Drinking Death Stirs Many Frats to Close Bars and Bring Back Advisers

The 14 newly pinned college fraternity pledges, roused by the members’ speeches and their own desire to belong, were led downstairs into the darkened Lambda Chi Alpha basement and lined up in front of the bar.

On went the lights, revealing the final stage of the pinning night. There sat 200 “kamikazes,” a potent vodka concoction.

They drank.

James Callahan of North Bergen drank until he dropped dead.

The 18-year-old’s alcohol death last winter at Rutgers University was one of a string of scandals at fraternity houses around the country that have brought more pressure for reforms of the Greek-letter brotherhoods.

With their futures at stake, fraternities are responding.

Bars Being Closed

Bars in many fraternity houses are being closed and advisers are returning. And the National Interfraternity Conference is considering a total ban on pledging.

“It’s not easy to change the culture, but until we do I think there are going to be very bad days ahead for fraternities,” said John Creedon, a Rutgers assistant provost. Since Callahan’s death, Creedon has led the push for fraternity reforms at Rutgers.

“Fraternities are under fire as never before,” said Eileen Stevens, a national anti-hazing activist. She has traveled the country since her son died 10 years ago after drinking too much during a hazing at Alfred University in upstate New York.

“Their very future is in jeopardy,” Stevens said. “I think we’ve come to a point where the people who supervise them realize the problems are enormous, and they’re just not sure what to do about it.”

The problems boil down to two hard-dying traditions--drinking and hazing.

Critics call fraternities an anachronism.

‘Futile Struggle’

“Fraternities have been engaged, like the brontosaurus, in a futile struggle against a changed climate,” Earl Smith, dean at Colby College, wrote last year in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Fraternities have been banned at Colby since 1984, when administrators decided that they no longer fit in at the college in Waterville, Me.

Fraternity leaders say the scandals are relatively few, that elitism charges are unfounded and that the positives such as friendship, leadership development and community service far outweigh any negatives.

But over the last two years, defenders of the fraternity system have winced at a series of incidents. In addition to the Rutgers death:

- Four members of the University of Alabama chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, the largest national fraternity, were arrested on charges of selling cocaine. They were accused of making some of the drug deals out of the stately chapter house.

- At the University of Lowell in Massachusetts, six fraternity members were charged under the state’s tough anti-hazing law over a stunt that sent a pledge to the hospital with a body temperature of 109. The members had bundled the victim in a sleeping bag and turned on heaters nearby.

- A former University of Delaware student claimed in a lawsuit that someone dumped caustic oven cleaner over his head during a fraternity “Hell Night.”

Death Inspires Bills

But nothing stirred an outcry like Callahan’s death at Rutgers. It inspired nearly a dozen bills in the New Jersey Legislature and is cited by fraternity critics nationally.

“That probably had more impact on us than any other hazing incident,” said Jonathan Brant, director of the National Interfraternity Conference.

The reprisals against Lambda Chi Alpha were swift and harsh. The Rutgers chapter was disbanded and the house doors slammed shut.

The 29 other fraternities were ordered to pull out their basement bars, which had become standard equipment at Rutgers fraternities, and make other reforms.

It could have been worse.

In recent years, more than a dozen colleges have banned Greek-letter organizations. Besides Colby, fraternities are passe at Amherst College and the University of Lowell, both in Massachusetts, and Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.

‘Underage Drinking Clubs’

At the Pennsylvania college, “the trustees felt the fraternities had been reduced in many ways to underage drinking clubs,” said college spokeswoman Patti Lawson.

The mounting pressure against fraternities threatens what has been a steadily rising membership.

Undergraduate fraternity membership has climbed to 400,000, according to the interfraternity conference. That’s more than double the 1970 figures and a 170,000 increase since 1980.

Unlike the Greek system’s golden age of the 1950s, this heyday has come in a relatively unsupervised environment, campus administrators note. Gone are the housemothers, strict rules and other formalities that once characterized fraternity life.

But some college administrations are starting to reintroduce the supervision. Many fraternity chapters have resisted, but some are starting to respond.

Live-in Advisers at USC

Resident advisers have moved into chapter houses on USC’s Fraternity Row. Fraternities have gone completely dry at Indiana University, home to one of the strongest Greek systems in the country.

The fraternities’ national magazines abound with denunciations of alcohol abuse, sexism and racism.

A recent edition of Alpha Tau Omega’s publication chronicles that fraternity’s efforts to halt a national liquor promotion geared to male college students.

The governing body of Zeta Beta Tau voted in September to end pledging, an idea being studied by the national Greek council.

Callahan’s death came a few days after more than 40 Princeton students were treated for alcohol poisoning following a drinking binge at two private social clubs.

Fifteen Lambda Chi Alpha members were charged with aggravated hazing in Callahan’s death. They have yet to come to trial, but a conviction would carry a maximum penalty of 18 months in jail and a $7,500 fine.

Consensus on Drinking

“I’ve had calls from all across the country,” said James Meisel, a Hackensack lawyer who is representing Callahan’s mother. “Among the people I’ve talked to--university people, crusader groups--there’s a consensus that as a general matter drinking is way out of hand on college campuses.”

Joseph Discenza, a lawyer for Lambda Chi’s Board of Trustees, acknowledges that there was “peer pressure” for the pledges to drink. But Discenza contends that nobody was forced.

He said Callahan’s own reckless behavior was to blame for his death, which an autopsy attributed to 23 ounces of alcohol and a .434% blood alcohol content--more than four times the legal limit.

“This one isolated incident said nothing,” said Discenza, an alumnus of the Rutgers Lambda Chi Alpha chapter. “It said if someone really wants to drink a lot they can. It could have happened just as easily in my basement.”

Fights Rutgers Proposal

Michael Steinbruck, a Delta Phi member, is leading a fight against the Rutgers administration’s latest proposal for reform--a requirement that each chapter have an adult, live-in adviser.

Steinbruck, 23, has a scrapbook full of press clippings about his chapter’s work to raise money for New Brunswick homeless shelters and other causes. He believes the university has ignored the good works of fraternities and acted in a reactionary fashion to Callahan’s death.

“People are so fed up with constantly being on the defensive about hazing, they’re willing to try lots of different plans if they feel they have a reasonable chance of succeeding,” said Patrick Brown, a national fraternity official.

Would End Irresponsibility

The goal, Brown said, is to reinforce the founding purposes of friendship and scholarship and eliminate “the basic irresponsibility, whether it is alcohol abuse, hazing, poor scholarship. . . .

“Fraternity can be a magnificent educational movement if it’s appropriately directed. I’m convinced we’re taking it in the direction it has to go if we’re to survive.”