By Ben Brown

Photo by Chris Jones/ The Lafayette

Other Northeast liberal arts colleges, such as Bowdoin and Colby, have removed Greek life on their campuses. According to their reps, this was due to wanting to improve campus life, but their decisions have yielded a variety of responses.

With the recent release of the Working Group’s report, Lafayette College has been pondering the role of Greek life on campus. In previous decades, other Northeast liberal arts colleges have done away with Greek life. These decisions have yielded mixed reactions.

Greek life at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine was completely abolished in 2000. According to Chris Rossi ’10, Associate Director of Residential Life at Bowdoin College, “An Interim Report of The Commission on Residential Life to The Board of Trustees of BowdoinCollege” (1997) was submitted to the Board of Trustees of the college and was unanimously approved. The report lists several concerns regarding Greek life including “disconnection from the academic mission of the college” and “dominance of social life and burden of providing it.”

There were mixed reactions among the Bowdoin community when Greek life was eliminated in 2000. “A lot of students who came through Bowdoin enjoyed their time in fraternities,” Rossi said in a phone interview on Monday. “There were certainly some people disappointed by the decision, which was natural.”

The report proposed a new residential system for Bowdoin focusing on broad housing membership for all students. Rossi, who oversees the eight college houses, is a product of the new housing system. He served as Vice-President of his house as a sophomore.

“[I] found it tremendously rewarding.,” Rossi wrote in an e-mail. “All my friends applied to the same House and we were lucky enough to get in together — as a result, the House served as the hub of social activity for us.”

Rossi attributed the creation of a house system to Bowdoin’s desire for a more inclusive social climate. “We focus on living and learning communities. Learning does not stop in the classroom. People always want the houses to be more inclusive. We are always trying to get better,” he said.

Another factor in Bowdoin’s examination of Greek life, according to Rossi, was a student death in the mid 1990s at a fraternity house.

Colby College in Waterville, Maine abolished fraternities and sororities in 1984, “Due to the exclusive/sexist nature of the Greek organizations,” Paul E. Johnston Senior Associate Dean of Students wrote in an email. Like at Bowdoin, a Trustee Commission was formed and a study was conducted to review the role of Greek organizations at Colby. Johnston believes Colby is better off without Greek organizations, citing improved student morale.

“We’re told today that prospective students who consider Colby do so because the Greek system was eliminated,” Johnston said in the e-mail. “The women on campus feel safer and more empowered to hold leadership positions and to have a larger voice in social and political matters.

Johnston wrote that the abolishment of the Greek system had a net positive impact on alumni contributions.

“What was lost in annual giving from those who supported Greek life was more than made up by the faction of the Colby community who applauded this decision,” Johnston wrote.

In 1989, five years after Colby abolished its Greek organizations, David W. Ellis, President of Lafayette College, issued a 17-page report on Greek life. In it, he identified several issues connected with the Greek organizations: racism, sexism, and anti-intellectualism – the so-called “animal house syndrome.” According to a January 1989 issue of The Lafayette, Ellis said these characteristics, “We are not alone: the same can be said of the nation.” In spite of these claims, Ellis said he felt Greek life has a role on campus.

“Changing residential and social arrangements to eliminate fraternities and sororities is not they key to improving the intellectual and academic environment at Lafayette,” Ellis said in the 1989 article.

The most recent U.S. News & World Report rankings of liberal arts colleges listed Bowdoin at number six, Colby in a three-way tie for 21, and Lafayette was tied for 40. The highest-ranked school on the list with Greek life was Swarthmore College at number three.