Today on another thing college fraternities are under attack we’ll talk with a man who’s in charge of frats at a Jersey College where they’re doing things right and my commentary will be on the media and it’s ugly and untrue attacks on fraternities and dawn takes us to a stunning one-of-a-kind
Interactive science exhibit that will make its one and only North American showing in our area I’m Larry Mendte welcome to another thing recently fraternities have come under attack for alcohol for underage drinking wild parties hazing and sexual assault some universities have disbanded fretts others are considering that the future
Of fraternities is our lead topic today and we kick off our coverage with Ellen Kolodziej Ellen know a lot of colleges around the country are starting to crack down on fraternities and sororities here at West Chester University the school’s put a moratorium on all social events involving alcohol that’s because some
Underage kids were getting drunk and getting in big trouble and at the University of Oklahoma video of a racial chant on a bus caused a lot of trouble for one University and fraternity to students when that video went viral and the national headquarters of Sigma Alpha Epsilon closed Oklahoma’s chapter Greg
Sneed who’s the regional director for iota Phi Theta and all-black fraternity says he’s not surprised he says these ideas have always existed now it’s becoming more blunt now we’re seeing a blatant video of what people think of african-american culture in college it’s unfortunate there’s always one or select
Few people that in any culture that bring down and bring the shadow of negativity to it to a culture like sororities an attorney life but that doesn’t mean holistically it’s all bad dr. claudia Cerullo travels around the country speaking about bullying he says what often happens during pledging can be called just that
Bullying and that hazing can be dangerous even deadly so some schools are fed up because whether you’re a victim of rape or a victim of bullying or hazing at all it contains one of those issues of the criteria of a power base and the intensity gets worse it
Doesn’t get any better for many of those in Greek life after a third sexual assault at a Greek party California Polytechnic State University put the entire system on probation dr. Cerullo and Greg Sneed don’t want all fraternities and sororities shut down they want more education on all levels
We’re back to awareness we’re back to education we’re back to professional development both at the university level I’m back at the high school level for these young people who hear about their brothers and sisters or friends are in college and want to go and pledge but they should understand the pitfalls that
Go along with pledging now here on the campus of West Chester University and at colleges all across the country advocates of the Greek system will tell you that the good far outweighs the negative they insist that these college kids do a lot of work they raise thousands of dollars for charity and
Donate thousands of hours to various organizations and they argue that the actions of a few should not punish all the rest reporting for another thing I’m Ellen Kolodziej Thank You Ellen to talk more about fraternity life and the reputation of fraternities across the country I am joined by Alex Lewis who is
The assistant director at the Center for leadership and service and Kane University and with that title that means you basically oversee the Greek life on campus yes correct do you think that fraternities are getting a bad rap across the country yes well cross the country they are
Getting a very bad rap with a lot of different negative stuff that’s going on throughout throughout the nation but however I know at Kane University we horn on a lot of the positive things that the Greek organizations are doing the fraternities nationwide some members do do crazy things that brings out the
Negative that put portrayed the whole fraternity in a bad light that’s what I was gonna get at and I’m sorry to interrupt you but I want to I want to key in on that point because I’ve heard many members say boy it’s unfair they shouldn’t be saying this about us and to
My answer to that is well you should police yourselves you you’re having these drunken parties where things can go horribly wrong you should take some accountability is that fair our debt is fair because some of the members again within the organization like you’ve said the key word policing themselves being
Responsible that’s one of the main things that we teach our students to be responsible as far as if you’re gonna have a party and have a social gathering you gotta be responsible if anything bad happens then they’re gonna come down on all foreigners in sororities so that’s
Why they have to police themselves in to shed a lot more of the positive things that they do in talking about accountability what role does the university have because they give their blessing to these fraternities shouldn’t they also be policing the parties yes there are some house and in some
Universities they have what they call fraternity rows where their houses are some of the universities overseas but there are some campuses that the school does not oversees just put bunch of students that live off campus but the university to not overseas the other houses then that falls under the Student
