Those of us who have spent a decade or more working in the
fraternity/sorority industry will all point to 2017 as a watershed year. 2017
changed everything. Five hazing deaths. Dozens of system-wide shutdowns.
Hundreds of closed chapters. If rock bottom is a thing, 2017 was it for the
fraternity and sorority industry. And while 2018 represented a great step in
the right direction (major steps forward in terms of policies around alcohol
and the partnership with the Piazza, Gruver, and Braham families – both major
wins for the NIC), those of us who have been doing this work for a while are
all asking ourselves the same thing.
How did things get so bad?
Don’t get me wrong – we’ve always had our problems. We
didn’t just wake up in 2017 and, out of nowhere, we had all of these new
problems with hazing and alcohol abuse. The problems have always been there,
but in recent years, those issues have become much more acute. Things are worse
than they’ve ever been, and the rise in problematic behavior has spiked in recent
years compared to the relatively stable nature of these problems in the
previous decade.
So, what has occurred in the last 3-5 years to catalyze the
downward spiral in FSL? Below, I offer four interconnected trends that I think
are the most responsible for the challenges we see in FSL today.
Trend 1 – Students’ Developmental Inability to Self-Govern
Much has been written of the post-millennial generation –
both good and bad. While there is still much we don’t know about the group,
they now represent the overwhelming majority of students on most campuses, and an even larger majority of students
in our fraternity/sorority chapters. While the research on Gen Z is mixed and
many of their characteristics remain unclear, one character trait that has
become clear should strike all of us in FSL as particularly problematic – members of Gen Z lack basic confrontation and conflict resolution skills.
Here is what the
research in this area points to - because of their helicopter parents, members
of Gen Z received much less of what psychologists call “unsupervised,
unstructured playtime” during their childhood and adolescent years. Their
parents or other adults were almost always around. As a result, any time
conflict emerged between a group of Gen Z kids, parents would almost inevitably
jump in and resolve the conflict. Because of this, members of Gen Z acquired
much less experience than previous generations resolving conflicts with their
peers.
Now, they show up on campus and join our organizations and
we tell them to “self-govern” and “hold one another accountable” while the
research tells us that they are uniquely unprepared to do either of those
things. Self-governance and peer-to-peer accountability requires navigating
conflict, something that these students are wholly unprepared to do.
This inability to self-govern is one of the primary reasons
that things have gotten worse in the last few years. In the not so distant
past, chapters were much more willing to confront members who engaged in
problematic behavior through both formal and informal systems of accountability
(I’ve written about those two systems
here). Now, those confrontations are few
and far between. Members are much less likely to be called to task for their
problematic behaviors, are much less likely to be punished for any wrong-doing,
and as a result are more and more emboldened to carry out their anti-social
behaviors without any meaningful checks or balances. The pressure to conform to
pro-social group norms is much less pronounced than it was even just a few
years ago, when millennials made up the majority of our chapters.
Trend 2 – Motivation to Join is Becoming Increasingly
Social
Technology has had a tremendous impact on the amount of
information available to would-be consumers of the fraternity and sorority
experience. Again, this is a relatively new change. Ten years ago, before the
onset of social media, the available information related to the
fraternity/sorority experience was limited to a handful of websites, the TV
show “Greek” and a handful of movies. Not anymore. Today, the market is flooded
with websites and social media accounts, many of which promote some of the more
unsavory aspects of the fraternity/sorority experience: Old Row, Total
Frat/Sorority Move and GreekRank, just to name a few. In addition, we’ve seen
increasing national media coverage of the fraternity/sorority industry. Stories
that, only a few years ago, would have been limited to campus or local
newspapers are now viral stories on major national media outlets. Would-be
consumers of the fraternity/sorority experience are bombarded with negative
images and messages about the fraternity/sorority experience – hazing, alcohol
abuse, sexual assault, racism – and are choosing to join us in spite of all
that. Or, as our research at Dyad suggests, they are now choosing to join us
BECAUSE of all that. They are fully aware of the stereotype and the
“problematic” aspects of fraternity/sorority life, and they are signing up for
the experience.
