From: thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank)
Newsgroups: soc.college,talk.rape,soc.women
Subject: Re: Generalizations (was: Fraternities)
Date: 17 Apr 92 02:09:15 GMT
Reply-To: thf2@midway.uchicago.edu
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <PSHUANG.92Apr16201906@W20-575-107.mit.edu> pshuang@athena.mit.edu (Ping-Shun Huang) writes:
> ** My main point is: should we model our interactions with other people
>on the same basis that insurance companies deal with their clients? e.g.
>an insurance company usually takes the attitude that: "We don't care
>that you're a person with your own mind and soul, all you are to us are
>these things on a sheet of paper, numbers and labels.  Because you fall
>within this category as indicated by these particular numbers and
>labels, we're going to charge you ten times as much, we don't care that
>you're actually a very careful driver, because we are not set up to do
>that because we handle 10,000,000 people." A fairly common stance seems
>to be that since statistically fraternity members are more likely to be
>this and that, then we should feel justified in being prejudiced.

This isn't prejudice, it's a policy decision.  Is it [unjustified] prejudice 
for a college to prefer to select from the set of students with 1510 SAT's
rather than from the set of 810 SAT's?  I guarantee that you can look
out there and find an 810 and a 1510 that are the exception and the 810
will outperform the 1510.  But there are information costs to getting
this perfect read.  It's not prejudice to say "We would rather that
the students on our campus organize themselves in such a way that does
not perpetuate attitudes that foster rape" any more than it's prejudice
against people who don't lock their doors at night to point out that
they'd be much safer if they did, or that drunks shouldn't drive.

A lot of the controversy comes from thinking that the purpose of what
me and others have been saying is "Fraternities are bad."  That's not
the purpose.  That's the conclusion.  Believe it or not, I can be
convinced the other way.  All I've seen though in the other direction
is anecdotal evidence that is inherently self-serving.  If someone
can come up with a coherent explanation why fraternities have these
problems with rape while, say, student government or environmentalists
don't, I'd be happy to hear it.  All I've heard in response to these
studies are personal insults, though.

It isn't just me.  Dozens of scholars have looked at this issue, and
as near as I can tell, they've unanimously come to the conclusion that
fraternities are causing a real problem.  Anyone out there have a
counter-study?  I'll be happy to look at it.  But of the hundreds
of pro-fraternity posts presented in the last couple of weeks, not one
has presented evidence.

> ** Whoever brought up the statistics might have considered mentioning
>that whenever you sub-sample, especially if the sub-sample is very small
>(and even an entire Greek system at an university is a small sub-sample,
>much less just a single fraternity chapter, or a single fraternity
>brother), you may get a population which differs very greatly in
>characteristics from the entire group. I think, as with the general
>college population, fraternity members have a very high standard
>deviation from whatever means are calculated for the group overall.

A lot of the debate has been over a study at one college campus, but there 
have been other studies that have addressed 60,000 students that had
substantially the same results.  Check the list of studies that I posted
today.

(Do you really find it better
to think that fraternity members are two to twenty-five times more likely
to rape rather than just four times more likely to rape across the board?)

> ** What would I like to see? For people to judge any given individual
>for who that individual is. If you meet someone and they act like an
>asshole, then by all means treat them accordingly regardless of whether
>that person is a member of a fraternity or not. If you're a woman at a
>party and someone wants to take you somewhere, decide from his behavior
>and demeanor if you trust him any farther than you can throw him. Let
>who the individual is guide what you think of him.

Many women who've been raped at these fraternity parties never got the
chance to make that decision.  I've seen case study after case study of
women drinking punch spiked with grain alcohol and waking up with a man
on top of her.  I have nothing against judging individuals individually.
But what we have here is a corrupt institution that takes people who
normally wouldn't rape and provides them with the mutual support and
peer approval/pressure (and ability to get away with it) where the end
result is an increase in the number of rapes.  I haven't been attacking
fraternity members, I've been attacking the fraternities that made them
that way.

>Why? Even if in your
>experience, persons belonging to certain groups are more likely to
>depend on welfare, or be loud and obnoxious, or be more likely to
>sexually harass others, why is it OK to generalize to the group for
>fraternities, but not acceptable to make similar generalizations on the
>divisions of gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation? (OK, at
>least I believe making such generalizations on the basis of any of those
>is not acceptable, you may or may not disagree.)

In a part of your post that I deleted you imply that it's alright to
be disgusted if someone wears a "KKK" shirt.  Isn't that over-generalizing?
Gender/race/religion/sexual orientation are matters that one has little,
if any choice over.  Affiliations are.  When one chooses to affiliate
with the Greek system, you carry a lot of baggage with that affiliation.
I didn't choose my skin color or ethnic background, so I have very little
say over the generalizations one can make from those classifications.  If
I were to join the KKK or the Federalist Society or the Progessive Law
Students Association, I would be choosing to associate myself with a set
of thoughts which I would presumably agree with by voluntarily making that
affiliation.  

> ** Stop all this flamage, which I do not believe to be accomplishing
>anything, except to raise people's tempers and generate ad hominem
>attacks in public. 

Hear, hear.  (Of course, I get flamed when I use Latin words like that :)

> ** For background: I am a first-generation Asian majoring in Computer
>Science at MIT. While I am proud to be a brother in Alpha Phi Omega, a
>National Service Fraternity, we are not part of the established Greek
>system by choice (e.g. no house, no IFC representation, etc.) I speak
>for myself using first-hand observations.

Please keep in mind that when the word "fraternity" is used in this
discussion, it is in reference to the traditional late-twentieth
century North American all-male Greek Letter society of a social nature,
rather than service fraternities, honor fraternities, etc.  (Conversely,
a lot of what is said about fraternities in these discussion is almost as
applicable to male college athletes in team sports.)
-- 
Ted Frank          + "Question whether attorney's filing claim for 'stud fee'
1307 E 60 St, #109 +  as countersuit to paternity action was improperly
U o' C Law Skool   +  motivated required remand."  Headnote 9, Committee on
Chi, IL 60637      +  Legal Ethics of WVa State Bar v Douglas, 370 SE2d 325.
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