Summary: Should Colleges Ban Frater-Nities

CRITICS OF THE VALUE OF FRATERNITIES and sororities have considerable evidence to support detrimental aspects of membership. Advocates counter that findings represent isolated cases comparable to the same rate of incidents by nonmember students or students in other campus organizations. The continued recurrence of the argument highlights a per- sistent difficulty confronting those interested in research and practice related to fraternal involvement. North-American Interfraternity Conference (NIC) President and CEO Pete Smithhisler recently stated, “often, arguments both for and against the fraternity experience focus on personal experience and anecdotal information” (Pendry, 2010, para. 2). The persistence of these ar- guments was most recently affirmed in a New York Times column (2011) asking experts to comment on the question, “Should Colleges Ban Frater- nities?” Further, research about the legal risks associated with fraternities on campus has done little to convince the public of the value of such organi- zations (e.g., Elkins, Helms, & Pierson, 2003; Hennessy & Huson, 1998), neither have popular books (e.g., DeSantis, 2007; Nuwer, 2001; Robbins, 2005), nor highly trafficked websites (e.g., http://totalfratmove.com/) that showcase the detrimental aspects of membership. Yet, students continue to join.
Since national data

As of 2012, the NIC, an association representing interna- tional and national men’s fraternities, listed 75 member organizations with approximately 5,500 chapters located on more than 800 campuses with about 350,000 undergraduate members in the United States and Canada. In 2011, the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC, 2012), which repre- sents international and national women’s groups, listed 26 member organiza- tions with approximately 3,078 chapters located on 655 campuses with