It takes no stretch of the imagination to say that generally speaking, college professors don’t like fraternities or sororities. But the email of one West Virginia University engineer professor might have gone a little too far when he sent an email to freshmen parents, explaining that the fraternity initiation process creates “beastiality”
Here’s the email in its’ entirety:
Subject: Advice on fraternity and sorority rush
Parents, Next week is the start of fraternity and sorority rush. I strongly urge you to advice your son or daughter NOT to pledge a fraternity or sorority this semester. Sororities take a tremendous amount of time that women in engineering simply don’t have. They are also very expensive. Once women are in a sorority, they are pressured into living in a sorority house with all its distractions. The real problem is that our women students will find it hard to find any other women engineering students to study with in the sorority house. The one really bad thing about sororities is that they are expected to attend parties with fraternities. As a parent of a daughter and a grandparent of a granddaughter, I would be scared of ever having them attend a fraternity party. Fraternities are much worse.
Last year, we had two of our freshmen students drop out of WVU because of all the craziness that goes on in the pledge process. They were actually afraid to withdraw from the fraternity and chose to withdraw from WVU instead. Very few of our engineering students who pledged fraternities survived the fall semester with above a 2.00 GPA. Joining a fraternity is academic suicide. One student was badly beaten last year in the hazing process. If the student had been smaller, he would have probably died. Fraternities say that the initiation process creates brotherhood. I say it creates beastiality.
Fraternity and sorority membership becomes even more problematic in the junior and senior years when our students need to work with other engineering students on major assignments. At the same time, the sororities and fraternities are expecting them to devote a lot of time to their activities as well. This is just a lot of time management conflict that is best avoided. The fellowship of fraternities and sororities offer doesn’t come close to the bonds that our students develop among their classmates. Anything that a fraternity or sorority offers in personal relationships is more than available to our students who don’t decide to join a fraternity or sorority. I have parents tell me that they were powerless to keep their son or daughter from joining a fraternity or sorority.
My suggestion is to pull all of their financial support if they join. This is harsh, but I hate to see you lose a lot of money as a result of the foolishness that comes with Greek life. Hope this is helpful.
P.S. WVU is not different from other universities when it comes to fraternities/sororities. They are very hard to control. If you want to read more about this national issue, go to [The Atlantic] I think you’ll see why I’m so concerned.
H/T TotalFratMove
