It’s no secret the University of Idaho’s Greek system has tried to rid itself of the out of control party scene stereotype for decades.
However, multiple mentions in the prominent national magazine The Atlantic, about dangerous living conditions and irresponsible behavior are bound to hurt the cause.
“The Dark Powers of Fraternities,” written by Caitlin Flanagan, was released Wednesday by The Atlantic and mentioned multiple incidents at UI where students were severely injured when falling from fraternities.
The Atlantic promoted the narrative piece and as a yearlong investigation into an “endemic” problem faced in fraternities across the nation.
However, calling the article an investigative piece of journalism is a stretch. For students, administrators and staff
who are involved in the campus community, this does not come as a ground-breaking surprise.
Personal injuries at fraternities are serious and consistent problems for so many major universities that have an active Greek community.
In her article, Flanagan cites three major incidents at UI fraternities where students fell out of a window and sustained serious injuries. One resulted in permanent brain damage for a first year student who fell from the third story window of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity in 2009. The other example occurred 12 days earlier, when a student fell from the third story window of the Delta Tau Delta house.
The third incident Flanagan mentions is a lawsuit brought against the Delta Chi Fraternity from a fall from their third-story building in fall 2011, which resulted in a broken pelvis.
Flanagan then goes on to suggest that university administrators did not take these situations seriously, and continually failed to take proper actions to prevent these incidents from occurring again.
These accidents are tragic, and should not be accepted as normal occurrences on college campuses, but to suggest that UI administrators did not address safety issues within the Greek system is simply false.
The next school year, UI prevented the Delta Chi Fraternity from housing freshmen for two years, forcing Delta Chi to rent out their house for two years — a fact that Flanagan seemed to leave out in her reporting.
Furthermore, as a part of the Dean of Students Office, the Greek Life Office coordinates safety programs for houses, and works with the UI Greek community to address safety concerns, as well as coordinate with the Campus Division of the Moscow Police Department.
Past UI President M. Duane Nellis even created two task forces last spring, one on alcohol and drugs, and the other on Greek life. Both of these task forces continued to meet throughout last semester to address safety concerns on each topic, and have received wide spread praise from the Idaho State Board of Education.
Fraternities should not go without criticism, their organizations created an environment in which these serious injuries occur more frequently than the other living communities, like residence halls and off-campus apartments.
However, these selected incidents certainly do not reflect the effort or impact UI administrators have on decreasing the amount of incidents in houses.
Flanagan’s 15,000-word article was promoted by The Atlantic as an investigative look into the dangers of fraternity life, but for our community and many Americans, it served as an obvious reminder of the well-known problems the Greek community faces.
Ryan Tarinelli
can be reached at