Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Ban of Brothers

As a former member of a fraternity (at a Southern university nonetheless), I was intrigued by an article called Ban of Brothers which appeared in the NY Times Magazine this past weekend. Here's a bit:
Eleven national and international fraternities, including Phi Delta Theta, now require most of their chapter houses to be alcohol-free, no matter what their university's policy is. (Sororities have long banned drinking in their chapter houses.) Take away the booze, the new alcohol-free theory goes, and fraternities will be safer, on more solid economic footing (fewer lawsuits, cheaper liability insurance) and more conducive to the creation of real bonds of brotherhood. Friendships will be forged out of genuine respect, not the shared misery of hazing or the shared fog of drink. ''We just didn't see a way to dramatically change the fraternity culture without removing alcohol,'' said Bob Biggs, executive vice president of Phi Delta Theta, when we met last fall in his office at the fraternity's spotless, museumlike international headquarters in Oxford, Ohio.

But what, exactly, would a dry fraternity look like? And would anyone want to join?
Definitely an interesting read.

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