Fraternity Lawsuits against Colgate University
Free Association for Everyone but DKE
Stalinist Russia and the Nanny-state in Hamilton
Coercive Land Grab Portends End of Greek Life
Colgate Views Involved Parents as a Problem
Practical Advice for Fraternities In Free Speech Battles on Campus
Expectations for Fraternity and Sorority members
Congress Weighs In on Students Rights
Frat Boys at Bay
The National Trend to Eliminate Greek Life
Student Rights: Congress Weighs In
by M. Ryan Clark and J. Patrick Leo
On October 7 of this year, President Clinton signed into law the Higher Education Act of 1998, which contains a provision, initially authored by Louisiana Congressman Robert Livingston, that restores rights of free association and speech to all student groups on college campuses.
The chief practical effect of this legislation will be to severely limit the restrictive powers Colleges and Universities have to curtail fraternities and sororities. This bill, of course, will need to be tested by judicial suit (in the courts) before its full scope is apparent.
The provision prohibits educational institutions from disciplining students solely on the basis of their participation in “speech or association” protected under the first and fourteenth amendments. This prohibits any public college or university from disciplining students for their involvement in any organization — a fraternity, a political group, a social society. The effect on private colleges is unclear at this point.
The federal government has long tried to force public legislation (such as affirmative action) on private colleges as well as public, by threatening to withdraw federal funds for financial aid and research if legal provisions are not met. This bill contains the same sort of argument, though it is unclear whether courts will support it.
This bill came about after several colleges (notably Middlebury, Colby, and Bowdoin) expelled local chapters of the national fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) from campus. DKE then formed a political action committee, Restore Our Association Rights (ROAR) to agitate for a legal remedy to the powers of colleges over fraternities.
David Easlick, Executive Director of DKE, said at the time: “We cannot permit colleges to go on wrapping themselves in privateness while emotionally and socially battering helpless students who cannot, without some help of a greater authority, hope to protect themselves against tenured radicals whose declared purpose is to establish an orthodoxy which the mainstream finds reprehensible.”
Representative Livingston worked a model of this argument into legal form, resolution HR 980. HR 980 failed a vote in the house, but was later attached by the Senate as an amendment to the Higher Education Acts.
Delta Kappa Epsilon has already filed suit against Middlebury, Colby, and Bowdoin, under the new bill, for restoration of their local chapters.
Nationally the bill is expected to help fraternities resist institutional pressure to go co-ed (a move administrations push for at many colleges around the country), but it could have much broader effects.
At Dartmouth, one is not even allowed to enroll if he is a member of a non-college recognized fraternity — a policy which keeps fraternities from divorcing themselves from College control (going underground) and, by way of consequence, keeps fraternities under fairly tight administrative control.
If the courts uphold the Livingston bill, Dartmouth's fraternities (at least those whose houses aren't owned by the College) would be able to go independent — to release themselves from College rule — without fear of penalty. The College, under these new rules, would have no real power of restriction. If the College were to adopt a new keg policy or new rules for monitoring that an individual fraternity found objectionable that fraternity could divorce itself from the College, with no real threat of retribution.
Several years ago three fraternities went independent from the College in order to avoid compliance with sophomore rush. The bid for independence ended quickly when the brothers were threatened with College discipline by Dartmouth. Under Livingston's new law, the College could take no such action.
This new legislation, then, if upheld by the courts, gives far more leverage to fraternities to set and review administrative fraternity policy.
Of secondary importance is the protection of free speech this new bill affords students. In recent years, politically correct speech codes have been instituted across the country.
Dartmouth does not have any speech code, although indications are Dean Scott Brown of the Tucker Foundation is trying to establish one.
Dartmouth has, though, recently taken it upon itself to discipline students whose speech did not incline with the College's beliefs.
Last year, The Jack-O-Lantern Humor Society published two articles: “Eskimo Pick-Up Lines” and “The Dartmouth Review Dictionary.”
Both articles were far from being politically correct — they parodied perceived ideas of the Review and Native Americans. While these articles were obviously done in jest (it is, after all, a humor publication), the Jack-O-Lantern was disciplined.
The paper nearly lost its funding and was placed under much more severe administrative oversight. Under this new law, the college would no longer be permitted to take such action against students or organizations for their speech.
The response to Chi Gamma Epsilon and Alpha Xi Delta's `ghetto' party has included strong and continued advocacy of a `speech code' on campus to restrict or prevent offensive speech.
Similar developments at other Colleges (over three hundred nationwide have such codes) and the emotional tenor of the opposition to the `ghetto' party seem to indicate the development of a speech code is a real possibility.
Robert Livingston's new bill holds a good deal of promise
— not only may it serve to free fraternities from suspicious College
control, but it also may provide a needed legal antidote to the pernicious
wave of speech codes now in vogue at colleges across the country.