Party Schools Exposed

Sorority "formal" includes vandalism, theft and public urination

When they learn that their daughters are attending a sorority "formal" event, parents probably imagine ball gowns, corsages and escorts in tuxedos. They are not aware that times have changed as newspaper reports from Ohio found last week.

What goes on at a sorority "formal" in the age of party schools? Public urination, public sex, leaving piles of feces on the carpet, tearing sinks off the bathroom walls and jumping over the bar to steal alcohol. One student was stopped as he was attempting to urinate on an exhibit at the National Underground Railroad Museum.

You can read the New York Daily News article here and a longer piece by the local newspaper here. It should be an eye-opener for parents who think their tuition money is being used to educate the youth of tomorrow. This kind of behavior is beyond childish and more like barnyard animals.

And what punishments do the colleges dole out for this behavior? The sororities were suspended for two years. I bet they are all shrinking in fear. The reality is that these suspensions are often reduced to time served once the media attention goes away. Colleges are not about to turn away paying customers just because they act like animals. This kind of behavior is quite common among college students, but colleges are experts at keeping it from the public.

Any other kind of organization would boot these imbeciles out the door. Can you imagine if a group of accountants, public servants or Boy Scouts acted this way? How long would they last? The message that Greeks get from these minimal punishments is quite clear. Go right ahead and have fun!  Just make sure your tuition is paid and we'll cover for you.

The administrators quoted in these articles say they are embarrassed and shocked by the stories and apologize profusely, yet there is nothing new about these reports and what rock have they been hiding under for the past decade while these reports eventually leak out to the public? Are they embarrassed by their students' behavior or embarrassed that the press reported them?

And what of Greeks themselves? Take a look at this quote:

“I don’t think their actions were responsible at all,” said Katey Clark, a 2006 Miami graduate and Alpha Xi Delta member. “But they’re making it sound like they burned the place down ... with the hype it’s getting. This has been going on for years now. I just didn’t appreciate how these two sororities were targeted. They acted like these students were criminals.”

Earth to Katey Clark: vandalism is a crime, defecating in a museum is a crime. People who commit crimes are called..."criminals" even if it has been going on for years now and party school students think they are entitled to this kind of behavior. If you can gone to a real college, Katy, you would have learned that in your classes.

Cops to crack down on drug-friendly Oregon college

Reed College in Oregon has long had an unofficial reputation as a stoner's paradise where students are free to enjoy their favorite illegal substances in peace without interference from college officials.

This unofficial "smoke 'em if you got 'em" policy has come under attack this month from Oregon prosecutors after two Reed students died of heroin overdoses over the past two years. Federal prosecutors have threatened to crack down on the college and take away its  federal funds unless the college adopts a "zero-tolerance" policy against drug users, a policy that would piss off a majority of Reed students who chose the campus for its pro-stoner policies. 

The procesutors plan to send undercover drug agents to the campus' annual Renn Fayre festival this weekend, an event at which public drug use has been on display.

You can read the Portland Oregonian story about this here.

Of course there is nothing in Reed's official documents, view books or college policies that allow drug use. This policy is unofficialy promoted in conversations and e-mails from college  students to high school students. Parents interested in finding out if the college they are considering for their children is a drug haven in disguise should take a look at the punishments handed out for drug violations.

Some colleges still expel students for illegal drug use, but judicial boards at drug-friendly colleges dole out sentences that include "mandatory drug education programs" or the writing of 5oo-word essays on "why drugs are bad." Even a high school student can understand that these kinds of punishments are really no punishments at all and do nothing to discourage the abuse of dangerous drugs.

In fact, colleges with "drug-friendly" reputations are really part of an underground marketing strategy to attract student customers willing to pay high tuition rates to enjoy their dangerous lifestyle choices.

It will be interesting to see how this confrontation plays out over the next few weeks.

When college students riot, who picks up the $60,000 bill?

College administrators around the country say they are stumped on how to prevent the apres-game student sports riots that cause significant property damage, injure students and result in police overtime charges in excess of $50,000 each.

If you take the problem back to its source, you can see that once again the duplicity of college administrators is to blame. On one hand, they accept millions of dollars from big alcohol firms for advertisements in gyms, stadiums, programs and the like and on the other hand they tell students that they should not drink if they are under 21. It's a pretty clear double standard.

