The Party’s Over : Fraternity excesses hit dead end after Greeks get sobering advice to clean up their houses or else.

Millions of high school and college-age students packed movie theaters in 1978 to watch fraternity party animal John Belushi drink, belch, inhale Jell-O, peep into sorority house windows and stagger around in a toga made from bedsheets.

Many of them came away with what they believed was a pretty terrific blueprint for Life at College.

Consequently, “Animal House”--the story of a crazed, anarchic and mythical small-college fraternity called Delta Tau Chi, circa 1962--became a boon to fraternities whose memberships had been on the decline since the mid-’60s, when political awareness deprived the toga party of meaning and relevance.

The film arrived at a time when more freewheeling student attitudes toward drinking, drugs, partying, sex, hazing, academics, propriety and social responsibility (or their lack) began to return.

In many fraternities nationwide, drinking and drug use increased, illegal and destructive behavior became more common, hazing practices became more virulent (several deaths occurred as a result), and incidents of sexism and racism were more frequent.

But now, for many Greeks, the fast times are ending.

Under pressure from college administrators, neighbors and their own national headquarters, many college Greek organizations are trying to clean up their acts and infuse a greater sense of academic and social relevance into the fraternity experience.

“It’s changed a lot since I pledged in 1971. You wouldn’t recognize it,” said Steve Forell, a former president of the Cal State Fullerton chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon and the immediate past president of that school’s Greek Alumni Council.

“When I pledged, you were there strictly for a good time and didn’t worry about what else went on. Now it’s become a major positive thing to become part of a group. Along with the elimination of hazing and all the derogatory things that went on in (earlier) years, now the chapters are helping out in the community. They’re overpowering the negative image of the elitist fraternity.”

Not to say that the “Animal House” days are entirely over.

Greeks, for the most part, aren’t quite ready to replace the beer bust with afternoon tea.

Indeed, a handful of recent incidents underscore the perception that fraternity behavior still is not entirely lofty. Among them:

* Last September, the Cal State Fullerton chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon was banned for five years because of violations of college regulations at a raucous party over the Labor Day weekend.

* That same month, members of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity at Chapman College in Orange threw a party at an off-campus apartment and hired a female stripper, sparking a campus controversy that culminated in the convening of an open forum to discuss the propriety of their actions.

* Two years ago, white members of three fraternities and sororities at UC Irvine appeared in blackface and lip-synced songs by the Jackson Five and Gladys Knight and the Pips during a campus event. They eventually apologized after vehement protests.

Such incidents (and others at chapters around the country that have been substantially worse) have brought about tighter restrictions on Greeks and a wider and more searching examination of the role of fraternities and sororities.

“General policy and member tolerance for certain behaviors has decreased,” said Jonathan Brant, executive vice president of the National Interfraternity Conference, a confederation of 59 Greek-letter fraternities with nearly 5,200 chapters on 805 college campuses in the United States and Canada.

“The universities, the nationals and their chapters are less tolerant of silly and dangerous activities or alcohol or sexual abuse,” he said.

So intolerant, in fact, that each of the National Interfraternity Conference’s 59 members exercised some form of restrictive discipline on an average of nine of their chapters in the past two years and revoked an average of one of their chapters’ charters during that time, according to an NIC survey.

This attempt at redirection comes at a time when the campus Greek system never has been healthier, at least in terms of numbers of students.

Brant said that throughout the ‘80s the number of new fraternity members nationwide grew by 7% to 10% each year. Today, he said, there are about 400,000 college men who are fraternity members, up from 149,000 in 1972.

In Orange County, there are about 340 Greeks at Chapman College, about 1,600 at UCI and 1,000 at Cal State Fullerton. At all three of the four-year schools, the increase in the number of chapters and members has been substantial in the past decade.

The reason for the increase, said Brant, is that “the students have really changed in profile. They’re really concerned about being successful in their careers and families and they’re more willing to join for experiences beyond the classroom that will help them get a better job and be more effective as leaders.”

It is less a sense of belonging to a drinking club than simply belonging, said David Hurwitz, the chairman of the Greek Presidents Council at UCI and president of that school’s chapter of Sigma Chi.

“The social aspect is the most obvious,” said Hurwitz, a 22-year-old economics and management major. “That’s the main motivation. But there’s more. There are a lot of leadership development skills, because being president of a house is sort of like being president of a small corporation.”

It isn’t unusual for fraternity members to go on to become executives of large corporations after graduation, the result, in part, of contacts with other members and alumni cultivated during and after their college years.

Said Forell: “At any of the major universities, the college is huge, it’s impersonal and you don’t have the Doris Day version of going to college. You stand in line, you go to class, you see a few people and you go home.”

But the camaraderie that goes with membership can also mutate into a kind of pack mentality, said Forell.

“That’s why some fraternities get in trouble,” he said, “because they’re growing together and they may make a mistake and the group dynamic carries them in the wrong direction.”

This has happened at each of Orange County’s four-year colleges, but perhaps more so at Cal State Fullerton, the only one of the three where Greeks live off campus in their own houses.

Loud parties, incidents of drunkenness, violence and destruction of property and such events as female mud wrestling contests prompted the university to ban alcohol at rush parties, the first of the 19 state universities to do so (Chapman and UCI have since also instituted a dry rush policy).

Complaints from neighbors also prompted the city to impose a regulation requiring Greek houses to obtain conditional use permits.

Alcohol use by Greeks has always been a touchy point, but with growing recognition of alcohol abuse on campus has come more restrictive rules from both universities and national fraternity chapters.

