The Fraternity Problem Has a Solution. Nobody Wants It. | Monologue Monday

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America, how many of you would be willing to bet actual money, your money, that banning fraternities would lower sexual assaults on college campuses?
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I don't mean a like or a retweet.
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I mean real money, the kind you'd have to explain to your spouse when it's gone.
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Because I want you to sit with that question this whole hour.
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Do you really believe banning something just stops behavior?
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Or does it just feel good to punish somebody right now so that in a year we can all go looking for the next group to punish?
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Last week, America got handed both of its favorite answers in the same 48 hours.
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On Tuesday, Cornell University canceled every party and every social event at every fraternity house on campus through the end of the school year.
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On Wednesday, Slate ran a piece by a writer named Susan Matthews under a headline that didn't leave a lot of room for interpretation.
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The headline was ban all the frats.
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And while all that was going on down in Tucson, the University of Arizona suspended all 21 of its fraternities in one shot and then let 16 of them back in before the week was out.
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So there's your menu.
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Option one is the shrug dressed up in a press release.
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Option two is the torch.
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And this is how it goes with everything now.
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It's defund the police or the police can do no wrong.
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Trump is the devil or Trump is the second coming of Christ.
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The frats go or the frats stay exactly the way they are.
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Every one of those choices makes you feel like you're doing something because you took a stance.
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And taking a stance is free.
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You put it on a sign, you post it, and you go to bed feeling righteous, and the next morning, absolutely nothing has changed except your follower count.
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The hard work, the smart work, is the part nobody wants, where you figure out the actual harm, find the incentive that's producing it, and do the boring work of fixing it.
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That doesn't fit on a sign, and nobody does it.
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So if you're sitting at home feeling like nothing in this country ever gets fixed, I want you to know something.
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You're right.
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And I think I know why, and I think the fix for this one is a whole lot easier than either side wants to ever admit.
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I'm Chad Law, the last gay conservative with a face for radio and a video decade.
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America, this is common sense.
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If you've got a question, an argument, or think I've got this one dead wrong, text 252-Chad Law.
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Now, let's take this whole thing apart.
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So let's start with the people who want the torch, because I'm almost tempted to let them have it.
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Go for it.
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Ban the frats, take the letters off the buildings, paint over the crest, pass the resolution, and throw yourselves a little party, which, by the way, is the one thing you'll just have made illegal, and then wait for the next headline because it's coming, and I can tell you exactly where it's going to be.
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It's going to be in an off-campus apartment or a rented house three blocks from the quad or some brand new independent social club with no advisor, no national office, no charter on the line, and a really nice logo that is definitely not Greek letters.
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That's not me predicting the future, that's me reading you the past.
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When Cornell shut down fraternity parties back in 2022, a lot of those parties just picked up and moved off campus.
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And when Dartmouth banned some of its fraternities, the alumni brought them right back.
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A ban doesn't get rid of behavior, ladies and gentlemen.
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It just gets rid of the address.
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Fraternities have two problems, and I'm not going to pretend they have 20.
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They have a bullying problem and they have a sex problem, which is to say hazing and sexual misconduct.
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Apparently, fraternities can't keep their hands to themselves or their peepee's in their pants.
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Because it's not the beer pong and it's not the loud music on a Thursday night, and it's not the guy in the Patagonia vest who thinks he invented the stock market.
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Those guys are just annoying, and annoying isn't against the law.
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If it were, half of Congress would be serving consecutive life sentences.
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And both of those real problems come from the same place.
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Right now, every incentive inside that house points towards protecting the individual brother.
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So when one guy does something terrible, the house closes ranks around him because the house survives either way.
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Think about that for a sec.
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If one member goes to jail, the house still recruits next fall, the letters stay on the building, and the alumni keep writing the checks.
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So there's no reason on God's green earth for the other 49 guys to stop him.
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So you flip it.
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You make protecting the group mean getting rid of the guy who's putting the group at risk.
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It's the same loyalty and the same brotherhood, just pointed in the other direction.
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Or the way I'd put it at the kitchen table.
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They want group status, they need to group govern.
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You don't get the house, the letters, the network, the alumni, and the job pipeline, and then suddenly turn into just one individual the second something goes wrong.
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If you want the benefits of being a group, you take on the obligations of being a group.
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America, I have a solution for the fraternity problems, and I didn't get it from a task force or a blue ribbon commission.
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I got it in sixth grade.
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When I was in sixth grade, I had a problem, which was that I could not stop interrupting.
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I had a mouth that ran faster than my brain, a curiosity that would not quit, and ADD back before ADD was trendy.
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I was the chubby kid with the smart mouth who had a follow-up question for every single thing the teacher said.
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Every lesson, I had a comment, and every comment had a sequel.
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Some of you are thinking that explains a lot about this show, and you're not wrong.
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My teacher that year was Carol Paquette.
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And funny enough, Carol is now one of the most loyal listeners this show has.
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So, Carol, if you're watching, and I know you are, correct me if I get any of this wrong.
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She tried everything, that poor woman.
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She sent me to the principal's office.
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The principal at the time had a really cool Corvette, so I would just sit and talk with him about his cars, no skin off my back.
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Then she started taking away my privileges like a good teacher.
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She kept me in and she did it all over again and over again.
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None of it worked.
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I could not shut up because every one of those punishments was aimed at me, and frankly, I could take it.
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Then she figured something out.
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The problem wasn't the size of the punishment, the problem was the target.
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So she started something that changed everything.
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Pizza Party Fridays.
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If the whole class behaved all week, the whole class got pizza on a Friday.
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And if one kid messed it up, nobody got pizza.
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Not just the kid who messed it up.
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Nobody.
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And something amazing happened.
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Every time I opened my mouth, my buddy in the next desk would knock me on the shoulder and say, Shh, shut up, we want pizza.
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He didn't need a principal and he didn't need a policy.
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He just wanted that pizza as bad as I did.
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And all of a sudden, he was the best enforcement officer that school ever had, and he worked for Pepperoni.
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Now you have to understand what a pizza party is to a sixth grader.
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You might as well have promised me a$10 million mansion.
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And it worked because she got two things right at the same time.
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The whole group had skin in it, and the reward was something we all wanted.
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Miss either one of those, and it falls apart.
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But if you make the whole group lose something nobody cares about, nothing changes, and dangle something great in front of one kid, and you're right back to punishing one kid.
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And this is the part that should bother everyone watching.
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Carol could have sent me to the principal's office a hundred more times, and it would have done exactly what it did the first 99.
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Instead, she tried something, watched what happened, and changed it until it worked.
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That's what we are not doing with Greek life.
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We have been sending fraternities to the principal's office for about 150 years now and acting surprised every time nothing changes.
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A fraternity is basically a pizza party for a 20-year-old.
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To him, that house and those letters are the$10 million mansion.
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And it's amazing how fast everybody behaves when you threaten to take the pizza party away, even the ADHD kid who can't control himself.
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And I know I was that kid.
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This is not a takedown of Greek life.
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Personally, I was never a big fraternity guy, but I understand the appeal and I've seen what it can do for people.
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And I truly believe Greek life is still adding net positive into the community than net negative.
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I have three or four great friends, all grew up around the country in different trailer parks with absolutely nothing.
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They don't know each other.
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These are people I know.
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It's a commonality I've seen.
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And all of them joined fraternities in college, and all three will tell you that's why they're successful today.
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Because they got access to a network, a structure, and the guys who vouched for them when nobody else would.
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They'd never have gotten any other shot any other way.
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So when someone tells me to burn down the frats, I think about those guys.
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And when someone tells me to leave it exactly the way it is, I think about the next headline.
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And I'll tell you something else.
