Greeks should ban hard liquor so houses stay in existence

Last spring, a University of Kansas student died from alcohol poisoning. After drinking at his fraternity house, the student died sometime during the night. An autopsy later found that the freshman had a blood-alcohol content of .362.

Now, think back to the news reports on the incident. Of which fraternity was this young man a member?

Chances are, you don't remember. And in reality, it doesn't matter.

My fellow greeks, of course, will protest this point. Each greek organization is built on a different set of values. There is a huge difference between, say, Alpha Gamma Rho and Lambda Chi Alpha. Not better or worse, just different.

To the public, however, there is no difference — a fraternity is a fraternity. A headline in the Lawrence Journal-World about the KU student's death reads "Fraternity Member Dies in Alcohol-Related Incident." No distinction was made until later in the article.

Even when a greek organization is named, the vast majority of the public does not understand the difference. To a non-greek person, every name of a house is just a confusing jumble of Alphas, Betas and Zetas. Any organization with a greek name gets thrown into the pile.

This fact is why K-State fraternities must pass a ban on hard alcohol.

Opponents of the ban cite self-governance by individual fraternities as a reason for being against the measure. They want each house to decide its own policy on hard alcohol. On most issues, this is reasonable.

But when consequences affect the greek community as a whole, the entire greek community must set the policy. If someone died in my fraternity house, every fraternity would feel the repercussions.

Self-governance in the greek community is a privilege, not a right. If we don't use that autonomy to make responsible decisions, the university administration itself will force change. We saw this at the University of Colorado, which no longer recognizes fraternities as campus organizations after its Interfraternity Council (IFC) failed to enact mandated reforms following an alcohol-related death.

No one wants to see that scenario at K-State, and the fraternities have the power to prevent it from happening.

Banning hard alcohol doesn't eliminate risk, of course, but it does reduce it. Because of the low alcohol content compared to volume, it is much more difficult to experience alcohol poisoning from drinking beer alone.

Expanding alcohol education and enforcement in chapters is a nice gesture but in actuality does little to prevent the problem. Programs such as these already are in place at K-State as well as in many national fraternities, but alcohol-related incidents still happen.

Banning hard alcohol would both ensure that fraternities still exist on this campus and, more importantly, create a safer environment for its members. No fraternity would argue that hard alcohol is central to its existence, so why would it not make this trade-off in pursuit of these goals?

Even if this ban does not pass IFC Monday night, it will be the policy sooner or later. The national trend is for fraternities to move away from alcohol. A combination of expensive insurance and university policy is driving this change. Even here at K-State, the Panhellenic Council, the governing body for sororities, recently passed a resolution supporting the ban on hard alcohol in fraternities.

So voting against the ban is a vote against the inevitable. For K-State fraternities, the choice is to adapt or die.

I urge my fellow chapter presidents to support the ban on hard alcohol. 


-Tim Hadachek is a senior in political science. He is the president of FarmHouse Fraternity. Please send comments to opinion@spub.ksu.edu.