How about a HUG? “I

From the Miami Herald

Florida International University President Mark Rosenberg is firmly and effectively cracking down on Greek life at his school. The good news is other institutions of higher learning in the state are taking a hard look at fraternity culture, too.

But Rosenberg deserves praise for tackling the frat problem head-on and sending a strong message that fraternities have to do better if they want to continue to exist.

These are hard times for these student organizations, and often because they brought the difficulties upon themselves. Universities across the country are suspending fraternity and sorority chapters in response to troubling — and sometimes deadly — incidents on campus. They have sparked a national conversation about the future of Greek organizations, which some students defend.

At FIU, fraternities were seemingly out of control. A fraternity’s leaked group chat revealed photos of nude women, Holocaust memes, jokes about rape and pedophilia and conversations about drug sales. They’ve been caught serving liquor to minors at tailgate parties.

After a month-long suspension of the groups, FIU announced this week that the campus chapters of 16 Greek organizations have been reinstated. But they won’t return to business as usual.

Real change is on the way. During the suspension, administrators, Greek organization leaders and alumni met in search of ways to curb the bad behavior. Frat life needs to evolve out of the 1950s — or die.

Rosenberg’s first solid act: banning alcohol from all fraternity and sorority events for the rest of the semester. Good move. Keeping liquor away from a campus is going to be really, really hard. But alcohol is too often the common denominator when a frat tragedy occurs, so Rosenberg’s edict wisely goes right to the source.

Two troubled fraternities have been suspended for two years. A third, Pi Kappa Phi, was suspended for an as-yet-undetermined amount of time.

“The fate of Greek life has been hanging by a thread, and this pause gave us the opportunity to recommit to our values and end the age of permissiveness and ambiguity that has hung over our Greek organizations for far too long,” Rosenberg said. Those aren’t the words of a scold, or a prude. Rather, they represent the responsibility campuses have not to be parties to illegal or dangerous behavior.

The days of looking the other way in response to bad behavior in Greek life should be over. And like FIU, universities are getting more aggressive as the death count grows.

November saw the shocking death of a pledge to the Pi Kappa Phi chapter at Florida State University. Andrew Coffey, 20, a graduate of Pompano Beach High School, was found dead. FSU said, Enough, and suspended Greek life.

In 2011, FAMU was hit with the hazing death — beating death, really — of a marching band newbie. Offenders received prison time, and deservedly so.

At the University of Miami, the future of fraternities and their oversight are also being debated.

There, hazing is strictly prohibited, according to the dean of students, but a Miami Hurricane student newspaper editorial recently said the practice “is common knowledge among students and needs to be discussed.” The university has hosted workshops and town hall meetings on the issue. That’s the correct course.

Done right, frat life is a rewarding and life-long bonding experience for students. But they are becoming an anachronism in a #MeToo world.

Rosenberg is on the right track in his efforts to reign in fraternities. know just how you feel” … during my years as a hospital chaplain I often heard that well-intended effort to identify with a person in crisis. More than once, the angry reply came back, “you have no idea how I feel.” The fact is that, no matter how much we may want to enter another person’s thoughts and feelings, we are limited by our own experiences. We really only know how we think we would act or feel in a given situation. Despite our most sincere efforts to understand, a fight with a spouse or close friend can reveal how easily we misunderstand or expect another to behave as we think they should. Empathy is a challenge!

In our polarized world, some have wondered if empathy is a lost art — even more sadly, a lost effort. Social media makes it easy to see photos of my grandchildren in California, my family in Arkansas and of friends scattered all over. Then I smile. That same social media can also carry vile hatred, fake news and cyber bullying. With no face to-face encounter to buffer harsh words, tweets and posts can ignore the destructive consequences of their impact. Even when not intentionally hurtful, thoughtless words may simply betray a total lack of understanding about those whose life experiences are different from those of the speaker.

The respectful give and take of real conversation is very different from that of flinging opinions or slogans into the atmosphere. In this column, I have more than once included the phrase “let’s talk” as an invitation to seek common ground where disagreement seems to be the most obvious conclusion. I did not originate the invitation; it is the unofficial slogan for the local group of which I am gladly a member, One Community United. The goal of OCU is to encourage conversation and new friendships between people who would not ordinarily be in the same social groups.

Though its big-picture focus is the open invitation “let’s talk,” an obvious special focus of the group lies in the area of interracial dialogue and understanding. The tragic, destructive history of racism has left scars and divisions that are not easily overcome. Most readers will have been youth or young adults during the Civil Rights Movement of the ’60s. We have made much progress since then, and many well-intentioned folks think that the remaining issues of racism are primarily the blatant bigotry shown last year by neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a KKK march through Rome. But much division and prejudice remain, overtly and subtly. White and black may believe they know how the other feels (or should feel) but unless they are talking to one another, they very probably know very little of the other’s experiences.

Few recent events have so highlighted vicious racial hatred as has the prayer meeting murder of 9 members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, by white supremacist Dylann Roof. People of faith recognize the teachings of Jesus to not return violence with violence. Jesus says to forgive 70 times 7. We know we are commanded to forgive, but wonder how in the world we would respond had one of those murdered innocents been our loved one! I most certainly do not know what it feels like to face such profound evil, and I stand awed to think that the killer might be forgiven by those he so hated.

The Hearts United Gathering (HUG III) event sponsored by One Community United offers the opportunity to hear about deep faith and radical forgiveness from the current pastor of Mother Emanuel Church. Thursday evening, in the Wilder Center at Rome First United Methodist Church, 202 E. Third Ave., the Rev. Eric Manning will speak on “Racial Healing and Reconciliation.” The program begins at 6 p.m. and is free. In a hopeful spirit of community, of respect, of crossing real and imagined barriers, of hope and inspiration — I invite you to the HUG event. Additional information can be found on the One Community United web site, by reference to the Sunday Rome News-Tribune, and in flyers distributed through churches and the community at large. How about a HUG? REV. GARY BATCHELOR