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I don't like the idea of punishing a whole group for what one person did.
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It doesn't sit right with me, and it shouldn't sit right with you, but we're already doing it.
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We just keep aiming it at the wrong group.
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And Cornell just canceled every party at every house on that campus over what happened in one of them.
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As for that one house, I'm not here to tell you what happened at the Kai Phi house on at Cornell in October of 2024.
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We know a former student has filed a lawsuit saying she was drugged and sexually assaulted there by seven members of that frat.
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The governor pulled the case away from the local prosecutor and handed it to the state attorney general, and nobody has been charged yet.
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I don't know what happened in that house, and neither does anyone yelling about it on the internet.
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That's the court's job.
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My job is the pattern, because this isn't one house and it isn't one campus.
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It's a story on my desk almost every week, coming out of Greek life at universities.
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The Associated Press ran a piece at the end of September under a headline that just about writes this segment for me.
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It said, Cornell's reckonings with fraternities haven't present prevented misconduct.
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Reckonings, plural.
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When your institution needs the plural form of reckoning, you are not reckoning, folks.
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You're rerunning.
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And the history in that piece is a long walk because Cornell has had fraternities and fraternity problems since the school opened its doors in 1865.
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One of the first confirmed hazing deaths in this country happened at Cornell back in the 1870s.
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Ulysses S.
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Grant was president, and Cornell was already writing the hazing press release.
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There's a professor quoted in that piece who studies fraternities for a living.
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Think about that job.
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And he describes what those houses turned into over the years as palatial mansions that dictate the social environment on campus.
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Palatial mansions.
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Remember what a pizza party is to a sixth grader?
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These kids aren't living in a metaphor.
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They're living in the actual mansion, and somebody else is paying the actual property taxes.
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So what has Cornell done about it?
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After a pledge died, they cracked down on risky pledging.
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Then they banned hard liquor in the chapter houses.
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Then they required live-in advisors, and in 2022, after reports of students being drugged and an assault, they suspended fraternity parties, and last week they suspended fraternity parties again.
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Look at that list the way you'd look at, I don't know, a contractor's estimate.
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Every single line on it is aimed at a party, a bottle, or a person.
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Not one line on that estimate touches the foundation.
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So which one of those reforms ever made one specific house afraid of losing itself before something happened?
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That's the only question that matters, and it's the one question that article never asks.
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The answer is none of them.
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Not one.
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It's the principal's office over and over again for 150 years, and every single time everybody acts shocked that the kid's still talking.
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And Cornell has already tried three strikes, which floored me when I found it.
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Back in January of 2013, right as Rush was starting, the student paper reported that Cornell had punished a fraternity called Pi Kappa Pi for three specific incidents over the course of a single year.
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Three incidents in a year is my plan, sitting right there in a newspaper from 13 years ago.
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So what did that house get for three strikes?
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Provisional status for at least four years.
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And according to the same article, it was still allowed to recruit new members.
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Three strikes and you still get to rush?
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That's not baseball, folks.
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That's T-ball, where everyone bats until they hit it and everyone gets a trophy.
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It's Carol telling the class that if one more kid acts up, there's no pizza on Friday and then ordering the pizza anyway.
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And the kids figure out real fast that the threat isn't real, and once they've figured that out, you've lost them.
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You've lost them for good.
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And the frat guys know it's theater.
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When Cornell barred four fraternities from recruiting in 2020, the president of one of those houses told the student paper he thought the university was clamping down to save face, to show the alumni and the parents it was doing something.
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When the frat guys are the ones telling you the punishment is for show, the punishment is for show.
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These are 20-year-olds who can't find a clean towel, and even they can see how stupid this is.
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And when you hear a university president say he's going to take a serious look at Greek life, I want you to remember that this isn't the first serious look or the fifth.
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This is a school that's been taking a serious look at the same problem since Grant was in the White House.
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And at some point, the serious look is the problem.
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And now look at how long the serious look takes.
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The alleged assault of that chi-phi or chai phi house happened in October of 2024.
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The local prosecutor declined to bring a case that year.
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Cornell ran its own investigation, and in March of 2025, a panel moved to expel or suspend some of the men.
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And then nothing changed for anyone else on that campus for a year and a half.
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The party ban didn't come when the university found it, no.
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It came after a lawsuit went public, after protests, after the government took the case away from the local prosecutor, and with a faculty no confidence resolution hanging over the president's head.
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NPR pointed out that this letter never explained why this was happening now two years later.
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I'll explain it for him.
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It's happening now because it's embarrassing, because the light is pointed at it.
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And in that same letter, he says Cornell will accelerate the recommendations of a task force on sexual violence that it already put together.
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Accelerate?
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Wait, wait.
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So the homework was done.
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It was sitting in a drawer, and it took a national news story to get someone to open the drawer?
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And look at what that serious look produced for the seven men in the lawsuit.
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I'm still not ruling on what happened in that house, but New York Times laid out the punishments and the shape of them tells you everything.
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Two were expelled.
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One had already graduated, so he was barred from campus for three years, and two were suspended.
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And the rest were ordered not to contact her, sent to training on things like bystander intervention and assigned reflection papers.
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Reflection papers.
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For a night that ended with a former student telling a court that she was gang raped.
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Part of that answer was a book report.
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Reflection papers, folks.
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For a night that ended with a former student telling a court she was gang raped, part of the answer was a book report.
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Only academia could be that stupid.
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And to be clear, that school's panel didn't find all seven responsible for assault.
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But whatever any one of them did or didn't do, every single consequence landed on an individual.
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The only thing that ever happened to the group was the chapter getting shut down after the fact.
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After the fact doesn't stop anything.
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After the fact is just a press release with letterhead.
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Now, I'm not the only one who noticed the new ban has a problem.
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A writer named Grace Russo Bilaro at La Vache de New York, a small publication, wrote about Cornell's party ban the day after it came out, and her headline called it too little, too late, and too easy to evade.
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Duh.
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Her point, which is true, is that the ban goes after where the parties happen, not who's throwing them.
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And the last time Cornell tried it in 2022, most of the fraternities just moved their parties off campus.
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So you didn't stop the party.
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You moved it from a house with an advisor and a fire marshal to an apartment with a futon and a landlord who's moved to Florida.
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That's not a safety policy, that's a change of venue.
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And then she writes a line I'd frame and hang in the president's office.
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She says, the measure of success will not be how many parties Cornell cancels.
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Yes, and I think she's exactly right.
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But watch where she goes from there.
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Her answer is that Cornell has disciplinary tools that reach beyond fraternity problems, and it ought to use them to chase the parties wherever they go.
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So the fix is more administrators chasing more parties into more apartments on a Saturday night in Ithaca in February.
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I would love to meet the associate dean who signs up for that shift.
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She got all the way to go after the people, not the place.
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And then she handed the whole job right back to the principal's office?
00:16:00.080 --> 00:16:04.080
The step she doesn't take is to make the house itself the thing that's at risk.
00:16:04.240 --> 00:16:07.120
So the guys throwing the party have a reason to police it themselves.
00:16:07.279 --> 00:16:12.159
And Cornell isn't just having a bad year because the same movie played this month in Tucson.
00:16:12.480 --> 00:16:23.039
Back in August, the president of the University of Arizona sat down with the fraternity presidents and told them the university would not tolerate any more violations that put students in harm's way.
00:16:23.200 --> 00:16:31.919
By the beginning of October, the Dean of Students' Office had so many misconduct reports involving nearly half of its 21 fraternities that it couldn't keep up with the caseload.
00:16:32.080 --> 00:16:40.240
So on October 5th, the university suspended all 21, every single house at once, and within the week, 16 of them were back.