Code of Conduct within different departments because anything that happens off campus with students then the university can step in and deal with that let me just push back a little bit on that because isn’t that kind of done with a wink and a nod isn’t that not taking enough responsibility for the
Universities to say well it’s off campus I know it’s a fraternity and I know we we sanctify and we acknowledge the fraternity but it’s off campus so that’s not our responsibility it’s not that easy is it not that easy however some university might did it but I know at
Cane we do talk to the people because it’s very important to be enabling with the people that you live next to because those are family members that lives there go to work that that’s doing a lot of stuff in the community we don’t want students to go and district district
District district report them as far as not doing the positive things around in the community but we deal with the individual students as well at Kane University but again some universities do some and some do not I know what I’m doing what the media always does I’m
Focusing on the negative and I know you have a wonderful story to tell let me stay on this for one more minute though the problem as I see it with the fraternity with the parties and that’s usually where the problems happen sexual assault underage drinking too much alcohol is
That fair to say there are the three major problems I would say that’s that’s a major problem that’s why we would recommend if somebody’s gonna have a party so we have a third vendor party where they can check on people is with the IDS and make sure there’s no
Underage drinkers coming in and they could monitor or mod majority of the stuff that’s taking place within within the social gathering so that would be the tomato will be the best solution for and just have an open party because you never know who’s gonna be coming in into
Your parties people might put in a social media people just might just show up that you’re not even aware of so it’s people that you might not know that you didn’t invite to the party so the word of spreading people by social media just coming into your party that you’re not
You didn’t even invite so that’s why it will be a more structure program as well they’re gonna have a social gathering is this something that all universities are talking about now especially Kay and Kane University which you know about specifically are they all sharing information on how to combat this yes
Yes and actually we have a Greek advisors meeting in the summertime with in the New Jersey Greek advisors so these are the topics so there’s some of the things that we we are discussing to make sure that to be proactive for the photos program are we doing enough about
Sexual assault at fraternities but let’s expand it from there on campus are the universities is the system doing enough I know it can University we definitely are we doing a lot of different programs for sexual assault we just had a campus save program that we do dealing with we
Had where we had administrative students we have pledges as far as people pledging not to to hurt anybody sexually so if they see something they have to say something they have to report it not just students but also administrators you because it we deal with a lot of the
Students soon as we hear stories we have to take it to the next level so I know it can we take an approach of proactive stand to help those things let’s get to the good news all right because it because it’s so easy to cover the bad
News and that’s what we always do and probably for every bad incident there’s 90 good incidents that happened the fraternity I know it came you got national attention because one of your fraternities actually bought some landed is going to build a house for the homeless we had one of the gentlemen
From the frat in here how’s that going for them we just had a meeting at the other day with the board of trustees of the of Kane universities to present part of their project to them as well the guys are doing a marvelous job I’m so
Proud of them for the good work that they are doing so far I know there’s a law firm I’m not a law firm equity textual firm there’s gonna be donating their time and services to help with the architectural part of the design I know it there’s a plumbing company that’s
Donating their their businesses which is over twenty eight thousand dollars to do that project for them when they’re in the process of getting money but our next step now is trying to get the whole university involved because this is such a such a good program not just them that
Want to participate they want to get the whole Kane university involved see here’s an example of attorney doing something good they think spa inspiring others to do right things too and I know we’re running out of time now but I know you just had a dance-a-thon just like
They do at Penn State yes and you raise 25 thousand over twenty five twenty five thousand five hundred sixteen dollars that we raise four children specialized hospital and that was our second year and doing that program would double what we raised last year and the next thing
We we’re trying to do and do the same thing and we have to do a better job of covering those good things yes thank you very much sir I thank you very much here today Alex Lewis who was the assistant director at the center for leadership and service at Kane University when we
Come back it is that season the summer season I know fun and Sun it’s also the season for drowning we’ll tell you how to prevent that when another thing continues
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