Frat booze ban debated

The empty bottles of Coors Light sat in plain view last week inside Kappa Sigma's fraternity house near the University of California, Berkeley, campus.

It wasn't clear how long the two dozen or so bottles had been there or when their contents were consumed. Yet there they sat, just two days after university officials banned alcohol from fraternity and sorority houses, perhaps as an unintended testament to the enduring mix of alcohol and college life.

In the wake of two serious alcohol-related incidents concerning UC Berkeley fraternities, one of which apparently involved hazing, there is a new focus at this campus on the use and misuse of alcoholic beverages among undergrads.

The new ban, announced May 9, made UC Berkeley the fourth major university in the country to take such a step since December. Moreover, it came three months after the well-publicized death of a student at California State University, Chico, after an apparent hazing ritual.

"I'm a realist," UC Berkeley Dean of Students Karen Kenney said in an interview. "I don't think that you can completely eradicate hazing. I don't think you can completely control alcohol abuse.

"But I think we need to do everything possible to ensure the health and safety of our students," she added. "So, to that end, that's what we're going to do."

The students most affected by the new rules aren't saying much. Visits to several chapter houses in a neighborhood south of the campus produced a chorus of "no comment."

Christina Zhao, president of the College Panhellenic Council, which oversees a dozen UC Berkeley sororities, also did not respond to interview requests.

But the student-run Daily Californian last week quoted Zhao as saying that her group "continues to be concerned that a moratorium will not solve any problems that we are seeing in the Greek community," adding that drinking could become more "covert."

UC Berkeley has escaped the informal "party school" reputation bestowed on other colleges, yet it suffers its share of troubles, both with drinking and hazing.

Since fall 1999, 48 hazing cases were adjudicated by the student judicial affairs office. The number of alcohol abuse incidents the past six years was not readily available, but a spokesman said it is much higher.

Three years ago, the university for the first time slapped a ban on alcohol at Greek chapter houses after a slew of incidents, including noisy parties, fights, alcohol poisonings and one episode in which a female student became inebriated, fell and suffered serious head injuries. She eventually recovered.

"At that point, I just had to say, 'Enough is enough,' " Kenney said.

The university has long prohibited hard liquor at Greek houses, and national sororities bar all alcoholic beverages from chapter premises. Still, the 2002 ban on beer and wine was not popular, and an alumni group formed to oppose it.

The prohibition was gradually lifted as fraternities proved they could abide by revised rules on parties.

More recently, Greek leaders had been working to enforce those rules and were drafting an update.

But the momentum began to change in early April when a 19-year-old student was stripped of most of his clothing and shot at more than 30 times with a BB gun in an apparent hazing incident at the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house. Kenney said some of the fraternity members involved had been drinking.

Less than a month later, a Kappa Alpha Psi-sponsored party aboard a ferry got out of hand, forcing the captain to make an emergency stop in Oakland. Police arrested a handful of people, some for public intoxication, and removed half of the 600-plus revelers.

Kenney said investigations of the two incidents revealed "far more serious things than we had imagined. That is what caused us to reimpose the moratorium." She would not elaborate, citing ongoing inquiries.

So now, alcoholic beverages of any kind are banned at the activities of about 70 Greek organizations, on or off their premises. Meanwhile, a task force of university and Greek officials will try to work out a new code governing alcohol use and how to enforce it.

Leaders of the Kappa Alpha Psi and Pi Kappa Phi chapters would not comment. The chief executive officer of the national Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, Mark Edward Timmes, said he suspended the chapter and banned it from participating in any activities, pending an investigation.

Timmes, though, acknowledged the difficulty of keeping in check young adults who are experiencing life away from parental authority for the first time, who are bombarded with conflicting messages about alcohol use and who are surrounded by thousands of their peers. Moreover, some of them leave each year and are replaced by a whole new crop of unaware teenagers.

"We're dealing with students and frail human beings," he said, adding that leaders "have to educate and re-educate. ... It's a difficult dynamic because of that changing landscape."

Chico State has suffered a string of drinking-related incidents going back five years, including the Feb. 2 water poisoning death of 21-year-old Matthew Carrington, the result of a fraternity hazing incident. Alcohol also played a central role in the deaths of students at California State University, Sacramento, and UC Davis, in 2000 and 2001.

In addition, Chico State officials recently suspended a fraternity for allegedly participating in a pornographic film. University President Paul Zingg is reviewing a soon-to-be-released report on whether to alter the school's Greek system.

Besides UC Berkeley, three other major universities - the University of Oklahoma, Western Kentucky University and the University of New Mexico - have enacted alcohol moratoriums in the last six months. The action in Oklahoma was prompted by the alcohol-poisoning death of a fraternity pledge.

"When you have four universities do this in one semester, I think, yes, there is a trend, and those of us that deal in this profession, we need to pay attention to it," said Bob Biggs of the Fraternity Executives Association and national executive vice president of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.

But current and prospective fraternity members also have to shift their expectations of Greek life away from one of unencumbered illegal drinking, Biggs added.

"We're not a drinking club. We are a fraternal organization," he said. "We're trying to change a culture within a fraternity system to say we're values based."


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FACTS AND FIGURES * Death: 1,400 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor vehicle crashes.

* Academic problems: About 25 percent of college students report academic consequences of their drinking, including missing class, falling behind, doing poorly on exams or papers and receiving lower grades.

* Health problems/suicide attempts: More than 150,000 students develop an alcohol-related health problem and between 1.2 percent and 1.5 percent of students indicate that they tried to commit suicide within the past year because of drinking or drug use.

* Drunken driving: 2.1 million students between the ages of 18 and 24 report driving under the influence of alcohol last year.

* Vandalism: About 11 percent of college students report that they have damaged property while under the influence of alcohol.

* Police involvement: About 5 percent of four-year college students are involved with the police or campus security as a result of their drinking. An estimated 110,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are arrested for an alcohol-related violation such as public drunkenness or driving under the influence.