Now is time for Penn State to ban fraternities

Back in July, we recommended that officials at Penn State University be given a year to test-drive a new prevention regime aimed at curbing the kind of fraternitydriven excesses that claimed the life of 19-year-old freshman Timothy Piazza.

And if those reforms didn’t take, we further recommended that Penn State follow the lead of Harvard University and consider a ban on all fraternities, sororities and single-gender clubs starting in the fall of 2018.

A one-two punch this week has caused us to reconsider that position.

First there’s the decision by Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller in the wake of revelations that footage from a camera in the basement where Piazza died had been, manually deleted just as police were going to seize it.

As The Post reported, FBI agents recovered video from the deleted hard drive. That showed, The Post reported, fraternity members requiring pledges to drink beer, wine and vodka in the basement, prosecutors said.

That was followed by Lehigh University’s decision to dissolve the Sigma Chi fraternity after two students ended up in the hospital after a champagne drinking party.

Yes, Penn State shuttered the fraternity in the Piazza case.

Nonetheless, the twin incidents have convinced us that enough is enough: It’s time for Penn State to go full-Harvard and enact a ban on Greek life.

Our reasons are the same as they were back in July.

While some fraternities undoubtedly do some good, that good has been overwhelmed by the unsavory underbelly of frat life.

Research has shown that “fraternity men are three times more likely to commit sexual assault than other college men,” James D. Foubert, a professor of higher education and student affairs at Oklahoma University, told The New York Times in 2015.

“Universities are often fairly hands-off with monitoring the activity within fraternity houses,” Foubert told the newspaper, “and it also happens to be the place where a great deal of the high-risk drinking tends to occur on a college campus.

“And with unmonitored facilities and a lot of alcohol consumption, and with male control over the space, it can create a dangerous environment for women.”

In a piece published by Newsweek in May, the University of Minnesota’s Toben F. Nelson and Spruha Joshi concluded that a “toxic drinking culture,” the same one that leads frat boys to sexual assault, contributed to Piazza’s death.

“Fraternity members insist they can take care of themselves. The evidence suggests that this is not true and it is not reasonable to expect these young people to appropriately manage alcohol at their events,” they wrote. “College administrators and prevention professionals have tried developing programs to educate fraternity and sorority members about the risks of excessive drinking.”

They concluded that “a recent review of existing scientific studies came to an alarming conclusion: Extant alcohol interventions show limited efficacy in reducing consumption and problems among fraternity and sorority members. In other words, what we are currently doing does not work.”

University officials have argued that banning the frats will simply drive them underground, making risky behavior harder to detect and prevent.

But as long as universities tolerate these organizations in their midst, they confer upon them a legitimacy that’s no longer warranted.

There’s a reason no one wears togas anymore.

The ancient Greeks are history. It’s time for Greek life on campus to join them.

— PennLive.com, The Associated Press

Research has shown that “fraternity men are three times more likely to commit sexual assault than other college men.”