Most of the controversy surrounding a new set of rules the University of Virginia is forcing on its fraternities — a revised Fraternity Operating Agreement — have concerned its effort to micro-manage the alcoholic and sexual behavior of fraternity members and their guests, such as requiring at least three “sober” brothers at social functions, specifying the types of alcohol that can be served to how many and in what sorts of containers, requiring one of the sober brothers to stand (at the bottom or the top) of stairs leading to bedrooms and presumably do something — determine informed consent, perhaps? — since the “sober brother charged with monitoring the stairs must have immediate key access to each room in the fraternity house during the social function.” If something untoward happens in one of those rooms, is the “sober brother” liable? The fraternity? The University?
I discussed these new rules in an essay this week on Minding The Campus. Since that essay was posted, as I noted here, two UVa fraternities, Alpha Tau Omega and Kappa Alpha, have refused to sign the new terms. As Bloomberg News reported yesterday:
UVA violated an existing fraternity operating agreement by suspending their activities in November, using the suspension as leverage to force changes that create new liability for the groups, the fraternities said in separate statements. Kevin O’Neill, a lawyer for the two frats, said they will continue operating and plan to initiate new members this semester.
“The fact is the university has never acknowledged that they made a mistake in suspending 25 percent of the student body that had nothing to do with an article that proved to be erroneous,” said O’Neill, an attorney at Squire Patton Boggs in Washington. “The university has not apologized and has not explained why they took this action.”
Although I noted in my original essay that according to the newly imposed rules at least “3 brothers must be sober and lucid at each fraternity function” (emphasis added), even adding that I was impressed “with the requirement that a few responsible brothers be not only sober but ‘lucid,’” I don’t think the significance of this new lucidity requirement has been sufficiently appreciated.
First, I think it may well be the first of its kind. I am not aware that the University of Virginia — or, for that matter, any other university — has ever required any of its students, or faculty, or staff to be “lucid” at any university function or activity. I wonder, for example, whether the AAUP has ever ruled on whether professors can be required to be lucid during faculty meetings or even in the classroom. In any event a number of questions come to mind:
- Does the three-member sobriety/lucidity requirement apply only to fraternities, or to sororities as well? If the former, does that amount to illegal sex discrimination under Title IX or other civil rights laws?
- Has UVa defined “lucid” and created instruments — tests? questionnaires? oral interviews? — to determine its presence or absence?
- How can the requirement of lucidity be enforced? Will UVa security personnel be empowered to apply lucidity tests at fraternity social functions? If not, is the new lucidity requirement anything more than a grandstanding gesture?
And yet … perhaps in her heated over-reaction to Rolling Stone‘s false rape fiasco UVa President Teresa Sullivan has finally stumbled on something worthwhile. How novel, after all, if a major American university actually implemented a lucidity requirement, even if (initially?) limited to three sober fraternity members at a time.
