Forbes fires columnist who warned of dangers posed by drunk women admitted to fraternity parties

Submitted by Mastodon on Thu, 2014-09-25 04:16

Article here. Excerpt:

'Forbes magazine on Tuesday published, and then quickly deleted, a column suggesting fraternities should ensure intoxicated women are not allowed into their houses, due to the risk of them falling out of windows or of filing false rape charges against frat members.

The column, "Drunk Female Guests Are The Gravest Threat To Fraternities," was written by contributor Bill Frezza, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Frezza, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is president of the Beta Foundation, the house corporation for the Chi Phi fraternity at MIT. His column was in part prompted by a clampdown on MIT fraternities following a student falling from a third-story window at the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.

Forbes deleted the column, but did not replace it with an editor's note explaining why.

"Mr. Frezza's post was removed from Forbes.com almost immediately after he published it," Forbes spokeswoman Mia Carbonell told HuffPost in an email. "Mr. Frezza is no longer a contributor to Forbes.com."

Frezza wrote:

"...The number of rules and procedures that have to be followed to run a party nowadays would astound anyone over 40. We take the rules very seriously, so much so that brothers who flout these policies can, and will, be asked to move out. But we have very little control over women who walk in the door carrying enough pre-gaming booze in their bellies to render them unconscious before the night is through."
...
Frezza offers the advice that frat brothers shouldn't take a drunk woman to bed, but not because it would be taking advantage of her -- rather, because "it doesn't take much for a campus kangaroo court to get you expelled, ruining your life while saddling your fraternity with a reputation for harboring rapists."

Frezza told The Huffington Post that despite Forbes' removal of the article, he stands by it.'

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Comments

... one have the temerity to tell the truth about the emperor's "invisible clothes".

My advice in fact would be that fraternities adopt the same policy most if not every sorority on college campuses has these days re parties: None. There were only 2 sororities at my alma mater whose national orgs. permitted the chapters to hold even invite-only parties, or non-rushing "parties". (Rush parties weren't parties so much as meet-and-greets. In fact, non-alcoholic-only rush events was a campus policy for all frats as well, only rushees weren't req'd to attend all frats' "open houses", as they were called, while sorority rushees were req'd to attend rush events at all the sororities to even be considered eligible for pledging one of them.)

College admins apparently lack the nerve to prohibit events where alcohol is served by student org'ns on campus, even to 21+ year-olds. Why, I couldn't say. But if drunken frat parties are, like money, the root of many evils but unlike money, don't do much good for the campus (as often asserted), then if they are allowed to exist, why don't campus admins just ban alcohol entirely from campus and be done with it?

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Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2014-09-26 03:57

How are they going to justify a kangaroo court if the events happen outside of their jurisdiction?

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Submitted by dudejo on Mon, 2014-09-29 00:52