One of the new measures our research team at Dyad Strategies
has developed in the last year captures “motivation to join.” Students are
motivated by a variety of factors – some join for involvement/leadership
opportunities, some join for a home/sense of belonging, others join for
networking opportunities, and others join for the social aspects of the
fraternity/sorority experience. While the data we have gathered thus far is not
longitudinal, they suggest a problematic trend – that students today are very
likely to be joining for social reasons as opposed to leadership, involvement,
or sense of belonging. Over time, we’ve seen tremendous spikes in the last few
years on brother/sisterhood based on the shared social experience. Students are
increasingly prioritizing the social aspects of membership over the other, more
altruistic aspects of the experience.
Why does this matter? Ten years ago, we had a lot more
students in organizations who cared about more than just the party scene. This change causes problems of its own, but it is not solely responsible for our challenges
today. We have always had a certain percentage of members who only cared about,
or at least prioritized, the social aspects of membership. Historically, there
have generally been enough responsible leaders in chapters to keep those
members at bay and to keep things, for the most part, from running off the
rails. But because of the negative publicity and the promulgation of the negative
stereotypes, students who are serious about both leadership and their academic
pursuits and careers after college are becoming increasingly less likely to
join fraternities and sororities. This is magnified by the availability of
other options on campus for those students – living learning communities,
academically focused honor societies, and student programming boards are all
thriving on campuses where only a decade ago, Greek Life was the only
leadership game in town. For many students, fraternity/sorority membership on a
resume’ looks much less glamorous than it did a decade ago. As a result, we
have a smaller percentage of chapter leaders fighting back against the negative
cultures in their chapters. At best, chapter leaders feel completely
overwhelmed by the challenges within their chapters and eventually give up. At
worst, chapter leaders are complicit with the issues and are part of the
problem. This toxic combination – more members motivated by social pursuits, a
dip in leadership quality resulting from less students joining for altruistic
reasons, and the aforementioned lack of confrontation skills – has been a
recipe for disaster.
This problem, on its own, may represent our single greatest
challenge as an industry. Until we are able to address who joins and why they
join, our struggles with social culture will continue.
Trend 3 – Increasing Societal Political Polarization Impacting
FSL
Much has been written about the increasing political
polarization in our society, and the impact that polarization is having on our
relationships, our voting patterns, and digestion of news. What has not been
written about, until now, is how increasing political polarization is impacting
the fraternity/sorority experience. While what I’m about to lay out here is
anecdotal and based purely on my own observations, I believe we will soon have
data to confirm what has been happening for the last few years.
While fraternity and sorority members have historically been
more culturally conservative than their unaffiliated peers, those differences
are becoming more pronounced. Unaffiliated students are increasingly
progressive, and fraternity (and to some extent, sorority) members are
increasingly conservative. Even within the fraternity/sorority community, there
is less ideological diversity than there was 10 years ago, and chapters are now
more or less divided along ideological lines. Within any given
fraternity/sorority community (excluding culturally-based groups), you’ll see a
handful (approximately 10-15 percent of chapters) in which a majority of members
align left-of-center politically, and a majority of groups that view themselves
as a bulwark against what they perceive to be an increasingly liberal student
body and a biased university administration obsessed with political
correctness and the advancement of a liberal agenda. A majority of IFC fraternities on most
campuses could be best described as MAGA, ultra-conservative counter-cultures
fighting against what they believe is the liberal establishment on their
campuses.
