The war on frat culture

 New York

It’s a new semester and a new start at the University of Virginia. Thomas Jefferson, the university’s founder, once encouraged America’s youth to ‘come and drink of the cup of knowledge and fraternise with us’. But this term, any student who fancies a swig from the cup of knowledge had better be sure it doesn’t contain any unauthorised alcohol — in fact he should beware fraternising at all, especially in a ‘frat house’, for fear of breaking the strict new rules.

It’ll seem incredible to fans of the 1978 film Animal House, but at the University of Virginia, one of the heartlands of America’s famous ‘Greek’ system, the chilly hand of authority has clamped down on frat-house life. All those single-sex student houses with names like Alpha Tau and Chi Phi, once the scene of capers involving beer, shaving foam, puking and cheerleaders, have been asked to sign a contract which for them amounts to a death warrant.

New rules ban beer kegs and pre-mixed drinks from parties. The drinks must only be poured by three uninebriated undergrads acting as ‘sober monitors’. These monitors must have keys to every room and are under orders to stop anyone going upstairs to bedrooms. Such venerable frat traditions as ‘beer pong’ (a drinking game: look it up) or the more esoteric wheeze of pumping red wine up your rectum are probably out of the question now. You can see why the frat boys are peeved — a frat house that cannot throw a debauched party is like a bird that cannot fly.

The University of Virginia’s stated reason for disciplining ‘Greek’ students appeared in Rolling Stone in November. The magazine published a shocking 9,000-word exposé of an appalling incident at one of the university’s frat houses, Phi Kappa Psi. A female first-year student, identified only as Jackie, recounted to the article’s author a tale of having been gang-raped by seven men during a party two years earlier.