A Sobering Pledge : College Fraternity Avoids All Drugs and Attracts a New Kind of Student

The spring social season was in full swing along the University of Maine’s fraternity row, with a beer bust at Phi Delta Theta, a beer and barbecue party at Sigma Nu, the usual weekend-long flood of suds at Delta Tau Delta, and at Sigma Chi, an evening of . . . milk and cookies.

“There were a lot of women here, and they all seemed to be having a great time,” said fraternity president Tyler Batteese. “It was a great success.”

It was also the group’s first social function in its new incarnation as an organization that permits no alcohol, no tobacco and no drugs stronger than aspirin on its premises.

In an undergraduate social structure where drinking is a virtual assumption, one bacchanalian blowout too many jolted Sigma Chi into a re-examination of its purposes and an overnight vow of sobriety. “We’re still going to socialize,” Batteese said. “It’s just that our events are not going to contain alcohol.”

The local chapter of Sigma Chi purports to be the nation’s first chemical-free college fraternity, and the move put the organization at the forefront of a national trend to better regulate the consumption of alcohol on campus or at least to de-emphasize its use.

But as Batteese discovered, sometimes it’s lonely at the forefront of a trend.

In the last few years, universities and colleges have been faced with a growing number of legal claims stemming from alcohol-related incidents, with insurance costs rising steadily as a result. In many cases, school administrators and student leaders alike felt it was time to put the brakes on.

Many schools in Southern California and elsewhere now require specially trained bartenders to preside at parties, and some schools are issuing identification bracelets stamped with birth dates to discourage underage drinking. Other fraternities or dormitories refuse to use communal funds to buy alcohol, relying instead on a “bring-your-own” policy. Student residences now routinely set up areas that are off-limits to alcohol. (At Colby College in Waterville, Maine, the announcement of a chemical-free dormitory produced a waiting list of students who wanted to live there.)

But although drinking on campus may be discouraged, it has by no means stopped. The “animal house” image that has long been synonymous with fraternities still flourishes.

“Drinking on college campuses is out of control,” said Jay Winsten, director of the Harvard Alcohol Project. “To try to transform a successful fraternity into a chemical-free fraternity is radical.”

Certainly that was how many of the brothers at Sigma Chi felt here last spring when the no-alcohol strategy was hastily adopted. The decision followed one especially wild-eyed party where members and guests got so loaded that the walls of the 90-year-old Sigma Chi mansion nearly tumbled down.

“The place was totally trashed,” Batteese said. Furniture was upended, windows were broken, food and drink were ground into carpets, holes were punched in walls, drapery was shredded.

The weekend-long rampage was common practice at most houses, fraternity members here insist. But this time, a young woman stepped forward to charge that she had been raped at this particular spring fling. As part of the disciplinary proceedings, university officials ordered Sigma Chi to clean up or shut down.

The edict was reinforced by an offer from the fraternity’s national charitable foundation to help foot the bill to refurbish the battered Sigma Chi building. But even that incentive was not enough to convince the majority of the chapter’s 35 members, who quit rather than see their house go chemical-free.

By the time school resumed last fall, only Batteese remained. Everyone else had quit or had been expelled for bringing booze, cigarettes or marijuana into the house.

“They’re knuckleheads,” said Batteese, who said he quickly became the fall guy for the fraternity’s new straight-laced image. “They’d like to see me have an unfortunate accident.”

Nonetheless, Batteese, a 22-year-old senior with a double major in political science and philosophy, settled in as the lone exponent of chemical-free living.

As the sole undergraduate occupant of the rambling old house, he found ample opportunity to reflect on what he believes to be the purpose of fraternal organizations in the 1990s: “This is a new era. You’ve either got to adjust to the times or you’ll die. Fraternities around the country have been taking a look at themselves and trying to figure out why are we here.

“If the purpose is to hang out together and drink,” he said, “then you have to rethink.”

This kind of logic, however, places Batteese in a minority. Without a perpetual beer keg, a fraternity is almost unimaginable, many students said.

“That’s for sure,” said Kerrie Johnson, a 21-year-old psychology major who was doing stretching exercises in front of the Delta Tau Delta house here.

“I just can’t see how they’re going to get very many people” with their no-chemicals requirements, Johnson said.

Pi Beta Phi sorority member Debbie Lebrun echoed her friend’s sentiments. “It seems like everybody who wants to join a sorority or fraternity is kind of social,” the 20-year-old psychology major said. “Alcohol just kind of makes people more social.”

To Batteese, however, the notion of excessive drinking is at odds with the kind of socializing he would like his fraternity to promote.

“There are people out there, believe it or not, who are our age and who don’t drink, or who do so responsibly,” Batteese said. He, for example, is just as likely as the next guy to head for the local watering hole and quaff a few pints. “I’m just not going to go back and throw furniture through the window,” he said.

“It’s not like I’m some kind of Prohibitionist,” Batteese continued. “I’m no fanatic. But I am fanatically committed to this idea.”

The chemical-free program intrigued M. E. Prichard, the president of the Sigma Chi Charitable Foundation in Evanston, Ill., “because I’m old enough to have been in college (when) there wasn’t beer and booze in the fraternities.” That was in the 1940s, and “we managed to survive.”

Prichard said the ideas of liability and risk-management also figured in the decision to support the chemical-free policy at the University of Maine. “They’re all time bombs out there, where there are no restrictions,” Prichard said of houses where excessive drinking goes on.

Most of the trouble he hears about on campus is “drink-related,” said Prichard. “There’s still an enormous amount of beer consumed out there.”

Dwight Rideout, the University of Maine’s dean of student services, praised Sigma Chi’s action: “We believe they’re where fraternities need to be to succeed in the ‘90s.

“We’re going to watch them very closely,” he added. “We know that if they’re successful, others will head in that direction--and we see that as very positive.”

Just in the last few months, Batteese managed to recruit 10 new members who have promised to uphold Sigma Chi’s chemical-free rules. Garrick Frost, 18, said he signed on because “I wasn’t impressed with what I saw at the other houses. I mean, guys riding bikes through the house and smoking pot all the time. I wasn’t brought up like that.”

Another new member, Andrew Dionne, 18, said he thought four years of beer busts was a good way to waste his college education. But, he added: “We’re not saying we’re a bunch of stiffs. We’ve said that this is a chemical-free house, not that we’re chemical-free guys.”

As for whether the absence of wild parties may mean that this Greek house will become known as a geek house, Sigma Chi pledge Brian Feldman, 18, said: “People who say that don’t know us. If they don’t take the time to find out what we’re about, who cares what they think?”

Batteese is proud to lead a tour through his group’s renovated residence. The huge bar and “kegolator system” that once occupied the entire basement have been replaced with a library and TV area. Second-floor study areas now include desks for each member and a large computer room.

“Desks, now there’s a novel idea,” Batteese said ironically. “There used to be one desk in this whole house.”

Batteese is off to law school this fall at the University of Miami. His early acceptance may have resulted from his essay about standing by one’s principles in a time of crisis. Surprise, said Batteese: It was all about a fraternity that decided to do away with drugs and alcohol.