Over the past eight years, Tufts Greek Life has decreased drastically. In 2016, during an exceptional growth period, Tufts had 17 active fraternities and sororities and 24 percent of Tufts students belonged to one. Nowadays, Tufts has 10 fraternities and sororities and student participation is no longer a recorded statistic. Moreover, the reputation of Greek Life has experienced a steep decline. Along with the 2020 petition, opinion pieces like “Abolish Fraternities” and “An Alumna’s Call to Burn Greek Life to the Ground” are emblematic of the view held by a significant portion of the Tufts community that Greek Life is anathema to a safe and inclusive campus.
Part of the decline stems from a single article. On November 7th, 2016, Tufts student and former pledge Ben Kesslen published an opinion piece in the Tufts Observer titled “Abolish Fraternities.” They recount being pressured to watch two women perform sexual acts on each other during a rush event along with other negative experiences they had while pledging. These events caused them to abandon the idea that “good” fraternities exist and call for the total abolition of Greek Life at Tufts. Kesslen’s article caused an uproar on campus. Amid calls for increased oversight and student protests, Tufts temporarily suspended all fraternity activities in the article’s immediate aftermath.
In 2020, the nationwide “Abolish Greek Life” movement swept college campuses. A change.org petition calling for the abolition of Greek Life at Tufts received over 1,100 signatures. The Tufts Panhellenic Council, one of three student-led Greek Life oversight organizations, announced its decision to suspend recruitment for the Fall semester, citing the “structurally and situationally problematic nature of Greek Life.”
Charles Trantanella, an alumnus and historian who wrote Brown and Blue and Greek: A History of Fraternities, Sororities, and Early Student Organizations at Tufts University, elaborated on the context of the controversy in an interview with the Tribune. Trantanella framed the 2016 controversy as inevitable, given the heightened attention the country was paying to fraternities. As Trantanella said, “[t]here was a big push nationally to expose these kinds of incidents…it’s unfortunate that it happened that way, but it’s not like it was a surprise.”
Besides the aforementioned suspension, Tufts launched investigations into nine Tufts fraternities. Most of these concluded in 2017, leaving one cleared of wrongdoing, seven suspended or placed on probation, and one fraternity dissolved during investigations.
Even before Kesslen’s article, fraternities and sororities at Tufts had taken proactive steps to address some of these concerns. Nowhere is this more evident than in the wave of disaffiliations multiple fraternities and sororities undertook starting in 2015, when chapters removed themselves from national Greek organizations to create independent, local chapters.
The first Greek organization to disaffiliate during this time, the Tufts chapter Alpha Epsilon Pi, did so in January 2015 because “[their] long-term goals do not align with those of the national organization.” They were followed by Sigma Phi Epsilon in November 2015 and a number of sororities in 2016 and 2021. To understand why, the Tribune talked to Ben Kaplan, a Sigma Phi Epsilon member (SigEp) who spearheaded their disaffiliation effort.
According to Kaplan, SigEp chose to go independent in order to form its own identity as a fraternity: “Greek life in general, is for students and should be defined by students themselves.” Kaplan said they chose to do this even though “a lot of the chapters that have gone from national to local have not survived at Tufts.”
Kaplan, who came out as gay in high school, found Tufts’ chapter of SigEp to be “an environment which represented a really positive version of masculinity that was accepting of a whole range of definitions of masculinity.” Kaplan and his brothers at SigEp felt they needed independence from the national organization, which had made national news due to members of a different SigEp chapter hanging a noose on a statue of an African American student.
SigEp isn’t the only example of a Tufts Greek organization disaffiliating in order to build a culture of inclusivity. In the case of the aforementioned sororities, sisters from Alpha Phi and Chi Omega splintered from the main chapter to form The Ivy and Thalia. The Tufts Daily quoted Kelly Bernatchez, a former member of Chi Omega, who left to form Thalia because of the “history of racism, sexism, classism [and] heteronormativity in Greek life,” seeking “to create a space that [upheld their] values.” In 2016, half of the sisters in Alpha Omicron Pi Tufts chapter left the sorority, including the former President, due to the national organization’s refusal to extend a bid to a transgender woman.
Kelly Kollias, an active sorority member at the time of Kesslen’s article, also published an opinion piece in The Tufts Daily responding to the controversy. She acknowledged the problems in fraternity culture while arguing that they provide a “home away from home” in what can be a new and unfamiliar college environment for many. The Tribune talked to Kollias, who said she wrote the article for the same reason she joined a sorority in the first place. “Freshman year of college was hard enough, but trying to find a balance between social, academic, and personal life was destroying my mental health…The friendships I built through my sorority provided a support system that encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone.”
Kollias believes that “Greek organizations at Tufts are deeply committed to the values that define the university’s community: inclusivity, diversity, and active citizenship….This creates a culture that aligns more with Tufts’ mission of global engagement and civic responsibility than the outdated stereotypes often linked to Greek life.”
So, what do Tufts fraternities look like today? Will Duncanson, the President of the Tufts chapter of Delta Upsilon (DU), cites several new measures to ensure safe and responsible practices. Before a party, police inspect the venue for safety violations and remain outside for its entirety. There must be one sober brother for every 15 guests, and parties end at 1:00 am. Besides that, many of the aforementioned proposals from IFC have been implemented, with each fraternity and sorority on campus having a DEI chair and ensuring each member is Green Dot certified.
Tufts fraternities do not only throw parties; each fraternity president we talked to raised the point that parties were a small fraction of their campus activities. Duncanson discussed DU’s “various fundraisers with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the American Cancer Society, and a small organization called No Empty Seats.” They have also “raised money for the Delta Upsilon Global Service Initiative, which raises money to go down to Jamaica and build houses down there for people that are less fortunate.”