Colleges encourage students to get a little wild at sports events, often with the aid of massive doses of alcohol, as long as they root for the home team and stir up interest in the teams. But as soon as the final whistle goes off, administrators expect students to pack up their enthusiasm and go home. Instead, they head for the streets for a few hours of assault on themselves and on police, setting fires in the middle of the street and general mayhem.

Squads of police need to be deployed to keep things from getting out of hand, but as the numbers of rioters increase and the riots are planned weeks ahead on Facebook, it gets harder to bring things back under control.

The University of Maryland at College Park, for example, is facing a federal investigation into complaints, caught on video, of police abusing students and students abusing police. Since the city of College Park has no police force of its own, it had to bring in county police. The cost for this at the most recent party was $60,o00, according to this story in the Maryland Gazette.

A debate is raging there over who should pick up the tab. The university? The city? The county?  After some preliminary discussion, officials reached the correct decision. The answer is to prevent the riots in the first place.  So why would university officials hesitate about that? Once again it comes down to the "student-friendly" policies of party school campuses like the University of Maryland.  Students LIKE these riots and college administrators don't want to deny them their fun. 

Or, as University Police spokesman Paul Dillon told the Gazette, "They want to come out into the streets, they want to start fires, they want to confront police. That's what they want to do." And, he might have added, these students are our customers and they get what they want. Or they might go somewhere else where their right to assault police and set fires is better understood by the college administration.

So, once again, immature and dangerous student conduct is protected by the college because these immature and misguided students  pay the tuition that keeps party schools operating.

Welcome to spring, the silly season at America's party schools

There is something about the last month of classes that drives party school students a little batty.

Besides the predictable "spring celebrations" that turn into riots each spring, students suffering from spring fever seem to put in a little extra effort into being outrageous. This week marks the beginning of the onslaught. Here are some examples:

In New Hampshire, students were busted when administrators used Facebook pictures to discover there was a secret room, called Narnia, accessed through a dormitory closet (I swear I am not making this up!) where secret student drinking parties were held.

Read the full story here.

In Michigan, a student was found to have stolen 79 pairs of women's panties in what police were calling "an epic panty raid." Who would have thought that such a 1950s-era prank would still be alive today in the era of hook-ups!

Read the full story here.

In Arkansas, members of a college fraternity were arrested for stealing wooden pallets from the back of a furniture store. They told police they were planning to use them for a bonfire at an upcoming spring party.

Read the full story here.

And it is only the middle of April! I'm willing to bet the best stories are still to come! Stay tuned and I will attempt to collect some more spring antics. Meanwhile, imagine if all this creative energy could be somehow put to a good use. I bet if you could somehow connect college student energy to a dynamo you could light an entire city.

College block parties become street riots with help from Facebook

Many colleges have semi-official spring celebrations designed to let off a little adolescent steam this time of year, but during the last few years they have turned into out-of-control riots featuring street fires and battles with police.

It turns out that we can thank Facebook for the change.  Students plan the event week in advance and place an advertisement on Facebook, which attracts thousands of additional students from colleges hours away and even from local high schools.

Campus police and local police, who have also taken to Facebook to anticipate these kinds of events, often call in additional troops to deal with the onslaught of intoxicated students. The result are massive confrontations between students and police featuring tear gas, rubber bullets, street fires, overturned cars  and the throwing of rocks and bottles.

You can read about a recent riot at normally preppy James Madison University in a Washington Post article here.  I also wrote about this phenomenon at Kent State and the University of Wisconsin last year.

My personal experience with this took place at Keene State College in New Hampshire, where students planned for weeks a street riot to take place at the end of the World Series. My student newspaper advisees knew about this for weeks and we planned how to cover it,  including ways reporters could remain safe from attacks by either side.

On the evening in question, I noticed that there were state police cars stationed around the campus, and an officer told me they had also been tipped off by the college to expect a riot. It turned out to be the worst kept secret in college history. But when I casually asked the officer what kind of weaponry was involved, he opened the trunk of his cruiser and showed me rubber bullets and tear gas canisters. 

But then he showed me his shotgun and boxes full of shells that he also kept in his trunk. Are those for the students? I asked. Well, he said, you never know when things will get out of control.

