 
|
|||||||||||||
              
|
Waynesburg College makes its Greek life history Trustees say social clubs at odds with school's goals Tuesday, September 07, 1999 By Milan Simonich, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Waynesburg College stood tall in the 1850s by opposing slavery and granting degrees to women.
It taught the country a dramatic civil rights lesson in 1954 when its white football players supported a black teammate whom Virginia Tech University had tried to ban from the field.
Now, as Waynesburg starts its 150th fall term, school trustees believe they have rooted out the last bastion of campus segregation.
The private college 50 miles south of Pittsburgh has outlawed fraternities and sororities, saying the members-only social clubs were at odds with the school's goals of scholarship and campus unity.
The decision, which most students learned about by letter during summer break, has left members of Greek organizations embittered.
"I think it's biased," said Jeff Dunn, a junior marketing major from Mount Pleasant.
He said his fraternity, Alpha Phi Delta, had worked hard on clothing drives and the Habitat for Humanity program to help needy townspeople move into their own homes.
He also enjoyed the friendships and social activities fostered by the group.
"Right now, there's nothing to look forward to," Dunn said.
But many of Waynesburg's 1,400 students say good riddance to the Greek system, with its rushes and pledges and arbitrary rejections of prospective members.
"I didn't notice any valuable contributions they were making to the college," said Amanda Sercel, a sophomore marketing major from Center. "They were only concerned with their own club."
Sercel never attempted to join either of the sororities on campus. She found the selection process at odds with her personal beliefs. "The whole Greek system is kind of like purchasing your friends," she said.
A handful of other private, liberal arts colleges in the Northeast believe she is right.
Williams College in Massachusetts and two Maine colleges, Bowdoin and Colby, have barred or are about to bar fraternities and sororities.
Bowdoin College, a school of 1,550 students in Brunswick, Maine, will eliminate them at the end of this academic year. Bowdoin administrators began phasing them out in 1997 by prohibiting fraternities and sororities from recruiting new members.
"Socially, they had an incredible amount of power," said Lisa Wesel, Bowdoin's assistant director of public affairs. "Because fraternities are exclusive organizations, it wasn't a welcoming social life and mix."
Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., moved to kill fraternities in 1962 and finally eliminated them in 1970. It has used the ban as a recruiting tool in the years since.
"Fraternities segregated students," said Jim Kolesar, director of public affairs at Williams, whose enrollment is about 2,000. "Today, our students see it as a real plus not to have them. Many say it was one of the reasons they came to Williams."
Colby College in Waterville, Maine, barred fraternities in 1984. It promises a one-year suspension for any student who tries to create an underground fraternity or sorority, contending that the clubs are counterproductive to the college's goals.
Stephen Collins, director of communications at Colby, said fraternities were so "narrowly focused" that they divided the school of 1,750 students.
"We believe the change has re-invented student life," he said.
At Waynesburg, both town and college executives had been chipping away at fraternities and sororities for years.
College administrators placed Waynesburg's three fraternities and two sororities on probation in the spring after five members from each took part in the Greek Games, a series of drinking and eating contests that a beer company sponsored at a Waynesburg tavern.
Waynesburg students who are 21 or older are free to drink off campus. But the school, whose roots are in the Presbyterian Church, does not permit any organized promotion of alcohol, and the campus itself is dry.
While on probation, fraternities and sororities were banned from recruiting new members. Participation fell to about 55 students, or 4 percent of the college's total enrollment.
The town of Waynesburg also had made life difficult for fraternities and sororities.
Zoning amendments approved during the 1990s prohibited more than two unrelated people from living together in a home. The law made it almost impossible for off-campus fraternity houses to survive financially, and they were closed and sold to new owners.
Fraternity members felt under siege.
"This was bound to happen. Ever since I've been here, they've been trying to get rid of us," said Jason Cupac, a junior management major from Beaver Falls and a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity.
He said he enjoyed being part of a fraternity because it gave him mentors and friends as close as brothers. That alone, he added, should have mattered to the college.
But Richard Noftzger Jr., a Waynesburg vice president and acting dean of student life, said fraternities and sororities were out of step with the school.
"We want a campus that affirms the unity of what we're doing. We want organizations that affirm that we are an educational institution. We want student activities that affirm that we are a Christian college," he said.
Fraternities and sororities, Noftzger said, were not contributing to those goals and "the chasm between us was growing wider."
Robert Showman, a senior from Uniontown who is president of Tau Kappa Epsilon, said he believes the administration was shortsighted. He predicted that the demise of Greek life will hurt the college.
"They really don't look at the whole picture and see what we do in terms of helping people," Showman said. "They label us."
He complained that fraternity and sorority members were held to a higher standard than other students, even those with a public profile in Waynesburg, a town of 5,000.
"If football and baseball players wear Waynesburg College T-shirts while sitting in a bar, nobody tries to punish the whole team. When it happened with a few fraternity people, entire organizations were punished," said Showman, himself a catcher on Waynesburg's baseball team.
Waynesburg's police chief, Tim Hawfield, said fraternity and sorority members had caused no more problems for his department than other groups of students.
That is not to say the college population has always been easy to handle.
Hawfield remembered times when drunkenness, fights and rowdiness would flare, putting a huge strain on his seven officers. But under the leadership of Waynesburg College President Timothy Thyreen, he said, the '90s have been mostly calm.
Maybe, he said, things will be even quieter without active fraternities.
"I've got nothing to judge it by since school has just started. But this might save some skin off my nose down the road," Hawfield said.
Waynesburg's decision not to recognize fraternities or permit them on campus was made relatively fast. Other schools are being more deliberate.
A wide-ranging review of how to improve student life at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., was reported in the national press as a move to eliminate fraternities. That angered some Dartmouth graduates and the college itself.
A committee of students, trustees, alumni and administrators probably will offer recommendations for changes by spring, but the notion that the work was directed against fraternities was wrong, said Roland Adams, a spokesman for the Dartmouth administration.
Many who participated in Greek life at Waynesburg talk of reversing their administration's decision against fraternities and sororities.
But John Capobianco, a junior graphic design major from Vero Beach, Fla., is one fraternity member who believes Waynesburg has had its last rush.
"You can't draw blood from a rock," he said. "We have to respect the college's decision on this and move on."
|
||||||||||||
