Tim Steller’s column: Pursuit of ‘manliness’ at heart of U of A fraternity problem

What that has meant, though, has changed over time. Back in the early 1800s, it didn’t include beer pong, game-day parties or, in the worst case, hazing deaths and frat-house sexual assaults.

“Manliness at the time did not involve things like sports, which were seen as a working class man's preoccupation,” author Nick Syrett told me. “But they did talk about being loyal and forthright and handsome and independent.”

Syrett wrote the book “The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities,” and he said there is a throughline in the masculinity embraced by fraternities from then to now. It was rooted in rebellion, especially against the colleges where they reside. At the beginning, frats were secret societies forbidden by colleges that formed and operated in the dark anyway.

Now, fraternities are ingrained in the culture of campuses like the University of Arizona, but many are still a constant source of trouble. My theory: It goes back to this old problem of young men proving their manhood to each other, too often in damaging, antisocial ways.

That’s how we came to the shock of last week from the University of Arizona. Dean of Students Chrissy Lieberman sent a letter to the university’s 21 affiliated fraternities suspending their activities because of misbehavior ranging from assault to drug and alcohol abuse to hazing, some of it potentially criminal.

“The number of cases under investigation and the severity of the concerns is egregious,” Lieberman said in the letter. “The Dean of Students Office is at capacity for the number of organizational cases our staff can reasonably investigate at one time, and every one of those cases involves an IFC (Interfraternity Council) chapter.”

It was interesting to note, though, that the hammer came down on Monday. That was the first day after parents’ weekend, a big weekend on Greek Row, where many frats traditionally hold “daygers” — day ragers — to celebrate the weekend. The parents who pay the bills had their festive days first.

'A public health crisis'

After my colleague Prerana Sannappanavar reported last month on the fifth fraternity to be suspended at the U of A this year, I started looking at the history of UA fraternity discipline by going through Star archives. I had the vague impression that there was a lull when hazing and other misbehavior were tamped down, followed by an upsurge of misbehavior over the last decade or so.

The online “manosphere,” pioneered by influencers like the accused rapist and sex trafficker Andrew Tate, has captured a swath of boys and men in that time. It encourages the selfish and misogynistic pursuit of wealth, power and women, which could naturally lead to more misbehavior in frats where the manosphere has sway.

But while the manosphere does have sway, it appears there was no lull in fraternity misbehavior before it came into existence. I only got back to 2009 in my archives hunt, but there have been regular disciplinary actions against fraternities all along, with surges in certain years. It’s unclear if that’s because fraternity members were acting especially badly those years, or because U of A administrators were cracking down.

One rash of discipline happened in 2009, one in 2012, another in 2018. The stories almost always read the same.

“One of the UA’s largest fraternities has been kicked off campus after several purported hazing and alcohol violations, while a second fraternity in limbo has withdrawn an appeal to stay at the university,” the Star reported on March 7, 2009.

This has gone on around the country not just for decades, but for more than a century, Jolayne Houtz told me. She is the cofounder of hazinginfo.org, an organization and website that attempts to catalog hazing incidents at colleges, most of which have happened at fraternities. Her son, Sam Martinez, died as a result of hazing at a Washington State University fraternity in 2019.

“The beginning of every fall semester, and the beginning of every winter or spring semester, every year, there’s a surge,” she said. “We need to think about it as a public health crisis. It’s not these kind of disconnected unfortunate incidents scattered over time and place.”

'Under scrutiny nationwide'

The context of our conversation, of course, was not just the University of Arizona’s sweeping sanction against frats, but the case of alleged gang rape at a Cornell University fraternity. Lieberman made it clear in her letter that this was part of her decision.

“As you know, the value of the Greek experience is under scrutiny nationwide,” she said. “It is time for the University of Arizona Greek community to step up and set an example for good.”

While the Cornell case was gripping the country, police in Madison, Wisconsin arrested two people for hazing 30 pledges at a house near the University of Wisconsin. The university had expelled the fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi, in 2015, but it continued operating as a sort of underground frat.

Police found about 30 pledges in the hot basement of the house, covered in condiments and other liquids, bearing marks from possible assaults.

The case showed that even when universities want to crack down on hazing, assaults and other misbehavior, it can persist.

“We should hold them accountable, but we can’t stop with that,” Houtz said. “We’ve tried that and it doesn’t work.”

She wants, among other things, to challenge the financial links between many universities and fraternities.

The Greek system, she said, “benefits the colleges and universities because their alumni are some of the most generous and engaged donors, coming back for tailgating with the guys at their old house and all of that.”

'Frats are being demonized'

My colleague Sannappanavar and photographer Grace Trejo and I wandered Greek Row on East First Street Wednesday, and I spent some more time around the frats near East University Boulevard Friday. Unsurprisingly, fraternity members are pretty closed up these days. They know the scrutiny they’re under.

The only exceptions we encountered were members of the professional fraternities. At Theta Tau Chi, 1030 N. Martin Ave., four members were outside putting up a giant skeleton. To our surprise, two of them spoke volubly about their house, an engineering fraternity that is co-ed, and where drinking is banned.

Eyal Danielli and Brody Allyn noted their fraternity is not a member of the Interfraternity Council, and therefore was not affected by the U of A’s mass suspension of frats. Still, Danielli said, the impact of the Cornell case and the U of A suspension “has been showing up in terms of image. Frats are being demonized.”

At the agricultural fraternity, Alpha Gamma Rho, 645 E. University Blvd., member Tyler Vallely told me “a professional fraternity is how it should be.” In other words, fraternities organized around fields of study and career have a better reason for being.

It strikes me that fraternities organized around a profession or field of study make much more sense, but the professional fraternities also have had hazing incidents, to a lesser extent, Houtz told me.

A better path to manhood

The secret seems to be finding a way for young men to bond and express their manhood and brotherhood in more productive ways. This is a struggle across societies, of course, not just at American colleges and universities.

Author Nick Syrett, who is chair of gender and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin, noted that even the alleged gang rape at Cornell seems to be at least in part about demonstrating brotherhood and proving manliness.

The fraternity members “are naked with each other. I don’t mean they’re actually gay,” he said. “They used her body in order to express their loyalty to one another.”

This repellant concept may seem a universe away from the days when fraternity brothers sought to demonstrate forthrightness, handsomeness and independence as evidence of their manliness. But really it’s the same struggle — finding more constructive, or at least less destructive, ways for boys to become men.