I think what gets missed about greek life in general is that its just a group of students. It's not inherently more dangerous or not than any other group of college age students. In my experiences in undergrad, organizations like club rugby or even the marching band were where you seriously got hazed or had risky partying going on. Greek parties in contrast were regulated. Representatives from the interfraternity council would walk through and inspect that you had people staffing the party and supplies like water and food. Pledges would work as bouncers or watch out for people getting too ill. People who were misbehaving would get tossed out routinely for the parties open more to the public, and members showing poor behavior would also get removed from the fraternity entirely.
Its a much safer environment to party than at some random off campus house where there's no rules, no inspections, no one deciding not to party and be a bouncer, and therefore anyone is potentially wandering in off the street into the party. Ironic that the university would go so hard after these student orgs that actually do a good job managing things like underage drinking or keeping drug use from getting too out of hand, while turning a blind eye to the fact that most partying isn't even happening withing student orgs but just from random people throwing big parties in their off campus houses. Just goes to show they care more about optics and how easy it is for the media to write a hit piece on greek life than actually being pragmatic about safety.
I can totally see the logic of why the admin would want to remove them. Popular school, always in the news, greek life poses a liability, even if that liability is so small. The DEI Office is screaming because greek life is a diversity nightmare to the casual onlooker (the one writing the hit pieces, which is what they are really scared of).
The logic makes perfect sense from one line of thinking, but it's stupid because it overlooks the benefits of these places. I almost can't describe why they are beneficial, part of it is the community and part of it is just having to deal with problems and conflict.
I look at greek life as "partially structured community building". This is where a university gives you a piece of land and a building, some funding, and tells the students to figure the rest out with a framework to guide them. Inevitably there will be messy moments, but that's kind of the point, because greek life is basically a giant class on figuring out life. You drink on a tuesday afternoon on the front lawn when you're a greek so you can realize that's not a worthwhile thing to do as an adult.
> "while turning a blind eye to the fact that most partying isn't even happening withing student orgs but just from random people throwing big parties in their off campus houses"
This is overall a good argument that Greek parties aren't necessarily unsafe, but I question this reasoning. Would universities have jurisdiction to intervene in off-campus houses?
If not, even if they can't stop all potentially dangerous parties, wouldn't it still be progress to improve safety at alcohol-heavy events where universities can? In the 2020s in the United States, three deaths were related to fraternities due to overconsumption of alcohol, with many other cases in the 2000s to 2010s (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hazing_deaths_in_the_U...). It is plausible that off-campus parties could be more dangerous, but it looks like it's still an ongoing issue at Greek parties too.
Current scrutiny by universities and the media have directly led to Greek societies to want to introduce safety measures to reduce this from happening, and the scrutiny is justified by past deaths.
At my university IFC did have authority off campus. You would register your off campus address with the university. Even by the early 2010s the rules were downright fascist which made them completely unproductive imo. The univesity argued any gathering of more than 3 people in a student org constituted a student org event. Therefore, a sober game of smash bros with four greek players in a single bedroom in an off campus would be considered an event worthy of registration and inspection from IFC (obviously the letter of this law would never be followed because it couldn't practically be followed nor even enforced, but served to shift liability should anything happen at the smash bros match). IFC would have hearings for incidents that would happen at places like bars all the time too (mostly underage drinking but the occasional fist fight as well).
Its a much safer environment to party than at some random off campus house where there's no rules, no inspections, no one deciding not to party and be a bouncer, and therefore anyone is potentially wandering in off the street into the party. Ironic that the university would go so hard after these student orgs that actually do a good job managing things like underage drinking or keeping drug use from getting too out of hand, while turning a blind eye to the fact that most partying isn't even happening withing student orgs but just from random people throwing big parties in their off campus houses. Just goes to show they care more about optics and how easy it is for the media to write a hit piece on greek life than actually being pragmatic about safety.