Some fraternity rules, if they do not ban alcohol outright (sororities routinely impose a no-drinking rule in their houses) forbid members to use chapter funds to purchase alcohol for parties.

A relatively new factor that gives universities and particularly national chapters more leverage in imposing alcohol restrictions is group insurance purchased by the nationals and provided to their local chapters. The idea, said Brant, is not to “insure behavior that is currently going on on the college campuses, but to change that behavior to reduce the level of risk. There’s a lot of incentive.”

As a result, he said, destructive, risky or illegal behavior has dropped and the insurance premiums have dropped along with it.

“We had a forum in the fall with the fraternities for Alcohol Awareness Week,” said Ellen Thomas, UCI’s associate director of student activities and the campus Greek adviser. “I couldn’t believe the level of understanding that these students expressed in the area of risk management and liability.”

(At UCI and Chapman, Greek functions are held at on-campus facilities or at private homes or rental facilities off campus.)

And hazing--the practice of compelling pledges to perform demeaning, embarrassing or potentially harmful tasks--is disappearing throughout the country as national chapters crack down, said Brant.

Orange County fraternity watchers say hazing has all but died out locally. Instead of the formerly traditional “hell weeks,” pledges may be required to attend fraternity education sessions or help other house members work on the house or a community project.

“All the nationals have incredibly strict policies against hazing,” said Thomas. “If something happened here, I don’t know any national that wouldn’t be out here in a minute.”

Allegations of exclusionary behavior, even racism, are harder to pin down, said Brant, although local Greeks say such policies don’t exist at their schools.

“We’re finding that students are far more open-minded (about pledging minorities) than even alumni and they’re eager to make friends with all students on campus,” said Brant. “But by looking at our records we have no way of knowing who is of a particular ethnic background or what their religion is or whether they’re handicapped. We have no idea what progress we’re making in that area. That’s something we really have to overcome as a society.”

Hurwitz said that UCI fraternities “have made a real effort to get more (minorities) to rush. Here we have quite a few Asians in the Greek system. And there are relatively few blacks on campus, but every fraternity has a couple of black members. I think it’s a problem that doesn’t exist. I’ve never heard anybody say, ‘We can’t let him in because he’s Asian or he’s black.’ ”

Hurwitz said he believes that in many cases minority students may feel pressure from their peers not to join a “mainstream” fraternity, or they may prefer to join one of the long-established chapters dedicated to specific ethnic or religious groups.

At Cal State Fullerton, Forell said that the lack of long tradition among that school’s Greeks worked against racism.

“We never saw it,” he said. “We didn’t have the influence of the old money and the old boys. We got people from all life styles.”

However, Ron Wilson, UCI’s ombudsman, said that “Latino and Afro-American students have long felt that there has been covert racism” in that UCI fraternities and sororities “were not going after or supporting black candidates for Greek organizations.” And, he added, the argument that ethnic and religious groups feel more comfortable pledging fraternities dedicated specifically to them is spurious.

“Isn’t that just as divisive and racist and sexist?” he said. “Does it make it right that you come up with the argument of comfort level? I see nothing wrong with having programs directly geared toward the promoting of certain ethnic cultures and ideologies. I’m against any system or process that excludes rather than includes all structures of society.”

The now-infamous blackface incident was an example of ignorance and misunderstanding between ethnic groups that might have been eliminated by more receptiveness to integrated fraternities and sororities, Wilson said. When that openness is provided, he added, tensions are eased.

Shortly after the blackface skit, Wilson said, he met with the leaders of the fraternities and sororities involved and discussed black history and culture with them. He said he was gratified that the groups later wrote ads distributed on campus that promoted Black History Week.

“I’ve seen it get better,” Wilson said. “You try to turn a negative experience into a learning experience. The problem is that we don’t do this until we have a crisis.”

One subject on which most fraternities refuse to budge, however, is admitting women.

Recently, trustees at Middlebury College in Vermont said the local chapters on campus must persuade their nationals to allow them to admit women as members or lose their charters as of Dec. 31. The nationals, said Brant, don’t like it.

“We don’t see a move to coeducation as being a trend,” he said. “We still believe there is value in a support group made up of men and a separate support group made up of women. There is an equal opportunity for women to join sororities. Having that separateness presents certain benefits and values that they wouldn’t have as co-ed organizations.”

Brant said the National Interfraternity Conference would approve if a group of men and women wanted to start a new co-ed fraternity (such as one that exists at Stanford), but would draw the line at sexually integrating an existing one.

In general, said Brant, restrictions on fraternity behavior by universities and nationals is not so much a crackdown as a swing of the pendulum. Until the ‘70s, he said, colleges and nationals were seen in a stricter in loco parentis role--in place of the parents. Then, for much of the next 20 years, fraternities were allowed more freedom to function as more autonomous groups of adults.

“Now,” said Brant, “it’s not really returning to in loco parentis, but there is an attempt to influence students’ attitudes and behaviors through more supervision, policy and education, which is necessary at this point.”

At their best, fraternities have much to offer, said T. Roger Nudd, Cal State Fullerton’s former vice president of student services and currently the college’s career counselor and substance abuse education officer.

“I’ve been a supporter of fraternities for 30 or 40 years, and I fully understand the potential for good and bad,” said Nudd, who was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon in his college years.

“Because of my own fraternity experience . . . I feel the potential for good outweighs the potential for bad. There’s a great educational opportunity there, but you have to be very careful with the negative influences a fraternity can have. I believe that students can be well served in the long run.”