Fort Collins – The push for a more sober campus at Colorado State University is meeting resistance from the old-school way of celebrating college life, students and officials say.
And those traditions could kill the Greek system, officials warn.
A dawn drinking ritual involving several sororities and fraternities led to sanctions last week against Greek houses at CSU, driving home the point that “Animal House” shenanigans won’t be tolerated.
“I think the university and the student body as a whole is fed up with that kind of activity,” said Kevin Selvy, president of CSU’s Interfraternal Council. “And if something like what happened last week happens again, there will be a huge crackdown.”
The drinking party – dubbed “Rise and Ralph” – happened in the face of both CSU and the Greek system implementing sweeping reforms after the September 2004 death of sophomore Samantha Spady. Spady went on a drinking binge over the Labor Day weekend and died of alcohol poisoning. She was found at Sigma Pi, a fraternity house near campus.
Besides banning alcohol in their chapter houses, Greeks also created groups dealing with alcohol abuse and sexual assault on campus. Three chapters participate in a pilot program where graduate students work as live-in advisers.
The changes have been good for Greek students, Selvy said.
“The whole environment has improved,” he said. “We have cleaner, safer chapters.”
But, he acknowledged, some fraternities lost members when alcohol was banned, and some remaining members want to keep the legacy of hard drinking.
“We’ve got some work to do,” Selvy said.
But there are positive signs, said Anne Hudgens, director of campus life at CSU, even from the “Rise and Ralph” incident, when students got together to drink until they were sick. While others opted to party on, several Greeks who witnessed the party came forward to report it, Hudgens said.
“Any time you have change, there are people who want to do things the old way and there are people who are very much on board with how things are changing,” she said. “And that’s causing some internal conflicts at some chapters.”
But that didn’t stop sorority and fraternity members when they met at 5 a.m. on Sept. 1 to celebrate the end of sorority recruitment. They popped the cork at fraternity houses and off-campus houses occupied by fraternity members, officials said.
The “Ralph and Rise” tradition not only violated the Greek prohibition of alcohol but several other university rules as well.
It led to CSU cutting off all recognition of the Pi Kappa Alpha chapter. This wipes Pi Kappa Alpha’s presence off the campus for at least seven years and prevents it from interacting with other Greek groups.
Eric Wulf, executive director of Pi Kappa Alpha in Memphis, Tenn., said the national headquarters of the fraternity is investigating whether the CSU chapter will keep its charter. A decision could take weeks.
“At the current point, they’re in good standing as far as keeping their charter,” he said.
Wulf said four fraternity members who rent a private house hosted the Sept. 1 party, attended by a couple dozen students. He was not sure the whole fraternity should suffer because of the actions of those four students.
The fraternity headquarters is investigating why the university singled out the chapter, which won a community service award from CSU in the spring and has a higher grade-point average than the male student body.
Wulf called “Rise and Ralph” a “ridiculous tradition” that didn’t fit the fraternity’s mission. But, he said, he hadn’t determined whether it was a fraternity activity.
“At the end of the day, the business that we’re in is building better men and building better people.”
CSU reprimanded seven other Greek organizations for participating. Their conduct damaged efforts during the past year to take the emphasis on alcohol out of Greek life, Linda Kuk, CSU’s vice president of student affairs, said in a letter.
Staff writer Monte Whaley can be reached at 720-929-0907 or mwhaley @denverpost.com.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