00:16:40.399 --> 00:16:49.679
The five that stayed out aren't out there for loud music, and one of them, a student, was reportedly assaulted and ended up in the hospital, and nobody from the house called the police or an ambulance.
00:16:49.919 --> 00:16:54.080
Another is accused of hazing new members with forced drinking and live goldfish.
00:16:54.240 --> 00:16:56.080
Live goldfish, ladies and gentlemen.
00:16:56.240 --> 00:16:59.840
I guess the goldfish didn't get a reflection paper either.
00:17:00.240 --> 00:17:09.039
One house, Sigmify Epsilon, was accused of sleep deprivation, forced drinking, forced calisthenics, illegal drug use, and kidnapping.
00:17:09.200 --> 00:17:15.440
Kidnapping, and the punishment was probation until the end of May next year and a fine of just under$4,000.
00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:20.480
Split that across a house full of guys paying dues, and it's less than a night out.
00:17:20.559 --> 00:17:22.319
That's not a fine, that's a cover charge.
00:17:22.480 --> 00:17:29.519
And when it was all over, the university put out a statement saying it will not tolerate further violations that put students in harm's way.
00:17:29.680 --> 00:17:33.920
That's word for word what they told those fraternity presidents back in August.
00:17:34.079 --> 00:17:40.480
So I gently point out that they did, in fact, tolerate it for six weeks, and then they put out the same sentence again.
00:17:40.640 --> 00:17:42.240
But I'll give Arizona this much.
00:17:42.400 --> 00:17:44.319
The sort at the end was right.
00:17:44.559 --> 00:17:51.759
The 16 houses without a bad record came back, and the five with a record stayed out, and in my opinion, that's exactly how this ought to work.
00:17:51.920 --> 00:17:59.440
The problem is it took a crisis, which was a dean's office drowning in paperwork, and a blanket suspension of every house on campus to get there.
00:17:59.599 --> 00:18:01.920
The dean can't be in every house at two in the morning.
00:18:02.079 --> 00:18:03.920
You know who is in every house at two in the morning?
00:18:04.160 --> 00:18:05.519
The guys who lived there.
00:18:05.680 --> 00:18:20.640
And before anyone tells me this is a handful of bad headlines, last year Cornell surveyed its own students, and more than one in three undergraduate women said they had experienced non-consensual sexual contact involving force or incapacitation since they got to campus.
00:18:20.799 --> 00:18:26.480
That number covers the whole campus, not just the fraternities, but it tells you what's at stake when everyone shrugs.
00:18:26.720 --> 00:18:39.839
And the Chronicle of Higher Education has reported on a statistic that more than half of campus sexual assaults happen between the start of the fall semester and Thanksgiving break, which means we're sitting right in the middle of that window as I'm saying this to you.
00:18:40.079 --> 00:18:42.640
And there's a number that tells you the fix is possible.
00:18:42.799 --> 00:18:55.200
A study from 2019 surveyed more than 12,000 college men across 49 schools, and nearly half of the alcohol-involved sexual assaults those men reported were committed by the guys who admitted to 10 or more of them.
00:18:55.440 --> 00:18:58.079
So think about what that means in a house of 50 guys.
00:18:58.319 --> 00:19:00.880
The problem isn't 50 guys, it's one or two.
00:19:01.039 --> 00:19:03.200
And the other 48 guys know exactly who they are.
00:19:03.279 --> 00:19:04.720
A lot of them already have girlfriends.
00:19:04.880 --> 00:19:06.400
They don't get involved in this stuff.
00:19:06.559 --> 00:19:12.319
They know which party he works, they know who he leaves with, and they know which girl stopped coming around after.
00:19:12.480 --> 00:19:15.680
Remember that house in Arizona where no one called the police or an ambulance?
00:19:15.920 --> 00:19:19.200
That wasn't a bunch of guys who didn't know what was going on, of course not.
00:19:19.359 --> 00:19:24.480
That was a bunch of guys who knew exactly what was going on and did the math on what it would cost them to pick up the phone.
00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:31.839
And right now the math says protect the brother because calling for help puts the house in the newspaper and keeping quiet keeps it out.
00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:35.440
I want to change the math so the phone call is the thing that saves the house.
00:19:35.599 --> 00:19:38.720
And I believe in legislating from the rule and not the exception.
00:19:38.880 --> 00:19:41.839
And most of these houses are full of great, decent kids.
00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:46.079
But when the exception starts looking like a rule, you need to put guardrails.
00:19:46.319 --> 00:19:47.519
That's what guardrails are for.
00:19:47.680 --> 00:19:51.359
And someone's gonna tell me this whole pizza party idea is cute, but childish.
00:19:51.440 --> 00:19:54.079
You can't run grown men like a sixth-grade classroom.
00:19:54.240 --> 00:20:01.279
Funny you should say that, because the most useful thing I read all week came from someone who'd probably agree with that and doesn't like me very much.
00:20:01.440 --> 00:20:05.680
That slate piece, ban all frats, was written by Susan Matthews.
00:20:05.839 --> 00:20:08.559
She went to Dartmouth and pledged a sorority there.
00:20:08.720 --> 00:20:11.680
So she's not some outsider throwing rocks at the house from the street.
00:20:11.839 --> 00:20:16.319
She was in it, she saw it, and I believe every word about what she says she saw.
00:20:16.480 --> 00:20:24.480
Her argument is that Greek life, the way it exists at most colleges, empowers men and harms women, and that there's really no reason for a fraternity to exist.
00:20:24.640 --> 00:20:28.480
Her fix is to ban them or at the very least, force them to go co-ed.
00:20:28.720 --> 00:20:33.039
And while she's at it, she wants college presidents pushing to lower the drinking age to 18.
00:20:33.279 --> 00:20:34.640
This woman is nuts.
00:20:34.880 --> 00:20:36.079
Let me get this straight.
00:20:36.240 --> 00:20:39.279
The fraternities are a disaster because of the drinking.
00:20:39.440 --> 00:20:44.319
So we're gonna shut down the fraternities and hand every freshman in America a legal six-pack.
00:20:44.480 --> 00:20:48.559
I mean, isn't that like fighting a house fire by banning the house and handing out matches?
00:20:48.720 --> 00:20:52.720
But then she tells a story, and I don't think she realizes what she handed me.
00:20:53.119 --> 00:21:00.960
Back when she was at Dartmouth, the police cracked down on underage drinking at the Greek houses, and the houses were looking at fines up to a hundred grand.
00:21:01.359 --> 00:21:06.880
And when a friend of hers talked to the treasurer of his fraternity about it, the treasurer told him a hundred grand would be nothing.
00:21:07.039 --> 00:21:07.759
It's no big deal.
00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:11.119
It's true, these fraternity houses, a lot of them have a lot of money in the coffers.
00:21:11.279 --> 00:21:14.319
$100,000 and the 20-year-old treasurer is shrugging.
00:21:14.480 --> 00:21:15.440
Can you believe that?
00:21:15.599 --> 00:21:20.640
I've met grown men who'd sell a kidney before they'd write that check, and this kid's acting like it's a parking ticket.
00:21:20.799 --> 00:21:23.440
She just proved that money is not the pizza.
00:21:23.680 --> 00:21:30.240
You can find these houses until the cows come home, and some guy in Connecticut with the letters on his golf bag will cover it before his tea time.
00:21:30.319 --> 00:21:39.279
And she proves it a second time without meaning to, because she mentions fraternity's Dartmouth banned for hazing and sexist behavior that came right back to campus with alumni support.
00:21:39.440 --> 00:21:43.440
So the fine didn't scare them and the ban didn't stick, and it gets better.