DU also places a strong emphasis on leadership development and making its members positive influences on the Tufts community. Duncanson mentioned DU’s speaker series with prominent alumni to discuss leadership across various professional fields. They also host career and leadership workshops with Professor Jack Derby and offer tutoring and academic assistance to members struggling to meet DU’s strict GPA requirement. Duncanson says these activities are part of DU’s mission to create “upstanding citizens of the community and hold our chapter and each other to high academic standards.”
At Delta Tau Delta (DTD), President Karsten Kropp describes his fraternities’ work with the Junior Diabetes Research Fund (including the “Pie-A-Delt” event), a blood drive they organized last year. Other programming includes partnering with a local elementary school to set up a haunted house.
Ethan Forde, President of Alpha Tau Omega (ATO), talked about how ATO works with Cradles to Crayons to address children’s clothing insecurity and participates in community and beach cleanups. The fraternity also has “certain policies where you have to do a certain amount of philanthropy to be in good standing.” Further, prospective new members are asked specifically about their philanthropy and service interests during the rush process. As an independent chapter, ATO’s philanthropy is purely self-driven; while they lack national networks and resources, the chapter has greater flexibility to customize service events and projects based on the needs of the local community.
ATO led Tufts’ first recorded disaffiliation in 1974, when the chapter decided to accept men and women as members, making them the third American co-ed fraternity.
Forde described ATO as a fraternity whose core values are “inclusivity, community, and family.” ATO has long been an example of a “good fraternity,” having not been investigated after the 2016 controversy and being in good standing since. Forde said, “ATO has kind of stayed away from the big, serious frat stuff. It’s one aspect of being an all-gender organization; we don’t go crazy in that sense.”
Given ATO’s track record of compliance with university guidelines, we were surprised to learn that ATO had been put on social probation for Fall 2024. We conducted another interview with an anonymous member of ATO, who has been working with the administration to address ATO’s recent probation. They described their disconnect with the administration, saying, “Our leadership would email the group that deals with all student probationary issues, and it’s almost as if they don’t understand what it means to be a fraternity.” Citing incidents such as waiting several weeks for a response to emails, an administrator in the Office of Community Standards (the disciplinary body that oversees Greek Life) allegedly not knowing what the new member process is and a general apathetic attitude towards fraternities.
The anonymous member feels as if the administration has given up on fraternity life at Tufts—“if it dies, it dies.”
When asked how Greek organizations at Tufts fit into the broader campus culture, Richard DeCapua, the Associate Dean of Students and Deputy Chief Student Life Officer for AS&E, wrote in an email to us that “[t]he institutional perspective is Fraternities and Sororities are another option for students in a very densely packed student organizational world….With more than 350 student organizations on campus, Fraternity and Sorority Life adds to the opportunities we are able to offer students.” Mary Kate Kelley, the Director of Orientation and Student Experience, stated, “Our FSL organizations are in a really great place, and I think have worked hard the past few years to recover from the Abolish Greek Life Movement and Post-Covid….We will continue to support and advise the students through any future evolutions!”
The OFSL, the administrative body meant to bridge the gap between Greek Life organizations and the rest of the administration, has shrunk to just three administrators. In 2019, OFSL had a Director whose sole purpose was to serve in this intermediary role and a dedicated advisor to each of the 17 fraternities and sororities on campus. According to Kelley, the responsibilities of the Director of OFSL have been incorporated into the newly created Director of Student Experience position, which entails many other responsibilities unrelated to Greek Life.
Both Ben Kaplan and Charles Trantanella independently cited the role that former OFSL director, Su McGlone, played in fraternity-administration dialogue. Trantanella claimed that under McGlone’s leadership, participation in Greek Life went from 10% of students to 25% in under a decade. During that time, Kaplan said “Su McGlone represented the best of what a campus administrator can be: somebody who is able to liaise with campus organizations, help them navigate important but dense rules and create a culture of trust, which enables students to have fun in a positive way and build healthy organizations on campus.” Ms. McGlone did not respond to requests for comment.
Despite the reduction in direct advising to fraternities and sororities, the fraternity presidents who spoke with the Tribune characterized their relationship with administration as genial and positive. Kropp said that DTD “[has] a pretty strong relationship with the school….It is a really positive relationship, because that ensures that the school is on board with what we’re doing and then we’re making sure that we have a safe environment.” Duncanson stated that he “think[s] Tufts administration has done a great job, especially with [DU] coming back from suspension.” He also lauded the administration for “holding [the fraternity] to a high standard to make sure that we’re on top of everything.”
When we asked Forde, whose fraternity is currently on probation, about his interactions with the administration, he said that the university wished for them to “take a semester break to reevaluate [themselves], go back and look at the values of ATO, what [they] are as a fraternity and as a group, and build back from that. Given the current state of things, it makes sense, and we will do our best to hold ourselves to that standard.”
Talk of abolishing Greek Life at Tufts has died down in recent years. However, the controversy saw new life when student Bela Silverman published an opinion piece in the Tufts Daily entitled, “Gutting Greek life: A call for reform over abolition of campus fraternities and sororities.” In this article, Silverman raises many of the same concerns that Ben Kesslen, the Panhellenic Council, and other critics of Greek Life shared. She writes, “Greek Life today not only represents a foundation of supremacism but also continues to uphold discriminatory principles.” Silverman adds an important caveat at the end of the article: “Tufts is a prime example of positive reform, as the emergence of local sororities unaffiliated with national chapters and the well-established GreenDot program… has birthed a new Greek life aligned with university policies.”
Photo by Tomás Gómez Revelo (Sept. 15. 2024)