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MIT bans frat parties before Boston can do it for them

The Tech reports the Institute announced the new ban yesterday, after determining that non-MIT student who fell out a window at a Bay State Road fraternity was "intoxicated" despite an MIT ban on liquor at rush-week events.

City officials last year basically banned parties at MIT's Boston frats after an MIT student fell through a skylight.

In April, MIT suspended Delta house for unspecified bad behavior.

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Comments

The Atlantic had a great (long) article on all things Fraternities, from their history, relationships with universities, and the very common occurrence of people falling from balconies. It also had probably one of the best opening paragraphs ever written:

One warm spring night in 2011, a young man named Travis Hughes stood on the back deck of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house at Marshall University, in West Virginia, and was struck by what seemed to him—under the influence of powerful inebriants, not least among them the clear ether of youth itself—to be an excellent idea: he would shove a bottle rocket up his ass and blast it into the sweet night air. And perhaps it was an excellent idea. What was not an excellent idea, however, was to misjudge the relative tightness of a 20-year-old sphincter and the propulsive reliability of a 20-cent bottle rocket. What followed ignition was not the bright report of a successful blastoff, but the muffled thud of fire in the hole.

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*smh*

seriously.. a bottle rocket up his ass? I'd love to know why they thought this was a good idea..

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Like the article says. Fraternities. AKA collective dudebro stupidity.

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I know someone who fell out of one of those frat houses 35 years ago. Drunk. Broke both feet. This is nothing new.

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If the frats are financially independent from MIT and don't use its name in any way, how is such a ban by the school even legal? Aren't there freedom of association issues here?

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Fraternities typically have contracts with the schools with which they are associated where they agree to be governed by restrictions such as this. The contract is typically between the national fraternity and the school. This is why schools can set rules around rushing, put fraternities on probation, and disband a fraternity.

If someone wanted to create an organization independent of this contract, they can feel free to.

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Harvard's non-frat frats (aka "final clubs") went independent about 30 years ago, and now the university can't do much about the problems they cause.

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If I remember correctly, the article referenced above by DHS had a lot of information on both the "Why are fraternities allowed to ...?" and "What authority does the university have to regulate ...?" questions. It's really worth reading.

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While most Fraternities, Sororities, and Independent Living Groups (FSILGs) at MIT own and operate their own houses, those in Boston are all licensed as Dormitories. Since Boston doesn't allow unaffiliated dormitories (a detail that came up in the Globe's expose of student slums back in the spring), to actually use their buildings, FSILGs must be recognized as Institute approved housing.

The licensing arrangements are different in Brookline and Cambridge. In Cambridge they are licensed as Lodging Houses, which aren't necessarily tied to a university. I'm not certain, but this may be how Harvard's unrecognized fraternities and final clubs operate. But at MIT, either out of fairness and/or solidarity, restrictions placed on houses in Boston are placed on those in Cambridge and Brookline, too.

Yes, there are freedom of association and fairness issues, but politically it would be impossible to win a dispute with the City on those grounds.

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I know it's fun to reference Animal House, but can we dispense with calling Delta Upsilon "Delta House"? It's not a name they go by or that anyone else calls them. That doesn't excuse whatever it was that got them shut down, but let's at least refer to people and organizations by their correct and preferred names.

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Is that the sound of an ox being gored?

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