00:21:43.599 --> 00:21:50.799
Dartmouth's own faculty voted back in 2014 to abolish the entire Greek system, was voted 116 to 13.
00:21:50.960 --> 00:21:52.000
That's not a close vote.
00:21:52.160 --> 00:21:55.680
That's a landslide, and the Greek system at Dartmouth is still there.
00:21:55.839 --> 00:22:00.640
The professors voted to abolish the fraternities, and the fraternities, as far as I can tell, through a Party about it.
00:22:00.799 --> 00:22:10.480
See, what scares a fraternity is losing the house and the letters for good because of its own record with no alumni cavalry riding in over the hill with the checkbook.
00:22:10.640 --> 00:22:11.680
That's the pizza.
00:22:11.839 --> 00:22:15.119
That's the$10 million mansion, and nobody's ever put it on the table.
00:22:15.279 --> 00:22:17.279
So on her diagnosis, I'm with her.
00:22:17.440 --> 00:22:19.519
And on her cure, I think she's dead wrong.
00:22:19.680 --> 00:22:23.279
She saw the mechanism with her own eyes and reached for the torch anyway.
00:22:23.440 --> 00:22:25.920
But making them co-ed misses the whole point.
00:22:26.079 --> 00:22:29.200
Putting women in the house changes the guest list, not the incentive.
00:22:29.359 --> 00:22:34.400
If nobody living in that house has anything to lose, it doesn't matter whose name is on the lease or what genitalia they have.
00:22:34.559 --> 00:22:36.720
Now, I'll give the ban crowd this much.
00:22:36.880 --> 00:22:42.079
Baoduin, up in Maine, phased out its fraternities back in 97 and doesn't regret it.
00:22:42.240 --> 00:22:50.559
But Baoin is a small, tiny college with an endowment the size of a mid-sized country and dorms nicer than my first three apartments.
00:22:50.799 --> 00:22:54.000
Try that at a big university where a third of the kids are Greek.
00:22:54.160 --> 00:23:03.039
When schools started cracking down a few years ago, a growing number of fraternities just cut ties with their universities and kept right on operating with no college oversight at all.
00:23:03.200 --> 00:23:05.920
So the guys didn't go anywhere and the house didn't go anywhere.
00:23:06.079 --> 00:23:09.599
The only thing that went away was the one relationship that could have held them accountable.
00:23:09.759 --> 00:23:11.759
That's the ban crowd's big win.
00:23:11.920 --> 00:23:13.920
They fired the only referee in the building.
00:23:14.079 --> 00:23:20.960
Now let's go back to Cornell, because buried inside that party ban is the best idea anyone had all month, and I don't think the guy who wrote it knows it.
00:23:21.119 --> 00:23:24.640
I swear I could start a business helping these journalists come to the right conclusion.
00:23:24.880 --> 00:23:35.599
When President Michael Kotlikoff announced the ban, he also announced a zero tolerance policy where any fraternity that breaks it gets an immediate emergency suspension of the whole chapter.
00:23:35.839 --> 00:23:36.400
That's it.
00:23:36.559 --> 00:23:37.119
That's it.
00:23:37.359 --> 00:23:39.119
He finally pulled the one lever.
00:23:39.279 --> 00:23:40.480
That's the pizza party.
00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:43.839
That's the whole class losing Friday because of one loud kid.
00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:52.240
One guy throws a party he's not supposed to throw, the whole house pays for it, and all of a sudden, 50 guys are very, very interested in making sure nobody throws that party.
00:23:52.400 --> 00:23:54.160
So why do I only give it a maybe?
00:23:54.319 --> 00:23:57.359
Because he aimed it at every house on campus at the same time.
00:23:57.519 --> 00:24:10.960
He says the suspension buys the school time to figure out whether and how it can safely continue, but in the meantime, every house on that campus is paying for what happened in one of them, on a campus where about a third of the students are in the fraternity or a sorority.
00:24:11.119 --> 00:24:14.559
The clean houses lost their pizza for something the dirty houses did.
00:24:14.720 --> 00:24:19.200
You also should know that there are gay fraternities now and lesbian sororities now.
00:24:19.359 --> 00:24:23.920
So why should they get punished for sexual assaults on campuses when that's not happening?
00:24:24.079 --> 00:24:31.680
That's a teacher canceling recess for the whole school because one kid in one classroom acted up, and the kid who acted up isn't even in the building anymore.
00:24:31.839 --> 00:24:35.440
And we do this all the time in this country without calling it what it is.
00:24:35.680 --> 00:24:44.880
Out in Portland, people were stripping the copper out of electric car chargers, so the chargers went away and everyone got punished, including the single mom who just needed to charge her car to get to work.
00:24:45.039 --> 00:24:48.960
We've punished the bystanders and left alone the people who could have stopped it.
00:24:49.119 --> 00:24:52.960
And then we act like aiming it at a fraternity is some radical new concept.
00:24:53.119 --> 00:24:57.680
Now look, I don't think this Michael Kotlinkoff is a bad guy, the president there.
00:24:57.839 --> 00:25:03.920
He says ending fraternities isn't on the table, and he wants to keep the good parts of Greek life while strengthening accountability.
00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:08.480
And in my opinion, that's the most reasonable thing anyone in charge has said through this whole mess.
00:25:08.640 --> 00:25:10.559
But why don't they implement it?
00:25:10.720 --> 00:25:15.680
I just think he runs a place that only moves when it's embarrassed and he's trying to fix a group problem with a calendar.
00:25:15.839 --> 00:25:19.200
He did the one thing in that letter that gets a straight yes from me, though.
00:25:19.359 --> 00:25:27.440
Crimes reported at Cornell have mostly been investigated by Cornell's own police department, which has real police powers but is run by the university.
00:25:27.519 --> 00:25:32.240
And now he's bringing in investigators from New York State police who don't work for Cornell.
00:25:32.480 --> 00:25:34.640
That matters more than any party ban.
00:25:34.799 --> 00:25:41.839
If you're the university showing off those houses on every campus tour, you are not the one who should be investigating what goes on inside of them.
00:25:41.920 --> 00:25:44.400
That's like letting the restaurant do its own health inspection.
00:25:44.559 --> 00:25:47.119
We checked the kitchen, it's fine, have a breadstick.
00:25:47.279 --> 00:25:50.880
And Arizona built a little pizza party too, and I don't think they even noticed.
00:25:51.039 --> 00:25:55.519
When those 16 fraternities came back, they came back on one condition.
00:25:55.759 --> 00:25:57.519
They had to keep meeting with the dean.
00:25:57.680 --> 00:26:03.680
Every chapter's advisor shows up to every meeting, and if the advisor misses one, the whole chapter loses its good standing.
00:26:03.839 --> 00:26:06.400
One guy doesn't show up, the whole house pays.
00:26:06.559 --> 00:26:11.920
So I promise you, every chapter president in Tucson is texting his advisor at six in the morning.
00:26:12.079 --> 00:26:13.119
Bro, are you up?
00:26:13.279 --> 00:26:15.599
Bro, the meeting, bro, go, go, go.
00:26:15.759 --> 00:26:18.720
Arizona built that mechanism to get a grown man to a meeting on time.
00:26:18.799 --> 00:26:22.880
No one's built it for the two things that hurt people hazing and sexual assault.
00:26:23.119 --> 00:26:25.599
And the reason it works goes deeper than pizza.
00:26:25.839 --> 00:26:29.599
For most of these guys, the fraternity isn't a club, it's who they are.
00:26:29.759 --> 00:26:31.039
They pay dues for it.
00:26:31.119 --> 00:26:33.359
They spend a whole pledge semester earning it.
