by RENEE MONTAGNE
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Allegations of an appalling gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity party continue to shake that campus. And that story adds to growing concerns about the level of sexual assaults on college campuses. And it’s led to calls for a ban on fraternities. We reached Nicholas Syrett to find out how fraternities came about in the first place. He’s author of “The Company He Keeps: A History Of White College Fraternities.” He says they emerged in the 1820s.
NICHOLAS SYRETT: Fraternities started as secret organizations – not just secrets in that they kept secrets, but secret from the faculty themselves. And they largely did so as a way to sort of assert independence in the face of a faculty that was pretty regulatory. So fraternities were a way for them to do something that was rule-breaking against the sort of rules of the faculty.
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