“It could bring down Greek life as a whole”: Greek life members’ perspectives on party culture, safety, responsibilities and consequences

Abstract

Objective

Describe Greek life students’ perspectives of party culture, safety, and College Sexual Violence (CSV) prevention.

Participants

27 US undergraduates: 5 fraternity underclassmen, 6 fraternity upperclassmen, 10 sorority underclassmen, 6 sorority upperclassmen.

Methods

Students participated in one of four focus groups, separately by gender and academic year. Facilitation guide addressed partying, sexual violence, and safety.

Results

Greek life members described partying preferences, perceived safety threats, and actions they took to party safely. University efforts to support safe partying were not universally viewed as helpful.

Conclusions

Although Greek life students strive to create safe partying environments, there remain missed opportunities to mitigate risks related to CSV. The responsibility to ensure safe partying falls too heavily on students, resulting in universities missing opportunities to provide measures that promote safety while mitigating risks and potentially serious harms.

Keywords:

• College sexual violence (CSV); gender
• Greek life
• higher education
• institutional-level
• partying
• sexual violence

Acknowledgments

The research team acknowledges the Greek life fraternity and sorority presidents and leadership teams, and all focus group participants, for their engagement and collaboration in this study. Their commitment to student well-being and safety is obvious, and it was a pleasure to conduct this participatory research with them. A special thanks to Pierce Ekstrom for his participation in the project as a whole. The team thanks additional Sexual Violence Collaboratory members Dr. Katherine Lust, Katie Eichele, and Ed Heisler for their assistance as well.

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States of America and received approval from the University of Minnesota IRB.

Notes

1 New members in Greek life are assigned an older, initiated member of the organization who serves as a mentor, role model, and friend for them. These mentors are often perceived as older siblings, hence the term “big”.

2 Tier 3 parties are the largest parties hosted by fraternities. These parties have the most open invitations, and often require the people, especially males, be on an approved and reviewed list ahead of time. These parties are registered with the university in advance.

3 The slang “townie” is sometimes used by Greek life members to refer to someone unaffiliated with Greek life that does not attend the university but is a resident of the surrounding area.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this project came from internal University of Minnesota Grant-in-Aid and MN Futures awards.