00:26:33.519 --> 00:26:38.319
Their best friends live down the hall, and the guys who hire them in 10 years are on the alumni list.
00:26:38.480 --> 00:26:40.880
Whether that's objectively worth it doesn't matter.
00:26:41.039 --> 00:26:48.799
To a 20-year-old, 22-year-old, it's the most valuable thing in his life, and people will police each other awfully hard to protect who they are.
00:26:48.960 --> 00:26:51.039
Behavior doesn't change behavior.
00:26:51.359 --> 00:26:53.279
Loss changes behavior.
00:26:53.440 --> 00:26:59.359
The threat of the thing going away is what finally gets 50 guys in a room saying, we have got to fix this.
00:26:59.519 --> 00:27:02.880
And the people who should want this more than anyone are the good chapters.
00:27:03.119 --> 00:27:05.519
Think about my friends from the trailer parks.
00:27:05.680 --> 00:27:07.519
Their houses did everything right.
00:27:07.680 --> 00:27:12.720
And the system we've got treats their house exactly the same as the worst house on campus.
00:27:12.880 --> 00:27:15.599
When Cornell cancels every party, their house pays.
00:27:15.680 --> 00:27:19.279
And when Arizona suspends all 21, their house gets suspended too.
00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:25.759
A strike system protects the good houses because your record is your record and nobody else's record gets put on you.
00:27:25.839 --> 00:27:36.400
If I were the president of a clean chapter anywhere in this country, I'd be the loudest guy in the room asking for this because the alternative is getting suspended every time idiots across the street do something stupid.
00:27:36.559 --> 00:27:41.039
And this isn't some sixth-grade theory I made up in Oregon after walking the cows.
00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:44.000
It's how a lot of America already works.
00:27:44.240 --> 00:27:45.839
Think about your local bar.
00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:54.319
In most of this country, if a bar keeps serving a guy who's obviously drunk and he gets in his car and kills someone, the bar can be on the hook under what we call dram shop laws.
00:27:54.480 --> 00:27:55.920
So what does the bartender do?
00:27:56.079 --> 00:27:57.200
He cuts you off.
00:27:57.359 --> 00:27:58.319
It's not that hard.
00:27:58.480 --> 00:28:08.000
He's never met you, he'll never see you again, and he doesn't care about your feelings or your fantasy football team, and he cuts you off anyways because the bar license is on the line and so is his job.
00:28:08.160 --> 00:28:09.039
And it works.
00:28:09.279 --> 00:28:17.279
The CDC looked at the research on these laws, and the median result across six studies was a drop of about 6% in alcohol-related traffic deaths.
00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:22.160
So for every hundred families who'd have gotten that call in the middle of the night, six don't now.
00:28:22.319 --> 00:28:23.759
Nobody calls that unfair.
00:28:23.920 --> 00:28:28.640
Nobody marches outside the bar yelling that the bar shouldn't have to pay for what one drunk did.
00:28:28.880 --> 00:28:32.559
We all understand that the people closest to the problem are the ones who can stop it.
00:28:32.720 --> 00:28:36.559
Now, this can go wrong too, and the best example comes from college football.
00:28:36.720 --> 00:28:43.279
In 1987, the NCAA hit Southern Methodist University with what everyone called the death penalty.
00:28:43.440 --> 00:28:46.799
SMU had a slush fund paying players going back to the early 70s.
00:28:46.880 --> 00:28:51.359
The administrators knew all about it, and the NCAA canceled their entire football season.
00:28:51.519 --> 00:28:55.200
It was so catastrophic that the NCAA has barely touched it since.
00:28:55.359 --> 00:29:01.200
Dozens of schools have been eligible for it, and it's been used twice, both times on small programs.
00:29:01.359 --> 00:29:04.559
A former university president compared it to a nuclear bomb.
00:29:04.720 --> 00:29:09.839
A lever that big never gets pulled, and a lever that never gets pulled doesn't scare anyone.
00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:12.160
That's exactly what's wrong with banning fraternities.
00:29:12.240 --> 00:29:13.599
It's the nuclear option.
00:29:13.839 --> 00:29:16.240
Everybody talks about it, nobody ever does it.
00:29:16.400 --> 00:29:20.160
And when somebody finally tries, the alumni bring the houses back anyway.
00:29:20.319 --> 00:29:27.119
What works is a lever that's small enough to use and that gets bigger every time you make it necessary, which is why you build in strikes.
00:29:27.279 --> 00:29:32.640
And if you put the whole house on the line, the brother who speaks up has to be protected, not blamed for losing the house.
00:29:32.799 --> 00:29:39.599
The national fraternities already have good Samaritan policies, so a kid can call 911 for a drunk friend without getting in trouble.
00:29:39.759 --> 00:29:47.599
Extend that to the brother who reports a hazing or an assault, and the guy who taps his buddy on the shoulder becomes the hero of that story instead of the snitch.
00:29:47.759 --> 00:29:50.720
I'd say the exact thing about police departments, by the way.
00:29:50.880 --> 00:29:59.519
The thin blue line is a brotherhood, and it works just like a fraternity house, where that loyalty protects the bad cop right up until the department has something to lose.
00:29:59.759 --> 00:30:02.720
Give the good cops a reason to turn in the bad one, and they will.
00:30:02.960 --> 00:30:04.880
I know a pizza party sounds juvenile.
00:30:05.039 --> 00:30:06.640
You know what else sounds juvenile?
00:30:06.799 --> 00:30:14.880
A story on my desk every week about members of adult organizations who can't keep their hands to themselves or can't stop bullying the new kid.
00:30:15.039 --> 00:30:17.920
So if you're gonna act like children, you're gonna get child rules.
00:30:18.079 --> 00:30:23.200
And they're not even child rules, they're bar rules, and we already apply them to every tavern in America.
00:30:23.440 --> 00:30:25.599
The sixth graders handled it better anyways.
00:30:25.759 --> 00:30:29.599
We had one rule and a box of pizza, and we had it figured out by Wednesday.
00:30:29.759 --> 00:30:36.640
These guys have lawyers, a trade association, a national headquarters, and an insurance company, and they still can't get past the first week.
00:30:36.799 --> 00:30:40.160
And we don't need a new law to do this, and we don't need a new agency.
00:30:40.400 --> 00:30:43.759
Washington already built all the plumbing, which might be a first.
00:30:43.839 --> 00:30:45.279
It's just hooked up backwards.
00:30:45.519 --> 00:30:46.880
Start with the scoreboard.
00:30:47.039 --> 00:30:57.759
At the end of 2024, President Biden signed something called the Stop Campus Hazing Act, which passed with support from both parties and from both the fraternity industry itself.
00:30:57.920 --> 00:31:01.519
Both parties agreed on something, so you know it's either very important or very boring.
00:31:01.680 --> 00:31:15.519
That law now requires every college in this country that takes federal money to publish a hazing transparency report listing hazing findings by student organization, and starting this year, hazing numbers go into the annual campus safety report.
00:31:15.680 --> 00:31:17.680
So the tally already exists.
00:31:17.839 --> 00:31:22.480
Every school is already counting hazing, and nobody has tied a single thing to the count.
00:31:22.640 --> 00:31:24.799
We built the scoreboard and forgot to play the game.
00:31:24.960 --> 00:31:31.839
And it doesn't just cover fraternities, it covers clubs, sports teams, bands, even student government, any student organization at all.
00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:34.720
So when someone says I'm picking on the frat boys, I'm not.
00:31:34.880 --> 00:31:40.160
If the marching band starts hazing the freshmen, the marching band goes on the same scorecard, tuba and all.
00:31:40.319 --> 00:31:46.880
When the hazing law passed, the head of the National Fraternity Trade Group, uh Judson Horas, praised it.
