Sororities Don’t Let Their Girls Drink in the House: Is That Wise?

The Huffington Post
reports that most sororities in the country are dry: They don’t
let girls have alcohol in the house at all. The national Greek
organization that oversees most sororities, the National
Panhellenic Conference, has apparently maintained that policy for
as long as anyone can remember—it’s a staple of a “more Victorian
era,” according to the organization. Fraternities, on the other
hand, have no such prohibition.

Perhaps more surprising: No one seems interested in changing
things.

“I hate to say it, but I don’t see that changing ever,” said
Julie Johnson, a committee chairwoman at the NPC.

According to a HuffPost poll, 65 percent of women
and 50 percent of men agreed that sororities should remain dry:

Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they agreed that
“sorority houses should not be allowed to host parties that serve
alcohol.” Yet, only 50 percent of men in the poll agreed with the
statement, compared with 65 percent of women.

Just 16 percent of female respondents think sororities should be
allowed to host alcoholic parties, compared with 32 percent of men,
the poll found.

Technically speaking, most residents of both sorority and
fraternity houses are under 21 and can’t legally drink alcohol
anyway. And I’m sure this policy isn’t followed uniformly, and is
often flouted. But just like the drinking age, a stated no-alcohol
policy shifts students’ drinking habits—not by stopping them from
drinking, but by changing where and when they are more likely to
drink. Since sorority sisters aren’t supposed to drink at home, and
can’t host social events with alcohol, and are legally barred from
drinking at bars and restaurants, they are driven to parties—at
apartments, college town houses, and fraternities—when they want to
drink.

It’s easy to see why this
may not be a socially desirable result. Drinking in a
stranger’s basement is inherently more dangerous than drinking in
the comfort of your own home, or a bar. It seems to me that the
kinds of misunderstandings, uncomfortable situations, and outright
assaults that befall college women are far more likely to occur
when drinking under such conditions. If college girls are going to
get drunk at parties no matter what the law says, shouldn’t more of
those parties be happening on their own turf—in an environment
controlled by women, where a potential rape victim is surrounded by
girls she knows and lives with?

The so-called “epidemic” of sexual assault on campus is
probably exaggerated, given how
dubious the statistics are. But campus rape does happen—and
when it does, it is almost always the result of blackout drinking.
Don’t both NPC’s alcohol policy and the current legal drinking
age incentivize sorority girls to binge drink in the dark, late at
night, in unfamiliar, male-dominated environments, away from their
sisters?

Some progressives think the best way to fix the problem is to
concentrate on what happens
right before a potential assault is committed. They are
obsessed over the precise words leading up to an assault, and think
legislatures should force colleges to police the expression of
thoughts and feelings during intimate moments.

Instead of forcing students to say the right words to each other
under dangerous and incapacitating drinking conditions, why
don’t we simply remove the policies that encourage them to drink so
irresponsibly?

Read more about the libertarian answer to the campus rape crisis

here.