Content Warning: sexual assault.
For decades, Greek life has occupied an anomalous position on American college campuses: being celebrated as a key experience of college while being criticized for the toxic culture it creates. Fraternities and sororities advertise for friendship, leadership, philanthropy, and lifelong community. They are described as social, professional, or honorary societies, noting that the traditional social fraternity historically functioned as a collegiate home and, at some universities, became a center of campus social life.
But that description raises a question: What, exactly, is the purpose of Greek life today? Is it tradition? Since when has longevity been proof that an institution deserves to survive? College students no longer need fraternities to have housing, friendship, leadership opportunities; professional networks; or a social life. Universities already offer hundreds of clubs, residential communities, sports teams, and service groups that are capable of providing all of those things. So what’s so special about frats? The exclusivity? Are there benefits that outweigh a culture that is repeatedly associated with hazing, exclusion, and sexual violence?
Recent incidents across the country make those questions difficult to ignore. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a 2026 police basement raid discovered thirty young men confined in a basement. The pledges were forced to stand shirtless, in an eighty-one degree room, covered in food, condiments, and other liquids. The Wisconsin frat leaders were later arrested.
Although Wisconsin-Madison terminated the recognition of the frat following violations in 2015, their recognition from Alpha Epsilon Pi National allowed them to have an off-campus house and operate. Other cases of hazing include those at the University of Arizona. University investigations found both Phi Delta Theta and Sigma Phi Epsilon responsible for hazing violations involving alcohol and behavior that endangered or threatened students. Additionally, it is hard not to mention the ongoing investigation at Cornell where a former student filed a civil lawsuit in September alleging that she was drugged and sexually assaulted by multiple fraternity brothers at the Chi Phi fraternity house in 2024.
These cases often result in serious consequences for students, including expulsion, suspension, or legal charges. Such consequences may be appropriate, but in many cases may not go far enough. Punishment alone does not answer the larger question: At what point do we stop treating each scandal as the failure of one “bad” chapter and begin asking whether Greek life itself creates environments in which these incidents are prone to happen?
Hazing is a clear example. The landmark National Study of Student Hazing found that seventy three percent of students involved in social fraternities and sororities experienced behavior meeting the definition of hazing in order to join or maintain membership. Even more disturbing is how those behaviors are normalized. Nine out of ten students who experienced behavior meeting the study’s definition of hazing did not consider themselves to have been hazed. And among students who did identify their experience as hazing, ninety-five percent did not report it to campus officials.
These figures come from a 2008 national study and should not be presented as a snapshot of every campus in 2026. However, nearly two decades later, there are continuously new hazing violations, suspensions of chapters, and new prevention programs. But, these responses seem more like damage control as the reports continuously flood in.
Additionally, sexual assault raises an equally serious cultural question. One longitudinal study published in PubMed Central found that fraternity membership was associated with a sixty-two percent higher likelihood of reported sexual aggression across the first two years of college. The researchers did not conclude that joining a fraternity magically transforms someone into a perpetrator; their work considered both selection—the possibility that men with certain preexisting behaviors or attitudes are more likely to join—and socialization—how peer environments can reinforce behavior after membership.
Such studies have limitations and should not be stretched into the claim that every fraternity causes sexual violence or every sorority member will experience it. However, these huge differences must be questioned. Why would membership in organizations supposedly dedicated to brotherhood and sisterhood correlate with outcomes like these? Is it due to bad parenting? Alcohol? Peer pressure? Group loyalty? Toxic masculinity? The answer is probably not one factor. Similar problems emerging across different chapters, campuses and generations, culture should raise questions.
Many universities face a fundamental problem: they are expected to regulate organizations they do not have full control of. Fraternities and sororities are separate legal entities and are often affiliated with national organizations. For example, Cornell explicitly states that recognition does not make these organizations part of the University and that they remain responsible for managing their own affairs. The University can impose rules and withdraw recognition, but the organizations themselves remain independent entities.
This problem is hardly unique to Cornell. Fraternity houses can be privately controlled and many of the activities universities need to know about happen behind closed doors. A university cannot regulate behavior it does not see. They can only give the appropriate response, investigate incidents thoroughly, and provide victims with adequate resources and answers.
Universities are attempting to regulate their way out of a problem that regulation cannot solve. Cornell has hazing policies. Arizona has hazing policies. In fact most colleges have these policies. National fraternities themselves even prohibit hazing. Students know sexual assault is prohibited. The problem is not that nobody has written down the rules. The problem is a social structure capable of making students believe breaking those rules is simply part of belonging. If nine out of ten students experiencing hazing behavior do not even recognize themselves as having been hazed, one more paragraph in a student code of conduct is unlikely to fix the culture producing that normalization.
Fraternities and sororities are communities built around selective admission that creates exclusion. Scholarship on American higher education has identified Greek-letter organizations among the most racially segregated organizations on campuses, and traditional white Greek organizations have a long history of racial exclusion. Additionally there are financial barriers: membership dues, initiation fees, housing costs and social expenses can make participation substantially easier for students with higher income. Greek life has never been simply about friendship, “brotherhood”, and “sisterhood.” It has always been about who is permitted into a particular social circle what membership in greek-life organization signifies.
Universities should stop asking how many reforms it will take to make Greek life safe enough and start asking why they remain committed to preserving it at all. Colleges may not be able to prevent independent groups of students from associating privately, but they can decide what organizations deserve university recognition, institutional resources, and a privileged role in campus social life. Social fraternities and sororities should no longer receive that recognition.
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