Student predicts end of fraternities within two years | Student Life:
Student predicts end of fraternities within two years
Charles Pointdexter | Some GDI
Controversy erupted over the weekend when a statistics student published his prediction that all Washington University fraternities would be suspended by May 2015.
Freshman Malik Peters, who is taking Elementary Probability and Statistics, analyzed the spacing between the recent suspensions of the university’s Sigma Alpha Mu, Sigma Phi Epsilon and Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapters.
“I was just doing a basic linear extrapolation, and with the rate fraternities have been getting suspended, the last fraternity is going to be gone by May 2015,” said Peters.
Peters published his results, including a graph showing the predicted decline in fraternity numbers, on Facebook Friday night, captioning the post “Say goodbye to Upper Row haha.” Within five hours, there were forty comments on the post. Several responses were positive, but most either disputed the results or attacked Peters for his conclusions.
“Yes! The Greek system is corrupt and needs to be brought down,” commented junior Aleera Anghelescu.
“dumass[sic] GDI [god damn independent, denoting a person unaffiliated with Greek Life]. were [sic] not going anywhere,” posted sophomore Alex Heineken, who is a member of Sigma Nu.
“I just think it’s ridiculous. This isn’t a scientifically rigorous study at all, but everyone seems to think…it means the end of Greek Life,” said freshman and Theta Xi pledge Gordon Himermann, who commented “One semester of statistics and suddenly you know everything? SMH,” on Peters’ post.