Yikes! Suddenly I was worried about my students and called the newspaper office to make sure the reporters and photographers wore badges identifying themselves as journalists, but I was still worried!

It just goes to show how quickly something like this can get out of hand. Once students start fires and attack police, local residents start to get worried and the rules of engagement can quickly change if an officer is injured or private property is damaged. You can add getting shot by police to the long list of things that can happen at party schools.

Party school campuses have their own bizarre social rules

Party school campuses operate under some rather bizarre social rules that would be entirely out of place in the outside world. They are, for example, the last places in America where being publicly intoxicated is accepted as normal behavior.

They also operate under the "stop snitchin" rules of urban gang culture where cooperating with police or other authorities can lead to social ostracism, a fate considered worse than death. This came up last week in the case of the UConn football player who was stabbed to death. There was an organized campaign to keep students from cooperating with the investigation. Thankfully, at least in this case, a number of students came forward to tell what they knew.

In most cases, students' refusal to cooperate in crime investigations combines with the colleges' efforts under the FERPA law to keep all campus crime under the radar to keep the public from finding out exactly how dangerous college campuses have become. Rapes, assaults, drug dealing and alcohol violations occur nearly daily, but the culture of silence and the colleges' secret judicial boards keep the public from finding out about these crimes.

Every once in a while, however, party school culture comes into conflict with the real world and can lead to some fascinating results. That seems to be what happened when Binghamton University's student leaders showed up last week for a meeting with other SUNY college leaders.

You might think that Binghamton, which is in the news nearly every day due to the antics of its basketball program and the president's wacky obsession with sending a team to the NCAA finals, would be on its best behavior these days, with the spotlight shining on it so intensely.  Not so, apparently.

The student leaders from Binghamton showed up at the SUNY meeting with some unusual refreshments: glasses of beer. While they all were apparently over 21, and therefore above the drinking age, they apparently thought that packing away a few frosty brewskies during the meeting was a good way to pass the time. Hey, we're college students, man! This is what we do, dude! Lighten up!

The students from the other SUNY campuses were not amused and voted to dismiss the three Binghamton students from the meeting. So it goes in party school land. Remember these are not some slackers, these are Binghamton's official student leaders. You know, like the leaders of tomorrow? God help us!  Thanks to MK for sending me this story about it from the Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin.

Judicial Boards: Secret Courts Behind the Ivy Walls

If you mention a college judicial board to parents they will call up an image of a friendly group of college officials assigning fitting punishments for students who cut in line or plagiarize a term paper. The truth is that on many campuses judicial boards are actually alternative criminal court systems that try students for felonies like arson, rape and burglary.

So what? Well, it helps if you understand that everything these courts do is in secret. The charges, the witnesses, the hearings and the sentences are all carefully hidden using the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) as cover.

Contrast this with the regular court system where nearly every stage is open to the public and reported on by the news media. There are a lot of reasons why this is a good system. It assures the public that the police and courts are doing their jobs and it also provides the transparency the public needs to ensure that there is no hanky panky going on.

Judicial boards use a different model. They are, in fact, similar to the courts run by dictators. The accused is summoned to appear before a secret tribunal. The charges are read and a sentence is passed. Some students are never informed of their right to have a lawyer. The prosecutor, judge and jury are often the same person and there is little or no oversight.

The U.S. Department of Education has amended the FERPA rules so at least the results of these tribunals are supposed to be made public, but across the country student newspapers are being illegally denied access to them.

All of this would seem pretty strange unless you realize that colleges are absolutely possessed with an obsession about bad publicity. Although they are required to report crimes to the education department, only 37 percent do this properly. Judicial boards are part of the process that allows them to cook the books. If they can convince a rape victim to withdraw her complaint then the crime doesn't go on the books. If they can convince a burglary victim not to press charges then the crime disappears. And all of these courts have a built-in conflict of interest. How can you dole out justice if your main concern is keeping campus crimes out of the newspapers?

It seems pretty clear to me that colleges have no business prosecuting felonies. After all, the maximum penalty a judicial board can impose is suspension from school. In the criminal courts a felony conviction can mean a decade or more in the slammer. What if Wal-Mart or the Chamber of Commerce suddenly decided to prosecute crimes "in-house?" There would certainly be an outcry. Colleges need to get out of the criminal justice system and concentrate on what they are supposed to be doing: educating students.