In a zero-sum game where making my opponent suffer is good for me
and my team, this political polarization manifests itself in increasingly
unhealthy ways. Anything that fraternity members perceive to be a product of
liberalism on the other team is met with resistance and skepticism, if not
outright hostility. And some really important things end up getting filtered by
this partisan political lens through which everything is viewed – sexual
assault prevention, diversity and inclusion initiatives, conversations around
masculinity, etc. You name it. If students perceive it to be the product of
doctrinaire liberalism, they will ignore it, resist it, or fight back against
it, especially when
we begin hurling names at them and making them feel like
part of the problem. And because of the increasing political homogeneity within
our organizations, it is increasingly less likely that one of these groups will
have voices of moderation to push back against the MAGA voices in their
chapters. These opinions are increasingly likely to be held in a vacuum where
no one dare challenge the mind guards who dominate the political viewpoints of
the group. And because of the aforementioned deficit of conflict resolution
skills in our chapters, those who disagree with the mind guards will likely do so in silence.
But the political polarization doesn’t stop there. As I’ve
noted before, in the last decade we have seen a significant
shift to the left among student affairs practitioners.
Studies have shown that student affairs
administrators are even more likely than faculty members to describe themselves
as “liberal” or “very liberal.” I think one the greatest challenges in our
industry today is the inability of increasingly liberal fraternity/sorority
advisors to meaningfully connect with, support, and provide meaningful support
for student groups that are culturally much more conservative. In our world of
tribal politics, many FSA’s, particularly younger millennials in the
profession, struggle to build relationships with students and alumni/volunteers
because they come from completely different political tribes. Most
fraternity/sorority advisors are speaking a completely different language than the majority of their students. The disconnect between many advisors and
their communities has never been more pronounced than it is today, and the
problem appears to only be getting worse. As I travel the country and meet
undergraduate students, I meet a lot of chapter leaders who are operating
without any sort of meaningful, trusting relationships with the fraternity/sorority
office on their campuses.
This problem is closely connected to the fourth and final
trend I will discuss.
Trend 4 - The FSL Talent Gap
Some of my colleagues made a lot of hay over the fact that I
had the audacity to suggest, in advance of the AFA Annual Meeting, that our
industry suffers from a talent gap. I do not think it is outlandish to suggest
that, just maybe, we could all be a little better at our jobs. In fact, this
wasn’t even the first time I’ve talked about this issue. A few years ago,
I wrote about the fact that we expect the youngest, lowest-paid and least
experienced people in student affairs to do one of the hardest jobs on campus,
and we scratch our heads and wonder why things are so bad.
When I said that there is a talent gap in FSL, did I mean that we have dumb, untalented people working in our industry? Of course not.What I DID mean is that we have a lot of
young people who lack experience holding many of these critical positions on
our campuses, and that many of our best and brightest leave the field within a
few years.
The talent gap manifests itself in many ways. For example:
- Fraternity/sorority directors (assuming the campus even has a director-level
position for FSL) are the youngest and lowest paid directors in student affairs.
Because of this, a majority of fraternity/sorority professionals leave the
industry within five years.
- Campuses, particularly at Power 5 schools,
routinely fail searches for directors because there are so few people with the
experience and skills necessary to do those jobs who are actually interested in
having those jobs.
- I can count on my two hands the number of
talented, capable people doing this work who have been doing it for 15 years or
more, and even fewer who have been doing it that long on the same campus.
The talent gap in and of itself is not new. But there are a
few aspects of the talent gap that are new, and have only begun manifesting in
the last few years. I’ve already discussed one new feature – the political gulf
between many FSA’s and most of their students. But there is another element of
the talent gap that is even more problematic.
Millennials.
Millennials now make up a majority of the workforce among
fraternity/sorority advisors. And we know that millennials bring to the
workforce a number of traits that most workplaces have not seen
in the past. In particular, two
millennial workplace trends have worked in combination to take a bad situation
in fraternity and sorority life and somehow make it worse.
First, millennials are interested in pursing their passions.
