When Lindsey Bond was a new member of Delta Delta Delta at the University of Virginia, in 2012, her sorority was placed on probation for a year. One of the crimes the TriDelts committed: Sisters were caught trying to bring a keg into the house. No party was planned — it was just for women to drink by themselves, at home — but that’s against the sorority’s rules.
Currently, sororities tied to a national organization do not allow their members to consume alcohol in the chapter houses. Beyond preventing sororities from hosting parties, these rules mean members cannot even have a glass of wine while watching Netflix in their bedroom. Some chapters go so far as to forbid sorority sisters from having empty containers in the house.
“My issue has always been, fraternities allow men be men, but I think sororities only let women be girls,” said Bond, currently a senior at UVA. But to the best of her knowledge, Bond added, there’s never been a push to get the Inter-Sorority Council at UVA to petition the national organization for a change in the alcohol policy.
While plenty of active members think the policy is silly, few have started any movement to change it. Even those critical of the no-alcohol rule are pessimistic an overhaul would change much on campus, even as intense debates rage about reforms for Greek life at schools around the country.
The University of Virginia, where a quarter of students are affiliated with a fraternity or sorority, is continuing its own review for improving student safety and evaluating the role of Greek life. Plenty of other schools are going through the same examination of their Greek scene, such as Dartmouth College, West Virginia University and the University of Southern California.
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“It’s creating a form of structural inequality where the money and cultural and social influence are restricted from the women,” Hughley said.
Ryan Calsbeek, a biology professor who chairs the standing committee on student life at Dartmouth, and who is openly critical of the single-sex Greek system as a whole, concurs any young attendee would feel “beholden” to the upperclassmen fraternity brother who serves them alcohol and provides a party space. But Calsbeek doesn’t see moving parties from frat basements to sorority houses as a viable fix.
At Dartmouth, there is a local sorority with no national affiliate, Sigma Delta, but it can’t rival the frats for parties. When Kathleen Meyer, a 2011 Dartmouth graduate, was social chair of Sigma Delta, she had $30,000 per school year to spend on alcohol and parties. That may sound like a lot, but most fraternities maintained a social budget three to four times larger.
“The solution to this problem is — if a politician wanted to take this on — would be to lower the drinking age to 18 to get a burgeoning bar scene going,” Calsbeek said. But it’s unlikely to happen, he concedes, so his focus is on the social scene that does exist.
“[The students] have to be able to go out and rage, but do it somewhere besides a frat basement,” Calsbeek said. “There’s a way you can party and blow off steam and drink alcohol without totally endangering yourself.”
