Fraternities at the University of Virginia can get their parties started again with the blessing of the school’s president after a semester of blistering criticism over campus sex assaults. But they’ll have to do it without kegs.Sororities are also having new restrictions put on them.Greek organizations have until Jan. 16 to agree to new drinking rules as a condition for ending a temporary ban on social activities, which UVa. President Teresa A. Sullivan imposed following a November Rolling Stone article describing a campus culture that fosters violence against women.
[UVA has new frat, sorority rules after alleged-rape story, Washington Post, January 7, 2014]
Organizations representing sororities also agreed to safety measures, such as “bystander intervention training” for new members.The Post reports that fraternities "proposed" these changes, but one suspects that it was either this or be banned. After all, the ban on social activities coming from the President is still in effect until they agree to these changes.
The rules were slammed on the school newspaper’s website Wednesday as either the beginning of the end for Greek social life, or far too weak to prevent sexual assaults. Some said Sullivan should apologize to fraternities, while others said she should have been far more forceful. One writer said “none of these new rules are enforceable in any practical sense.”Feature, not a bug. The whole point is to have a system where everyone is guilty. That way, the administration has a legalistic rationale to crack down the next time there is a media created scandal. They can say the fraternities and sororities "broke the rules."
As the great Ann Coulter observed, "It is a common practice of the left to stage an incident and then demand enormous legal changes to respond to their hoax." The Left decides in advance what institutions and subcultures they want to destroy and then creates an artificial rationale to go after them.
What's behind the war on fraternities? As I've written here before, part of it is that Greek organizations are seen as Eurocentric and conservative and are therefore an attractive target for SJW's and feminists.
But some of it is more mundane — they are a base of power outside the administration and "controlled" campus culture. Multicultural groups and leftist groups, for example, often pretend to be "rebellious" but they are basically pets of the administration and dependent on university funding and connections. The campus conservatives and libertarians are not a real opposition. Fraternities would exist even if the school cut all ties with them. At many schools, such an arrangement is already in place.
At best, this is a holding action. In the long run, the universities have to be reclaimed. And the sole institution with any kind of power base is the fraternities. Like the historic American nation, eventually they will have to fight or fade away.