00:31:46.960 --> 00:31:50.079
He said it would bring transparency to make lasting cultural change.
00:31:50.240 --> 00:31:53.519
I'm with you, Judson, but we gotta take that one step further.
00:31:53.680 --> 00:31:58.480
Transparency is a scoreboard, and nobody ever started playing defense because somebody put up a scoreboard.
00:31:58.640 --> 00:32:00.880
They play defense because they can lose.
00:32:01.039 --> 00:32:04.960
We have to hook something to that scoreboard, and then you'll get your cultural change.
00:32:05.119 --> 00:32:06.480
Then there's Pennsylvania.
00:32:06.640 --> 00:32:14.400
After a 19-year-old named Timothy, Timothy Piazza died following a hazing ritual at Penn State, the state passed a law in his name.
00:32:14.559 --> 00:32:20.240
Under that law, the organization itself can be fined for hazing, not just the kids, and the college can be fined too.
00:32:20.400 --> 00:32:29.039
So the idea that the group answers for the group is already the law in one of the biggest states in the country, and nobody laughed it out of Harrisburg, but then Pennsylvania lost its nerve.
00:32:29.200 --> 00:32:35.039
The fines on colleges top out at$5,000 for hazing and$15,000 for the worst kind.
00:32:35.279 --> 00:32:36.160
$15,000?
00:32:36.319 --> 00:32:39.680
Remember the Dartmouth treasurer who shrugged at$100,000?
00:32:39.839 --> 00:32:43.839
$15,000 to a major university is what falls out of the athletic director's couch.
00:32:44.160 --> 00:32:49.279
Pennsylvania got the idea exactly right and then picked the one punishment nobody on earth is afraid of money.
00:32:49.440 --> 00:32:51.279
And the fraternities have their own rule book.
00:32:51.440 --> 00:33:01.039
Their national trade group, the North American Interfraternity Conference, makes every member fraternity keep policies on hazing, sexual abuse, and alcohol.
00:33:01.119 --> 00:33:08.319
And then, right there in the same standards, it says the chapters are self-governing and the national doesn't supervise them day to day.
00:33:08.559 --> 00:33:15.839
Yeah, self-governing with nothing at stake, folks, self-governing with nothing at stake is just ungoverned with better stationery.
00:33:16.000 --> 00:33:18.079
And then there's the money, and this is where I get mad.
00:33:18.240 --> 00:33:23.759
A few years ago, Investigate TV dug into how the national fraternities handle insurance.
00:33:24.000 --> 00:33:29.839
Most of them are insured through companies they own or have a stake in, and the undergraduates pay for it through their dues.
00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:39.839
Chapters pour a million dollars or more into some of these national policies, and one national had nearly$20 million in assets built mostly from those premiums.
00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:45.119
But those policies exclude any members involving hazing, alcohol abuse, or sexual abuse.
00:33:45.359 --> 00:33:46.799
Hold on, read that again.
00:33:47.039 --> 00:33:54.960
The insurance of fraternity cells to fraternity kids excludes, excludes hazing, drinking, and sexual misconduct.
00:33:55.119 --> 00:33:57.359
That's flood insurance that doesn't cover water.
00:33:57.440 --> 00:34:00.319
That's a fire extinguisher that says not for fires.
00:34:01.359 --> 00:34:07.200
A former executive director of one of these national fraternities calls it meaningless insurance, and he would know.
00:34:07.279 --> 00:34:14.960
A lawyer who spent years suing fraternities for hazing families told those reporters the whole arrangement is a charade to dodge liability.
00:34:15.119 --> 00:34:16.559
And here's where the bill lands.
00:34:16.719 --> 00:34:22.960
In one hazing case, those reporters looked at part of the settlement was paid out of the member's own homeowners' policies.
00:34:23.119 --> 00:34:26.400
So the kid pays premiums to the national through his dues.
00:34:26.559 --> 00:34:28.000
Something terrible happens.
00:34:28.239 --> 00:34:34.079
The national's insurance doesn't cover it, and the bill ends up on his mom and dad's homeowner's policy back home.
00:34:34.320 --> 00:34:36.079
Think about that, moms and dads.
00:34:36.239 --> 00:34:46.239
You paid the dues, you paid the tuition, and if something goes wrong in that house, the national's got 20 million in the bank and you've got the bill on your kitchen table through your homeowner's insurance.
00:34:46.400 --> 00:34:47.679
The money's already there.
00:34:47.840 --> 00:34:52.480
It's just protecting the headquarters from the chapters instead of protecting the victims from the chapters.
00:34:52.639 --> 00:34:58.000
The person who gets closest to fixing this is a guy who's been inside the machine, Anthony Haddad.
00:34:58.320 --> 00:35:01.360
He's a columnist at GV Wire out in Fresno.
00:35:01.599 --> 00:35:09.119
And before that, he spent years working in an international fraternity, starting chapters, recruiting guys, advising them, and enforcing the discipline.
00:35:09.280 --> 00:35:11.199
So this isn't a guy throwing rocks.
00:35:11.280 --> 00:35:14.239
He's the guy who used to sweep up the rocks after the party.
00:35:14.400 --> 00:35:21.920
His column ran last week, right as the calls to ban Greek life were getting loud under a headline saying banning fraternities won't end the problems.
00:35:22.079 --> 00:35:24.960
And his first argument is the one I've been making all hour.
00:35:25.119 --> 00:35:28.159
When a school brands fraternities, the fraternity doesn't disappear.
00:35:28.239 --> 00:35:31.280
It goes underground and the school loses whatever control it had.
00:35:31.440 --> 00:35:39.920
Then he says he wants independent investigators with the national headquarters helping them pay, and chapter leadership and headquarters both answering for their failures.
00:35:40.079 --> 00:35:47.920
He even points out that fraternities are businesses, and if headquarters take the money when a chapter grows, it doesn't get to walk away when that chapter fails.
00:35:48.159 --> 00:35:50.000
Yes, yes, and yes.
00:35:50.320 --> 00:35:50.960
Thank you.
00:35:51.199 --> 00:35:53.840
He's naming the chapter the national and the money.
00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:57.119
That's my whole plan, sitting right there in his hand, and I'm getting excited.
00:35:57.280 --> 00:35:58.559
And then he lands the plane.
00:35:58.719 --> 00:36:03.679
He says keeping Greek life means demanding far more from people responsible for running it.
00:36:03.920 --> 00:36:05.440
See what he just did there, folks?
00:36:05.599 --> 00:36:07.679
The people responsible for running it.
00:36:07.840 --> 00:36:10.400
That's the administrators and the headquarters staff.
00:36:10.559 --> 00:36:11.760
That's the principal's office.
00:36:11.920 --> 00:36:17.280
Again, after 150 years of the principal's office, a big finishes a stricter principle?
00:36:18.079 --> 00:36:22.639
Everything he wrote before that sentence points at the house.
00:36:22.800 --> 00:36:26.320
And in the last line, he turns around and hands it back to the grown-ups.
00:36:26.480 --> 00:36:28.719
The answer isn't demanding more from the people running it.
00:36:28.880 --> 00:36:34.079
The answer is making the consequence automatic so the 50 guys living in the house become the people running it.
00:36:34.159 --> 00:36:40.880
And to his credit, he says the answer can't be more mandatory online training that kids click through while they're scrolling TikTok, and I loved that.
00:36:41.039 --> 00:36:42.719
Remember the reflection papers?
00:36:42.880 --> 00:36:50.159
A training module and a reflection paper are both ways of punishing one kid with homework, and nobody has ever lost a house over a module.
00:36:50.320 --> 00:36:52.239
He wasn't the only one who stumbled on it either.
