Bloomsburg ends association with fraternities and sororities

Bloomsburg University, a public university in Pennsylvania, announced on May 13 that it is terminating its relationship with all fraternities and sororities formerly associated with the school.

The announcement came days after sophomore Leah Burke reportedly died after an incident outside a fraternity house. A spokesman told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the university’s decision was unrelated to Burke’s death, which the county coroner said “is not considered suspicious nor was it trauma related, and nothing nefarious was involved.”

Although Burke’s death was not blamed on the fraternity, it was not the first fatal incident in which a Bloomsburg fraternity was involved. In 2019, a freshman named Justin King was found dead after consuming large amounts of alcohol in an alleged hazing incident. King’s family sued the fraternity and sorority allegedly involved, claiming that the accused students “negligently and/or recklessly coerced, encouraged or otherwise caused unauthorized Bloomsburg University pledges, including freshman Justin King, to consume life-threatening amounts of alcohol.”

The university was not a subject of the litigation and implemented a “zero-tolerance policy” for misbehavior in Greek organizations in December 2019.

In January 2021, university president Bashar Hanna sent a letter to Bloomsburg’s Greek-involved students, warning that “any future significant violation of Greek specific rules or Code of Conduct violations will result in the cancellation of the entire FSL community at Bloomsburg University.”

In response to the January letter, Zach Greenberg of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) claimed that Hanna’s warning threatened students’ First Amendment rights.

“If Bloomsburg truly wants to better its Greek life system, it may want to consider punishing the students and groups that have actually broken university rules,” Greenberg wrote. “For whatever ails its fraternities and sororities, punishing the innocent cannot be the cure.”

Greenberg sees the University’s May 13 decision to disaffiliate from all Greek organizations, regardless of conduct, as another assault on students’ associational freedoms.

“Bloomsburg’s decision derecognizes over a dozen groups with hundreds of student members, limiting their expressive and associational rights, and hindering their ability to meaningfully engage with the university community. Without university recognition, these groups lose access to university resources and the various benefits reserved for recognized student groups,” he told RealClearEducation.

Bloomsburg’s decision also disappointed representatives of the North American Interfraternity Conference (NIC), a trade association of 58 national and international fraternities affiliated with two Bloomsburg fraternities. NIC sent RealClearEducation a statement expressing its frustration with the university’s decision.

“We are disappointed by the University’s decision to end support of fraternity and sorority life without meaningful dialogue or collaboration. We believe students are best served and held accountable through collaboration between host institutions, inter/national fraternities and advisors,” the group said.

It’s not clear how and why Bloomsburg’s decision to disassociate from all Greek organizations regardless of group conduct was made. Asked about the process by which the school reached its decision, spokesman Thomas McGuire told RealClearEducation that it “was a University administrative decision” and declined to comment further.

Greenberg argued that the public university’s decision to disaffiliate from all Greek-life organizations violated the spirit of the First Amendment.

“Bloomsburg University appears to have terminated its Greek life program based on allegations of misconduct against individual students or specific groups. If so, the university’s guilt-by-association approach is antithetical to the First Amendment and fundamental fairness,” he said.

Greek-involved students across the country regularly report being subject to guilt-by-association, according to RealClearEducation’s Survey of Greek-Letter Organizations. Sixty-eight percent of the more than 4,500 Greek-involved students surveyed said that they sometimes or very often felt as though entire student groups were punished for the misdeeds of one student or a small group of students.

To Greenberg, guilt-by-association is not only an immoral principle but an impractical one.

“Rather than punishing innocent students by banning an entire category of student groups,” he said, “Bloomsburg should only discipline those found responsible for violating university rules.”

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