Amherst students are isolated and lonely. Clubs and activities on campus are lackluster compared to other colleges. Amherst should create more significant social groups, especially those established in dedicated spaces. These could foster meaningful connection, as long as we are intentional about how they operate. In other words, Amherst should bring back fraternities.

The word “fraternity” is laden with stereotypical associations — massive alcohol infested ragers, bouncers keeping people out, and hazing where students die of alcohol poisoning. This is not the kind of fraternity we should have at Amherst, or even fraternities open only to men (or sororities only open to women). Think of relatively friendly, open communities, like the Zü co-op at Humphries — it’s a tight-knit and stylized community, albeit requiring an application, that has a recognizable theme, traditions, and a distinct housing option.

Many current student organizations are already exclusive, and people joke that there are “glorified frats” on campus, including varsity sports teams, which are more inaccessible. The athletic recruitment process is wrought with discrimination at almost every level: which schools recruiters go to, which athletes they screen and choose to pamper, and which athletes they finally recruit. Many sports at Amherst are structurally more available to wealthy and white students, such as squash, volleyball, tennis, hockey, and lacrosse. These sports require differentially more resources to access from a young age, which might explain why, according to an Amherst college report on athletics only about 23.5% of students on varsity teams are POC, 4% are low-income, and 3.5% are first-generation, compared to 53% of non-athletes as POC, 31% as low-income, and 20% as first-generation.

Fraternities, on the other hand, would provide a less discriminatory route for a fulfilling social life. While it is true that fraternities have historically been discriminatory, they don’t have to be if we are intentional about what spirits we cultivate and strict about policy enforcement. Fraternities could be regulated and forced to comply with nondiscriminatory or transparent application processes. They could admit people on grounds unaffected by their wealth and privileges afforded to them since they were a child. In fact, instead of requiring exorbitant “dues” from members to participate in the fraternity (a practice that many sports, including club sports, observe), Amherst could pay for or at least subsidize the costs to make fraternities more accessible for low-income students.

Just imagine: a handful more communities sprinkled across campus, maybe on a couple floors of Morris Pratt, or in one of the old fraternity dorms, with their own traditions and themed parties. You might find them right alongside other clubs at the Get Involved Fair in September, encouraging new students to apply. They could be loosely organized around professional interests, or not at all. They could be like the Zü or like some other community theme housing, but not as exclusively based on race or ethnicity like the community housing for Latinx students or Asian students.

People are often quick to dismiss fraternities because of their strong association with sexual assault. This is justified. Amherst originally abolished fraternities for that very reason. If Amherst brings back fraternities, this is absolutely something we should think and be worried about. But has sexual assault gotten less pervasive or severe since fraternities have vanished? Is our current situation, in which unsupervised sports teams act as de-facto fraternities, better? The Board of Trustees have left these questions unanswered in the wake of the fraternity ban. We have been deprived of any kind of analysis, or even data, on the matter. However, bringing back fraternities wouldn’t necessarily bring back or sanction sexual assault as long as we are mindful and intentional about the kind of cultures we allow fraternities to foster.

In a world with these kinds of respectful, meaningful social groups, Amherst could feel more like a place where people can belong. For once you could walk into a party that isn’t just a mega-mixer between a bunch of varsity teams, or an admittedly lame mixer between club teams, but a place where you could have a spot in the room. Student life at Amherst would no longer be cloistered in the high towers of privilege, behind decades of lacrosse or ice hockey, but instead just across the quad. ■

— Anonymous