00:36:52.400 --> 00:37:00.079
When Cornell announced its party ban, one of the people who pushed back was Andrew Mittenberg, the lawyer for one of the men accused in that lawsuit.
00:37:00.400 --> 00:37:08.079
According to the Associated Press, his complaint was that universities promote Greek social life and then distance themselves from it when something goes wrong.
00:37:08.239 --> 00:37:08.880
That's true.
00:37:09.039 --> 00:37:10.960
Now he's saying that to defend his client.
00:37:11.039 --> 00:37:15.599
I'm not taking sides in his case, but on the universities, he's dead right.
00:37:15.760 --> 00:37:18.320
They put those houses in every brochure.
00:37:18.480 --> 00:37:24.480
They walk every tour group past them on a sunny day, and the second there's a lawsuit, it's we don't control them.
00:37:24.639 --> 00:37:26.719
The universities want group status too.
00:37:26.800 --> 00:37:28.559
They need to group govern too.
00:37:28.800 --> 00:37:36.639
The plan is three layers, and every one of them is to make the layer underneath it police itself, so the consequence flows up and the accountability flows down.
00:37:36.800 --> 00:37:38.239
Layer one is the chapter.
00:37:38.320 --> 00:37:42.320
You take the hazing report, the federal government already makes every school publish.
00:37:42.480 --> 00:37:49.360
You count the findings against each house, and only two things count, which you already know: hazing and sexual misconduct.
00:37:49.519 --> 00:37:51.440
Not the parties and not the noise complaints.
00:37:51.599 --> 00:37:53.760
Get enough of those findings in a set period of time.
00:37:54.000 --> 00:37:54.719
Charter's gone.
00:37:54.880 --> 00:37:55.840
Is it three strikes?
00:37:55.920 --> 00:37:56.320
I don't know.
00:37:56.400 --> 00:37:57.920
Maybe it's five, and maybe it's ten.
00:37:58.320 --> 00:38:00.559
People a lot smarter than me can set the number.
00:38:00.719 --> 00:38:04.880
What matters is that there's a lever to pull when the trend line keeps going the wrong way.
00:38:05.039 --> 00:38:07.119
And a strike isn't an accusation.
00:38:07.280 --> 00:38:12.880
It's a finding after an investigation by investigators who don't work for the house and don't work for the university.
00:38:13.039 --> 00:38:16.480
So a rumor on social media doesn't cost anybody a thing.
00:38:16.639 --> 00:38:18.320
It doesn't have to be forever either.
00:38:18.559 --> 00:38:20.559
Think about the points on your driver's license.
00:38:20.719 --> 00:38:22.320
You get a ticket, you get points.
00:38:22.480 --> 00:38:25.280
And if you keep your nose clean for a while, the points fall off.
00:38:25.519 --> 00:38:28.400
Rack up too many too fast, and you lose the license.
00:38:28.559 --> 00:38:32.079
Everybody in America understands that system, and nobody calls it tyranny.
00:38:32.239 --> 00:38:34.639
They call it the DMV, which is probably worse.
00:38:34.800 --> 00:38:39.360
A house that turns in its own problem should get treated better than a house that got caught hiding one.
00:38:39.519 --> 00:38:42.159
You want the phone call to be the thing that saves the house.
00:38:42.400 --> 00:38:49.440
Once the house is on the line, those 48 guys know exactly who the problem is and have every reason in the world to deal with him.
00:38:49.679 --> 00:38:51.440
You don't need more cops on campus.
00:38:51.599 --> 00:38:53.280
The brothers become the cops.
00:38:53.440 --> 00:38:55.039
Layer two is the university.
00:38:55.199 --> 00:39:04.960
If a school's chapter keeps going down and the number keeps climbing, the school loses its rights to police itself through the creditors it already answers to and the federal money it already takes.
00:39:05.119 --> 00:39:06.480
That's not a power grab.
00:39:06.559 --> 00:39:08.480
It's the Voting Rights Act principle.
00:39:08.719 --> 00:39:12.800
When some states proved they wouldn't run clean elections, Washington, D.C.
00:39:12.960 --> 00:39:13.679
took the wheel.
00:39:13.840 --> 00:39:16.079
You govern yourself until you prove you can't.
00:39:16.239 --> 00:39:17.840
Layer three is the national.
00:39:18.000 --> 00:39:28.000
You take that insurance money they're already collecting and flip it around so the pool pays for independent investigations and makes the victims whole instead of excluding everyone who ever did anything wrong.
00:39:28.159 --> 00:39:32.400
And then every chapter's premium goes up and down with every other chapter's record.
00:39:32.639 --> 00:39:36.800
So one bad chapter at one school raises the bill for every chapter in the country.
00:39:36.960 --> 00:39:40.880
All of a sudden, the national doesn't need a regulator because it becomes its own regulator.
00:39:41.039 --> 00:39:47.360
The bad chapter in Arizona is now costing the good chapter in Ohio real money, and trust me, Ohio will make a phone call.
00:39:47.519 --> 00:39:49.519
If that sounds complicated, it isn't.
00:39:49.679 --> 00:39:51.519
It's how the FDIC works.
00:39:51.760 --> 00:39:57.360
Every bank in the country pays into the fund that protects your savings account, and the riskier banks pay more.
00:39:57.519 --> 00:39:59.039
Nobody had to invent anything.
00:39:59.199 --> 00:40:01.599
We just never thought to do it with fraternities.
00:40:01.760 --> 00:40:06.400
And it's important that that insurance has to cover everything that potentially happens in that house.
00:40:06.559 --> 00:40:08.719
Insurance is for covering risk.
00:40:08.880 --> 00:40:10.400
Those are massive risks.
00:40:10.559 --> 00:40:11.760
They don't get a carve out.
00:40:11.920 --> 00:40:17.760
And if the findings keep showing up across one national, campus after campus, the national loses its charter everywhere.
00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:22.320
The second they have to pay for their own investigations is the second the behavior stops.
00:40:22.559 --> 00:40:23.280
I promise.
00:40:23.440 --> 00:40:26.079
Right now the taxpayer in the university eat that cost.
00:40:26.239 --> 00:40:29.039
Flip it and watch how fast the house fixes itself.
00:40:29.280 --> 00:40:31.519
And the trigger for all of it is the federal money.
00:40:31.599 --> 00:40:33.760
If you take it, the standard applies.
00:40:34.559 --> 00:40:38.159
Now, somebody's going to say you can't punish a whole group for what one guy did.
00:40:38.320 --> 00:40:42.000
But guys, a chapter isn't a bunch of strangers waiting at a bus stop.
00:40:42.159 --> 00:40:43.440
It picked its own members.
00:40:43.519 --> 00:40:44.480
It voted them in.
00:40:44.559 --> 00:40:47.119
It put its letters on them and it vouched for them.
00:40:47.280 --> 00:40:50.800
And the charter isn't a right, it's a privilege, like a liquor license.
00:40:50.960 --> 00:40:55.599
Nobody gets a jury trial before the state pulls a bar's license for serving minors.
00:40:55.760 --> 00:41:02.000
The accused guy still gets his day in court and his hearing at school, and nothing here takes a single right away from a single person.
00:41:02.159 --> 00:41:04.639
The good guys in that house hold every card.
00:41:04.800 --> 00:41:07.199
Turn him in, get him out, and the house is fine.
00:41:07.360 --> 00:41:12.000
The only way the good guys lose the house is if they decide he's worth more than the whole house is.
00:41:12.159 --> 00:41:15.199
Somebody else is gonna say, what about false complaints?
00:41:15.440 --> 00:41:15.840
Sure.
