[protest against fraternity]Sue Ogrocki/AP Images Earlier this year, the hazing death of 19-year-old student Timothy Piazza during a pledge event at Penn State's Beta Theta Pi fraternity shocked the country. The death garnered attention due to its highly documented, visual nature. (Security footage provided a detailed account of events on the night of his death.) In just the past few years, there have been other instances of hazing deaths at Baruch College, Fresno State, Northern Illinois University, and more. In fact, since 1970, there has been at least one hazing-related death on college campuses every year. And hazing is far from the only problem that plagues fraternities. We reached out to writers at various college newspapers throughout the United States and asked for their opinions on the status of fraternities today. Here's what our campus correspondents had to say. FRATERNITIES WIELD POWER — AND PERPETUATE INEQUALITIES — BEYOND CAMPUS. Gravitas Ventures University of Pittsburgh student Christian Snyder argues that even if fraternities have their benefits, only a small group can even access them, ensuring that they perpetuate race-, class-, and gender-based discrimination. The power they wield extends far beyond campus. Greek organizations have a political Super PAC representing them (Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee), that pushed bills that to limit college rape investigations. 85 percent of US Supreme Court justices, 76 percent of US congressmen, 80 percent of Fortune 500 executives, and nearly every president belonged to a fraternity. Snyder pushes for the complete abolishment of fraternities. _Read his post here. _ FRATERNITIES ARE HOMOGENOUS IN NATURE ACROSS MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS. Flickr / ken fager Fraternities are not financially accessible, Harvard University student Ruben Reyes writes. Among other things, fraternities require their members to pay semesterly dues, averaging $605 nationwide. In many ways, "Greek life has become a microcosm of widening U.S. economic inequality. " Ethnicity-based fraternities aside, fraternities are overwhelmingly white and are lacking when it comes to the inclusion of LGTBQ+ individuals. Reyes concludes: "College is a place where individuals are supposed to learn how to interact with people who are different from them, but fraternities are getting in the way." _Read his post here. _ FRATERNITIES ARE BUILT ON OUTDATED VALUES AND ENCOURAGE THINKING THAT HAVE NO PLACE IN MODERN CULTURE AND SOCIETY. AP Photo/Steve Helber University of Washington student Mac Hubbard points out that fraternities are based on simplistic, outdated ideals: "[i]t’s golden era thinking and team colors — you say red is better, I say blue." These ideals suppress individualism, and may have helped contribute to the deaths of students like Piazza. Many seek to join fraternities because of their desire to belong to a larger group and lose their sense of morality in the process. A future without fraternities will be difficult to achieve, but "we are learning how to slowly undo them while our conversations have increasingly focused on rethinking them completely." _Read Hubbard's post here. _ SEE THE REST OF THE STORY AT BUSINESS INSIDER
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