Lambda Chi Alpha posted a party on Facebook called the “Freshman ‘Fifth’teen.” As members of the greek community have suffered grievous injury and death due to binge drinking, they do lip service to the idea of responsible drinking with no change.
Instead, groups like Lambda Chi Alpha use events targeting vulnerable incoming freshmen with the notion that extreme binge drinking is as natural as overeating when one gets to college.
They prey on the emotional upset freshmen feel when coming here to get people to join their group by not only catering to self-destructive behavior, but also targeting and promoting it.
For this group, binge drinking isn’t just a problem their fraternity happens to run into, it’s a problem that is guaranteed by the way they are recruiting. MSU needs to take strong and unequivocal steps immediately to remedy this situation.
Lambda Chi Alpha should be banned from recruiting and having parties entirely this year, starting immediately. It will prevent the group from being successful in their attempt to prey on the vulnerable in order to recruit them, and it will send a message to the rest of the student body that this type of behavior is unacceptable. It will send a message that MSU is no longer “that party school” and it will start incoming freshmen off on a serious note.
Anything less than this will show that the university is not serious about preventing deaths and other problems resulting from binge drinking, nor is it serious about academics.
In the end, coming down hard on the groups that promote this type of activity will result in them changing the way they recruit and it will lead to a different ethos in the greek community: one where scholarship, civic responsibility and brotherhood actually are possible.
Justin Lippi, 2010 MSU graduate
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