00:41:16.079 --> 00:41:22.400
A handful of people have abused the system, but there's no army out there filing fake reports to ruin fraternity boys.
00:41:22.480 --> 00:41:30.000
And if it ever got that easy to file a false one and wreck somebody's life, that would be a broken incentive too, and I'd fix it the same way by making it cost something.
00:41:30.159 --> 00:41:36.719
And then somebody's going to ask the clever one, who decides what counts as a strike and who screens the complaints and what's the threshold?
00:41:36.880 --> 00:41:44.079
Those are real questions, and they're exactly the questions the people we pay already out of our tax dollars to solve should be answering.
00:41:44.239 --> 00:41:46.000
I'm not here to write the bylaws.
00:41:46.079 --> 00:41:48.400
I'm here to tell you that the lever should exist.
00:41:48.559 --> 00:41:56.559
And when people start fighting with me about the details, I take that as a good sign because nobody argues about where to put the thermostat in the house they don't think should be built.
00:41:56.719 --> 00:42:02.400
And for my conservative friends getting nervous right now, this is the most conservative idea in the whole conversation.
00:42:02.559 --> 00:42:07.039
It's personal responsibility applied to a group that chose to be a group.
00:42:07.199 --> 00:42:16.639
No new agency, no new bureaucrats, and not a dime of new taxpayer money because the cost of the investigations comes off the taxpayer and lands on the people causing the problem.
00:42:16.880 --> 00:42:25.280
The usual answer from one side is a new office with a new director, a new budget and a new logo, and the lazy answer from the other side is to do nothing and call it freedom.
00:42:25.440 --> 00:42:27.679
I'm not anti-regulation, I'm pro-results.
00:42:27.760 --> 00:42:31.840
And the result I want is 50 guys who'd rather turn a bad apple than lose the barrel.
00:42:31.920 --> 00:42:36.719
And part of common sense is that you try it, and if it doesn't work, you peel it back and try something else, too.
00:42:36.880 --> 00:42:38.320
It's better than nothing, right?
00:42:38.480 --> 00:42:39.599
That's what I'm here for.
00:42:39.760 --> 00:42:40.559
Try something.
00:42:40.719 --> 00:42:43.360
Anything is better than this false choice we're being presented with.
00:42:43.599 --> 00:42:49.360
So, folks, I asked whether you'd bet your own money that banning fraternities with lower sexual assaults on compasses.
00:42:49.519 --> 00:42:50.000
I wouldn't.
00:42:50.079 --> 00:42:52.559
And after everything we've walked through, I don't think you would either.
00:42:52.800 --> 00:42:59.119
A ban gets rid of the address and the behavior packs a bag and moves three blocks away to a place where nobody has anything left to lose.
00:42:59.280 --> 00:43:00.960
And I'll tell you what I would bet on.
00:43:01.039 --> 00:43:04.559
I'd bet on 50 guys who really, really want to keep their house.
00:43:04.719 --> 00:43:09.039
I'd bet on the kid in the next desk who wants that pizza as bad as I do.
00:43:09.280 --> 00:43:12.719
And I'd bet on the brother who finally has a reason to pick up the phone.
00:43:12.880 --> 00:43:22.800
And somebody needs to make that bet fast because we're in the stretch between move-in day and Thanksgiving right now and somewhere tonight, there's a freshman walking up the steps of a house for the first time.
00:43:23.039 --> 00:43:28.159
I want every guy inside that house to have a reason to look out for her, not to look out for their buddy.
00:43:28.320 --> 00:43:29.199
That's all this is.
00:43:29.360 --> 00:43:30.800
It's not a new agency, folks.
00:43:30.960 --> 00:43:33.519
It's not a new law, and it's not a war on Greek life.
00:43:33.679 --> 00:43:38.400
It's taking the loyalty that already lives inside those houses and pointing it at the right thing.
00:43:38.559 --> 00:43:41.360
They want group status, so they need to group govern.
00:43:41.519 --> 00:43:45.360
And the universities that put those houses in every brochure need to group govern too.
00:43:45.519 --> 00:43:47.360
And you don't have to wait for any of them.
00:43:47.519 --> 00:43:54.719
If you've got a kid in college or a kid heading there next fall, ask the school one question in orientation, right there in the gym with the folding chairs.
00:43:54.880 --> 00:43:56.719
What happens to a house that gets caught?
00:43:56.800 --> 00:43:58.480
Not the guy, the house.
00:43:58.719 --> 00:44:04.159
If the answer is a task force, a training module, a serious look, you've got your answer.
00:44:04.320 --> 00:44:08.159
And to the folks already typing in the comments, don't grab the specifics.
00:44:08.239 --> 00:44:12.480
Don't walk out of here saying Chad Law wants every house shut down after three strikes.
00:44:12.719 --> 00:44:15.840
Three strikes is an example, and the number is a dial.
00:44:16.000 --> 00:44:22.880
The principle is this: groups should police their own, and there has to be a lever for when they don't.
00:44:23.119 --> 00:44:26.400
That's a sentence you can say at the dinner table, ladies and gentlemen.
00:44:26.559 --> 00:44:31.519
Say it to your kid, and say it to your brother-in-law who was in a frat and is about to be very mad at me.
00:44:31.679 --> 00:44:36.159
And to the university presidents, the trustees, the national headquarters, and the legislators.
00:44:36.320 --> 00:44:40.159
I'm a guy with a show working this out of a place in Oregon.
00:44:40.239 --> 00:44:42.639
You're the one with the budgets, the staff, and the titles.
00:44:42.719 --> 00:44:47.440
You already have the scoreboard, you already have the insurance money, and you already have the federal dollars.
00:44:47.679 --> 00:44:50.159
Every piece of this is sitting on your desk.
00:44:50.400 --> 00:44:51.599
Pick it up.
00:44:51.920 --> 00:44:57.119
Folks, I'm Chad Law, the last gay conservative with a face for radio in a video decade.
00:44:57.280 --> 00:45:01.199
If you think I got this dead wrong, text 252 Chad Law and tell me.
00:45:01.280 --> 00:45:03.679
Everything I do is at Chadparkerlaw.com.
00:45:03.840 --> 00:45:05.599
Sign up for the gaily news while you're there.
00:45:05.679 --> 00:45:11.119
It's free twice a day, and I go through the best stories out there and verify vet and validate them so you don't have to.
00:45:11.280 --> 00:45:12.559
And pick up my books.
00:45:12.800 --> 00:45:18.480
The free common sense conservative manifesto, the price of progress, the velvet monopoly, or the cost of certainty.
00:45:18.639 --> 00:45:26.159
And if you want the short version of this to send to that brother-in-law, I put out Chad's ADHD notes on Substack for every episode.
00:45:26.239 --> 00:45:31.679
A condensed briefing for those of us who want the argument without another 45 minutes of political theater.
00:45:32.000 --> 00:45:33.360
And Carol, thank you.
00:45:33.519 --> 00:45:35.519
You didn't have a task force or a consultant.
00:45:35.599 --> 00:45:40.079
You had a room full of sixth graders, one kid who would not stop talking, and a stack of pizza boxes.
00:45:40.159 --> 00:45:44.639
And you figured out in about a week what this country hasn't figured out in 150 years.
00:45:44.800 --> 00:45:48.400
Look, guys, we pay people a lot of money to figure out the details of this.
00:45:48.559 --> 00:45:50.880
These politicians that come out of your check every week.
00:45:51.119 --> 00:45:55.039
My job, what I'm trying to give you, is the framework, the mentality, and the how.
00:45:55.119 --> 00:46:03.679
And whether or not you think this is the be all and end all solution, isn't it better to try, fail, and adjust than keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result?
00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:06.960
America, that was common sense.