EDITORIALS^"
The Voice
May 7, 1985
Despite Trend, Frats Slide & Close On Some Campuses
By Susan Skorupa and Chuck Sadc
MINOT, ND (CPS)--While most
fraternities and sororities around
the country are of full to capacity,
the boom seems to be going bust
on some campuses.
Some obervers predict, the still-
isolated greek failures are a
precursor to a nationwide
downturn or leveling off of greek
activity, pointing to changing
student attitudes and financial aid
woes as evidence.
But others say it's wrong to rad
much into the failures, and that the
affected campuses simply haven't
caught on to the growth trend yet.
At Minot State College, for
example, Nu Sima Tau closed
down “for fmancial reasons,”
leaving just one frat and three
sororities—with a total member
ship of 45 students—left on the
campus.
MSC used to host three frats
and four sororities.
“In my years here. I've seem
membership as high as 80 in one
group,” recalls Garnet Cox,
MSC's dean of students.
A number of other .colleges—
several branches of the University
of Minnesota and Penn State,
among others—also are seeing their
greek population dwindle
somewhat.
“Greek participatin is down
except for two house's,” Cox
reports. “In the past two years
membership has been very low,
and it's been edging down for the
past five to six years.”
“Everywhere else, frats and
sororities are gaining members,”
laments Tim Ross of Sigma Tau
Gamma, MSC's remaining
fraternity. “We're rushing for the
first three or four weeks of the
quarter, but the attitude is so poor
on campus.”
Ross blames the decline on “a
change in attitude from Greek
life,” and what students perceive as
the high financial cost of joining
up.
“It's a strong system,” addds
Mike Fries of Psi Upsilon at
Wesleyan University, “but the
composition of the school is
changing. There's less interest in
greeks.”
Wesleyan greek membership
declined in 1982, but has
rebounded since houses begap
stretching out rush periods.
Nebraska greeks also prolonged
the rush period and changed
eligibility rules to reverse a
membership decline several years
ago, reports Rachel Jensen of the
Interfraternity Council in Lincoln. ,
Membership at Albama,
Cornell and Penn State slid this
year, but Dan Daughtery of Penn
State's Pi Kappa Psi says yearly
membership is “a give and take.
We were up last year more than
we're down this year.”
At the University of Minnesota-
Minneapolis, however, some
houses report membership drops
of as much as 15 percent. Seven to
ten houses have closed in the last
four years.
UM's large commuter
population accounts for some of
the decline, says Alpha Tau Omega
member Pat Teage, “but there's
just a lack of interest.”
While more than 80 percent of
UM's 42,000 students live off
campus, the college currently
houses 27 greek groups.
“The idea of legacy, recruting
(alumni) children, grandchildren,
cousins, hasn't worked well lately,
though we're starting to push that
again,” Beta Theta Pi member Guy
Purvis explains. “And the
reputations don't mean as much.
Perhaps the kids in high school just
aren't interested in greek life.”
“The national cycle for greeks is
down all over,” MSC's Cox claims.
“The interest is not there with
incoming students.”
“It's not the start of a trend,”
argues Bob Marchesani, assistant
executive director of the National
Interfraternity Conference (NIC)
in Indianapolis, Ind. “It strikes me
as very odd. It flies in the face of
anything we see nationally.”
“They're dealing with very small
numbers,” contends William
Gurowitz, Cornell's student affairs
spokesman. “Minnesota is a high
commuter campus in an urban
area, and at Minot, with only a few
greek groups, any incidence of
thought that frats aren't the place
to be makes for a drop in
membership.”
Indeed, a recent study concludes
1984 fraternity membership
topped 250,000, up from about
150,000 in the Vietnam War era
when greek popularity fell on
many campuses. In 1965,
membership was 188,000.
Sorority membership has
increased by six percent every two
years since the early seventies.
“The trend toward increasing
membership began on the east and
west coasts,” says Sociology
Professor Jack Levin of
Northeastern University, author of
hte 1984 national greek census
study.
“It doesn't surprise me it hasn't
spread there (MSC and UM),”he
adds. “I predict the Midwest will
experience a big spurt in the next
five years.”
“Some places lag behind the
coasts,” Levin continues. “It's a
regional lag, but it's also probably
lack of interest and money. Five
years from now, I bet you'll see the
trend reverses there (MSC and
UM).”
“The situation at Minot is not a
trend,” the NIC's Marchesani
agrees. “At least not in the next five
years because greeks today are
marketing themselves in a more
attractive way.”
In deed, “fraternities and
sororities are going to have to pay
attention to the student of the
eighties,” says Mary Rouse,
University of Wisconsin assistant
dean of students.
“There's more academic
pressure, so greeks with a heavier
academic emphasis will fare better
than those that remain with
traditions like hazing,” she
predicts.
“Greeks need to update and
revise to appeal to a different type
of student,” MSC's Cox agrees. “I
don't anticipate a return to earlier
membership levels at Minot, but I
do anticipate a return to a healthy
level.”
