I'm already getting crap about Freddie Fratboy in the previous posting, albeit not nearly as much harassment (and no threats as of yet) as when I caught a whole frat cheating in my intro class and they weren't allowed to recruit the next year because the F's brought their GPA's too low.
I shouldn't have to say this, first because the previous post clearly does not apply to everyone in a frat (I know some very caring and decent people who survived the Greek system), and second because any minimally informed person realizes that college fraternities are pernicious. But many people are for whatever reasons unable to parse satire, which by definition is mockery infused with moral rage. For one source of the moral rage (leading to the comment about date rape not being an intramural sport in the preceding the post) consider all of the following.
(1) Around two percent of female college students are raped in a fraternity house (statistics from which this can be extrapolated here). This is not two percent of all women who are assaulted, rather two percent of all female college students. Likewise, this does not account for rapes committed by fraternity members outside of the house, even though most frat-rats live off campus and many frat parties are now off campus to get around no alcohol and no hazing policies. Thus, especially given the following research, one should reasonably conclude that the number of female college students raped by fraternity members is much higher than two percent.
(2) S. B. Boeringer ((1999). Associations of rape-supportive attitudes with fraternal and athletic participation. Violence Against Women, 5, 81-90) discusses the repulsive attitudes of the average frat-rat. This is summarized here in the following manner.
The author examined rape-supportive attitudes in a sample of fraternity members, university athletes, and a control population. In all, a sample of 477 male university students were recruited. Results indicate that fraternity men report significantly greater endorsement of five statements supportive of rape and adversarial gender beliefs than did the controls. The author also found that athletes reported significantly greater agreement with 14 rape-supportive statements than did men in the control condition. The control group only reported greater agreement with 2 rape-supportive statements. This study tends to support the contention that there is a measurable relationship between rape-supportive attitudes and membership in fraternal or athletic organizations.
(2) T.J. Brown, et. al. ((2002). Understanding sexual aggression against women. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 17, 937-952) showed that fraternity membership (alongside conservative attitudes towards women and viewing contact sports) was a significant predictor of sexual violence against women.
(3) J.D. Foubert ((2000). The longitudinal effects of a rape-prevention program on fraternity men's attitudes, behavioral intent, and behavior. Journal of American College Health, 48, 158-163) showed that the institutional impetus to sexual assault was so great in the fraternity system that anti-rape programs led to no long term decrease in sexually coercive behavior.
(4) M.P. Frintner, et. al. ((1993). Acquaintance rape: The influence of alcohol, fraternity membership, and sports team membership. Journal of Sex Education & Therapy, 19, 272-284) determined that though fraternity members consisted of 25% of the student population (at the predominately white midwestern school they researched), they committed 50% of the campus rape (sports team members were 2% of the population and committed 20% of the rapes).
So no, I don't think I'll remove the bit about Freddie Fratboy, and if it offends you then your priorities are horrendously misplaced.
Since satire confuses some mentally limited people, let me reiterate non-satirically that I am not being in the least facetious when I say that if there was anything approaching the level of "faculty governance" that the U.S. courts have posited to make it harder for professorial staff to unionize (since the existence of powerless faculty senates apparently makes us management), then all of the frat houses would be seized and either blown up like those orthodox churches circa 1917 Soviet Russia or at least converted into something more useful such as Christian Science reading rooms.
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