Responding to the proposed Greek Life review

Beth Hagovsky, Ed.D., director of Student Leadership and Activities, has proposed an external review on St. Joe’s Greek Life. The goal of such review is to evaluate the current climate surrounding Greek Life at St. Joe’s and take input from outside sources in order to improve the social groups.

The review board will ideally be composed of three evaluators from other Jesuit institutions with a Greek Life presence, and they will speak with various other leaders within the St. Joe’s community in order to make a holistic evaluation of our Greek Life community.

These evaluators will then be a part of a proposed open forum in November following their review, in which they will make recommendations on how to improve the overall climate of Greek Life on campus and foster an open dialogue with the students who partake in these social groups. However, the forum is not guaranteed yet.

While this evaluation is not in direct response to hazing incidents on campus, and it is supposed to take into account other aspects of Greek Life culture like the overall lack in diversity, hazing is no doubt an important part of why this will be taking place.

But how much do bureaucratic responses actually help the issue of hazing within Greek Life?

Last semester, Director of Community Standards Bill Bordak sent out an email to all St. Joe’s students detailing hazing incidents on campus, and this public notification and documentation was, “in compliance with enacted Pennsylvania state law” (The Timothy J. Piazza Anti Hazing Law). This public detailing is a component in the revised anti-hazing policy on campus in response to said legislation.

And yet, an external review will still likely take place this semester in order to address hazing once again. Students across America still deal with hazing incidents, including students on our own campus, even though the rules against hazing are quite clear. There is no doubt plenty of legislation and policy in place in order to try and combat the problem.

These codified standards and regulations are of course a great start to combating the issue of hazing, and the plan to conduct an external review within St. Joe’s Greek Life is no exception to this claim.

Nonetheless, it is not addressing hazing at the root of the issue. There is a stigma that surrounds Greek Life, and it comes from all angles. Students have their own perception of Greek Life, whether it be holding the groups on a pedestal for their philanthropic efforts or seeing them as a place to go on the weekends.

There are perceptions of Greek Life at the administrative level as well, whether it be support of Greek Life because it attracts more potential students to the university, or lower levels of support because issues like hazing exist and create an environment difficult to navigate.

And then within each fraternity and sorority, there are their own set of perceptions about tradition and family. Hazing comes from within a social group, and it is not limited to just Greek Life. There are various instances of hazing in other groups like sports teams or other clubs on college campuses. And needless to say, not all chapters of Greek Life partake in hazing.

But regardless, hazing incidents pull from the mindset of initiation and tradition. No matter how hard administration tries to enforce policy, the problem will still exist, if not grow worse.

It works in a cyclical way: “Well, we got hazed as pledges, so now it’s your turn,” is the assumed logic. It continues through the generations of new students as they filter in and out of the university, and it is thus a difficult challenge to try and solve.

It is going to take quite a bit to eliminate hazing fully, unless you decide to remove a social group from the environment in question. But in all honesty, that is by far more impractical than enacting more cautionary procedures.

So we applaud the proposal to host an external review evaluating Greek Life, because hazing remains an issue that needs to be addressed, especially since the death of a student back in 2017 at Pennsylvania State University.

But there also needs to be open dialogue between the administration and Greek Life, as well as between the students in and outside of Greek Life. It is thus up to the students who support these social groups, as well as the students that are members of the social groups to maintain an open dialogue about the dangers that come with hazing.

This means we must take a bottom-up approach that starts with the students, fraternity brothers and sorority sisters, rather than putting emphasis on the administration to fix the problem.

Social groups such as fraternities and sororities have a multitude of benefits, and they should be environments in which people who would like to join can do so in a comfortable and safe way, while still having a good time.

Initiation and tradition should not be considered synonymous with uncomfortable actions and frightening circumstances, especially when safety starts to become an issue. So it’s up to us as students to change our perceptions surrounding Greek Life, because if we continue to perceive hazing as an inescapable fate when joining Greek Life, the problem will never dissipate.

As long as we sustain an open dialogue from the student end, and encourage a topdown approach to the problem along with bottom-up support, we will come much closer to creating a Greek Life environment on campus that is able to thrive and keep all members away from the dangers of hazing.

—The Editorial Board

This week’s Editorial Board is comprised of the Editor in Chief, Managing Editor, Copy Editor, Digital Managing Editor, Senior Editor, Photo Editor, Assistant News Editor, Assistant Features Editor, Online Editor, Opinions Editor and Assistant Opinions Editor. This editorial reflects the views of the Board and not the entire Hawk staff.