‘ANIMAL’ CONTROL
The toga party’s over. The president of Penn State University on Tuesday threatened to kill off all Greek life on campus if students don’t stop acting like the bros from “Animal House” (right).
Nine of the university’s 82 fraternities were busted during parents’ weekend in early April for breaking booze rules, ranging from underage drinking to throwing parties without licenses, President Eric Barron fumed in an open letter online to parents and students.
“Even some parents were visibly intoxicated,” said Barron, who said he is now considering the “end of Greek life at Penn State.”
“Given they have broken just about every restriction, I’m thinking there’s going to be some very deep conversation about it,” he wrote.
In February, the university put a moratorium on serving alcohol at Greek parties after a student, Tim Piazza of New Jersey, took a fatal fall down a set of stairs during a pledgenight party.
School administrators made an exception for parents’ weekend but said students must follow all legal-drinking rules.
“Apparently, this was a mistake,” Barron wrote.
“The drinking was excessive and was not restricted to beer and wine.
“The party was open to any- one, and people with no formal association roamed freely in and out with access to handles of liquor. Those roaming in and out included some who were underage.”
Barron was also irked by an e-mail, sent by a member of the school’s Interfraternity Council, advising frats to simply move “the alcohol upstairs,” where campus booze monitors can’t go.
Sigma Alpha Mu broke more booze rules than any other frat, Barron said in the blog post.
Activists have pressed in re- cent years to end Greek life at colleges after a slew of sexualassault and binge-drinking cases linked to frat parties.
Shuttering all frats would not be unprecedented — but the school would be among the country’s biggest to end the centuries-old tradition.
The smaller, private Middlebury College in Vermont pulled the plug on Greek life in 1991. Alfred University in western New York shuttered frats on campus in 2002, and Amherst College in Massachusetts banned them in 2014.