They are altruistic in that they are more motivated by doing work that they
find interesting and meaningful than in just making money. Good, right? However, new research in student affairs by Ardoin, Crandall & Shinn (2018) reveals a gap between what early
career professionals are bringing to student affairs and what senior student affairs
officers expect and need from them. Many young fraternity/sorority advisors are more
interested in doing work that aligns with their passions, regardless of whether
or not that work is needed with their students, whether or not that work is a
priority for their departments/divisions, and whether or not that work makes a
difference in terms of moving the needle related to social culture on campus.
For example, young fraternity/sorority advisors passionate about traditional
gender roles and hypermasculinity are going to try to find ways to work conversations/programs about hypermasculinity into almost everything they
do, regardless of whether or not those conversations are needed, whether or not
students are prepared to listen to the message, and whether or not those
conversations are helping move the needle with regards to the important issues
in their community. While conversations about hypermasculinity (and other
topics) are important, when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem
looks like a nail. Name the topic – hyper-masculinity, social justice, authenticity/vulnerability,
whatever – and many young FSA’s would rather spend a significant amount of their
working hours talking about and doing work involving whatever topic it is that
drives their passion. Then, this trend intersects with the other problematic
trend with millennials in the workforce.
Job-hopping.
Research has shown a very clear trend on this issue –
millennials are much more likely to leave their jobs after a short period of
time than previous generations. In our industry, after pursuing their passions
for a year or two without any tangible results, they jump ship and move on to
what they perceive to be greener pastures, only to continue to be unfulfilled
and – this is the important part – the problems on their campuses get worse and
worse. It is nearly impossible to build meaningful, trusting relationships with
students and stakeholders and then be able to leverage those relationships in
meaningful ways in order to push back against the negative social cultures on
campus in a period of less than two years. So a new FSA comes to campus, spends
a majority of their time doing what they are most interested in doing
regardless of need, quickly grows disillusioned because they feel that they
aren’t making an impact, and then leaves their job within two years. Little
progress is made, and then the campus hires someone new to come in and the
process repeats itself. No continuity, no progress, and no change.
Meanwhile, as we are spinning our wheels with constant staff
turnover, the challenges within the campus social cultures continue to spiral
downward, which inevitably leads to campus professionals pointing their fingers
at national headquarters staff for not doing enough to correct these social
problems. Then things get so bad that campuses institute system-wide shutdowns,
angering students, alumni, and national organizations who see decreasing value
in the support that campuses provide their chapters, further hampering campus
professionals’ ability to build the trusting, meaningful relationships required
to move the needle in a positive direction. Some (not all) national groups and
alumni are increasingly willing to operate chapters unrecognized by their
campuses because they see diminishing value in the support and services that
are attached to campus recognition. Some national organizations feel that, on
many campuses, they can support their chapters from afar better than on-campus
professionals can support them. This leads to a lack of trust within the
profession, which leads to AFA Business Meetings devolving into childish bickering
about who can and cannot hold leadership positions within AFA. All while the social
culture in our communities continues to spiral downward.
Each of these four trends are interconnected. They are
intertwined in complicated ways. Further, we are only beginning to understand
the impact of some of these trends. What will happen when post-millennials
begin entering the workforce? What will happen if national fraternities become
increasingly supportive of independent IFC’s? What will happen when the women’s
groups begin seeing the same behavioral challenges as the men’s groups as the
sorority experience becomes increasingly social (as our research indicates it
already is)? There are many things we do not yet know about these four trends,
how they will morph over the coming years, or what, exactly, should be done
about them.
All of this leads to an obvious question – what can/should
be done about these trends? While space does not allow me to tackle that
question here, I hope to attempt tackle that question in future posts. The
answers are complicated, but a good step forward in finding solutions is having
an accurate description of the problems. That is what I have attempted to lay
out here – an accurate description of what I see as the four intersecting
problems that have led to our current environment. By understanding these four
trends and their consequences, we can begin to work collectively as a field to
find those answers. I look forward to serious conversations with serious people
about the steps that need to be taken as we seek out those answers.