Erin McQuinn

Party at the Lodge? One Greek questions the rules

Soon, we'll all be spending a lot more time at the Elks Lodge. Yes, that's right, due to a resolution passed by the National Sorority people, (or National Panhellenic Conference) fraternity parties will essentially be moved out of the houses and into alternative venues. Why? Because at a NPC conference in 1998, the members passed a Resolution to "encourage their collegiate chapters to co-host non-alcoholic events with those men's fraternity chapters who have implemented the policy of substance-free fraternity housing." A resolution means that it was not unanimously passed, so they can only suggest it. But many of the nationals to our sororities here at the University have heeded the call of this resolution and drafted their own policies regarding alcohol and parties. These range from no parties at a non-dry house, to no parties with a non-dry house. What this also conveniently means is that a lot of liability is taken off of sorority national chapters - but they insist that the real heart of this resolution is for the students' personal safety.

This means that fraternity and sorority socials must now seek out other places to host their parties. This might work out just fine if we went to the University of Wisconsin - the land of the cheese and also of many bars. But alas, here we are in Ann Arbor with our four (or so) bars. So the Greek community has been told by NPC spokespersons to "think outside of the box" and contact alternative venues such as Elks lodges and banquet halls. The Greek community was also encouraged by this spokesperson to convert abandoned warehouses into swingin' fraternity funhouses. But I'm pretty sure that there aren't any Elk's Lodges or abandoned warehouses on the corner of Hill and Washtenaw. Therefore we must either charter continuous buses, or all leave at the same time. And then there's always drunk driving. But as the spokesperson said, "that's a personal choice." That's funny, I thought they were looking out for our best interest.

Not only are they preventing parties and being a platform to drunk driving, but they're also disempowering women. The same women that the NPC was supposedly trying to look out for. By moving the parties out of houses, the sorority girl's role of checking lists and playing a part in who gets in is taken away. It now goes to the bouncer.

Here we are, looking in the face of a reoccurring problem affecting the world today. What it all boils down to is problem stemming from a terrible memory disease affecting almost 99 percent of the population; everyone forgets what the hell it's like to be young. Almost all of us are guilty of it already. If you've ever turned down playing tag/coloring with your younger cousin/little sib - you're guilty. It seems that we all seem to forget what it's like to be in a particular age group as soon as we outgrow it.

The same thing is happening here. It's a bunch of old women, halfway across the country, thinking they know how to run our lives - that they know what college students want. They also think that it is their responsibility to protect college girls from themselves. They go on to assume that every University is the same, and passing a "resolution" will fix everything. That's the major problem here. It's a law that's trying to fix a social problem.

The NPC is trying to be mothers to not only sororities, but fraternities and also the University as a whole. They stated that their resolution is to "help remove alcohol as the central focus of campus life." Get that? Campus, not Greek. They even go on to call it an "amendment." Obviously no one at the NPC has ever taken a Poli Sci course. Because if they did, they'd know that you can't pass legislation to try and correct a social problem. Someone should really tell them that Prohibition was repealed.

Basically, all these new rules are to slowly kill off the Greek system. It's no secret that there's been very bad press surrounding everything Greek. This puzzles me somewhat as we don't blame any other organization for the mishaps with one of their members. No one would try to shut down Circle K if one single person messed up. But Michigan's Panhellenic board is fighting this resolution, and hopefully the Greek system will persevere. And maybe next year we won't have the additional problem on our hands of finding a nearby Elks Lodge.

-Erin McQuinn can be reached via

e-mail at emcquinn@umich.edu.