Apathy, Desegregation Push Some Colleges
To The Brink This Spring
By David Gaede
(CPS)—“It's clear things aren t
working out for black colleges,”
understates Keith Jennings, who
monitors black student issues for
the United States Students
Association (USSA) in Washing
ton, D.C.
Indee, the black colleges —
choked by a withering money base,
federal aid cuts, muddled
communications, black student
apathy and desegregation efforts
that are pushing black students
into historically-white campuses —
are having their worst season in
years.
Enrollments at black colleges,
after increasing steadily for the
past 25 years, have dropped five
percent in just the last year.
And amid cries of racism and
even bureaucratic “genocide,”
black education leaders apparently
aren't sure what to do about it.
It's serious enough, moreover,
that inside observers are labeling it
“the quiet death of black colleges,”
Jennings reports.
Some colleges aren't going
quietly:
Cheyney University in
Pennsylvania, for instance,
recently lost its accreditation by
the Middle States Association of
Colleges and Schools because it
laced “coherent and purposeful
direction, mission, and leader
ship.”
President C.T. Enus Wright
resigned the next week, and soon
after that two administrative vice
presidents were fined.
“It's nothing more than cultural
genocide to get rid of and destroy
black colleges,” claims former
Cheyney student government
leader Cynthia Jefferson.
Most of the reasons for the
accreditation denial “could be
applied to any college if you
looked hard enough,” Jefferson
claims, adding President Wright
was merely a “sacrificial lamb” to
appease the accrediting
association.
Historically-black Knoxville
University in Tennessee and
Lincoln College in Nebraska also
have lost accreditation this year on
similar grounds, Jennings notes.
Three financially-strapped
black Texas college — Wiley,
Huston-Tillotson and Texas
College ~ may merge to pool their
resources and enrollments.
Tennessee State University,
meanwhile, is under pressure to
integrate its predominantly-black
student body and have a 50 percent
white enrollment by 1992.
The crises follow last year's
financial failure of 119-year-old
Fisk University, long regarded as
the fiagship of black colleges.
“Black colleges are facing a
problem which has two
contradictory ends,” laments
Samuel Myers, president of the
National Association for Equal
Opportunity in Higher Education
(NAFEO).
Myers says that while black
students need black colleges more
than ever now, there's a “new
threat to black schools that their
funding, enrollment, and support
will decline. The image of black
schools is hurt by problems at
some black institutions, which
adds to the problem even more.”
Only 20 percent of all black
students attend predominantly-
black colleges, but nearly half of all
black students who complete their
degrees do so at a black school.
“Students in black colleges seem
to have a virtual corner on
intellectual satisfactions and
outcomes during the college
years,” chiefly because of the sense
of belonging, support and
understanding they receive, claims
psychologist Jacqueline Fleming,
author of the newly-released book
“Blacks in College.”
On white campuses, black
students often “fall prey to the
feelings of alienation and
estrangement, and are less likely to
.develop motivating relationships
with faculty or to feel a part of
campus life.”
More black students head for
predominantly-white campuses
anyway.
“Ironically,” points out Harriott
Schimel, spokeswoman for the
United Negro College Fund, “the
traditional information systems
among blacks for passing along the
advantages of black schools—
parents, teachers, and ministers
who were themselves educated at
black schools—have become more
diffused, so many blacks go off to
white colleges not knowing the
value they could get from a black
college.”
Many of today's black students
seem more interested in
assimilating faster into white
society, some sources add.
Even on historically-white
campuses, enrollment in black
studies courses and membership in
campus black student unions have
plummeted in recent years.
And the nation's only national
black student lobby group—the
National Organization of Black
University and College Students-
has locked the doors of its
Washington offices and all but
ceased operating because of
“disinterest in internal conflicts,”
sources report.
Many black colleges today are
run by administrators who
graduated from white, not black,
schools, “and are completely
unfamiliar with the history and
purpose of black institutions,”
Jennings says.
And as blacks themselves
forsake black colleges, the
politicians who finance them now
question the need for them.
“The Brown decision (the
hallmark court case which forced
integration of public schools) is
being reinterpreted in an upside-
down manner now, in effect saying
that we should doe black schools
so those students can go to white
schools,” says Jennings.
In response to all the problems,
NAFEO is planning a nationwide
marketing strategy for black
colleges.
Pepsi Cola officials, in fact, have
volunteered “to help us identify the
strenght of our product and
market it the same way you would
market anything else these days,”
says Myers.
“We can't sit back in the black
colleges and go on the assumption
that we're needed,” he explains.
“What we need is a very
sophisticated marketing strategy.”
But “the problem just isn't
getting enough attention,”
Jennings counsels. “People aren't
sure what to do: should we fight or
should we accept what seems to be
our fate in society? The thing is, as
long as have this ‘keep it in the
family' attitude, nothing will
change.”