraved....
EXCERPT: [...] Though writers like Flanagan and Lohse, as well as faculty members—who have historically stood against fraternities and still do—are quick to blame fraternities for many of the problems of campus social life, the issues we see on today’s college campuses are not the fault of the fraternity system, which has produced many great leaders in business, politics, and beyond, and which continues to contribute to college communities in positive ways. The problems on campus arise, rather, from a warped ideal of manliness to which fraternity brothers today aspire, an ideal radically different from the one that inspired the original founders of Greek organizations and that guided fraternity behavior until recent years.
The fraternity system is as old as America. [...] These organizations [...] fashioned themselves with the model of ancient Greece in mind. They were named after Greek letters [...] “To be Greek,” [...historian Nicholas L. Syrett ...] goes on, “was to hearken back to the ancients, to the ideals of the founding of Western civilization; it was also to subscribe to notions of self-improvement through literature and oratory.”
Like the band of friends in Plato’s Symposium, fraternity members came together around two common interests: fellowship and intellectual cultivation.
[...] By the 1920s, the ideal of masculinity changed from the more genteel manliness of the antebellum period to one grounded in physical prowess, athleticism, sexual virility, and aggression. Drinking had occurred previously in fraternities, but the fraternity brothers tried to drink “gentlemanly” quantities—that is, in moderation. But by the post-World War I period, excessive drinking—not self-control—became a mark of masculinity. The more manliness and drinking became intertwined, the more college men drank themselves to the point of oblivion.
Part of the reason ideals of manliness changed, Syrett points out, is women. As women started attending colleges that were traditionally all-male, men not only responded with hostility, but they felt compelled to assert their manliness in new ways. Women, after all, were now equal to men in the eyes of the college. They could engage in the same intellectual exercises as the fraternity men of the antebellum period. But what women could not do was rival men in their physicality, which included their drinking prowess. Another dividing line between men and women was the act of sex itself. For men, sexual prowess became a signature of manhood. “It was in the twenties,” writes Syrett, “that it became popular—indeed, commonplace—for young, middle-class men, fraternity brothers among them, to discuss their sexual exploits with each other.”
Even as the cultural tide continued to turn [...] there were still glimmers of gentility in fraternity life. [...] “When I was a fraternity member in the ’60s, we wore coats and ties to dinner every night. There were interfraternity debates.” [...Cal Mackenzie...] went on to say: “But it was a much more civilized lifestyle in the ’60s. That changed for a lot of reasons.”
One reason, Mackenzie told Newsweek, was the “Animal House” ideal that emerged in the 1980s and washed away, in the words of the Newsweek journalist, “the romantic fraternity culture of the 1950s and ’60s.” Animal House, which is based on fraternity life at Dartmouth College in the 1960s, came out in 1978. The hero of the film is an intellectually apathetic character named Bluto who is impervious to pain and can chug a fifth of whiskey in less than one minute. He, in other words, represents the new ideal of manliness, which many students today admire.
[...] What they need is a higher and better standard to strive for—an ideal worthy of them. In the antebellum period, that ideal came from ancient Greece and was firmly grounded in virtue. [...] Rather than giving fraternities new rules that they will surely break, college administrators and faculty members might encourage them to rethink their values and ideals. The problem with Greek life today is not Greek life itself; it is that the masculine ideal the fraternities currently celebrate is depraved....