Taming the Toga

The long promised Time Magazine article has arrived! It is full of off the cuff sound bites but is essentially positive toward Sig Ep and the Balanced Man program.

The SigEps of Oregon State were a long way from such genteel pursuits just five years ago. At a school that offers a degree in fermentation sciences, the SigEps of old stood out for their love of inebriation. "When I got here in 2001, it was awful," says Mike Powers, 20, a senior. "Drugs were coming in, grades were falling. There were nothing but monster parties." The chapter hit bottom that fall when a single party resulted in a whopping $195,000 in fines for 26 separate counts of providing alcohol to minors. The house needed a fresh start, which led to a purge of partyers in which a third of the brothers left the chapter. "We needed to get rid of the cancers of the frat," says Powers.

Today the chapter, reorganized under the Balanced Man Program, has rebounded. Membership is almost back to prepurge levels, and last summer the chapter won a national SigEp award that placed it in the top 15% in academics and community service of all chapters in the country.
[...]
But the frat makeovers have their detractors. In the rush to save fraternity life, some say, SigEp and the Balanced Man Program may be ruining it. [...]As one SigEp who clearly missed the etiquette lessons wrote, "The [Balanced Man Program] has effectively cut the balls [off] our fraternity."

In the interest of full disclosure, several of your intrepid bloggers were contacted by the reporter for the article. (That last quote was not from us, however.) As usual, the fact checkers will have plenty to quibble about. But it looks like the overall tone is positive, regardless of mis-statements.

TIME.com: Taming the Toga -- Feb. 20, 2006 -- Page 1

Technorati tags: SigEp, Fraternity, Balanced Man