Over the spring and summer of 2024, a seemingly innocuous incident involving fraternity members protecting an American flag from protesters at the University of North Carolina was seized upon by a handful of fraternity executives who felt that their behavior was a laudable demonstration of civic virtue. The fraternity members were praised on social media and in the pages of the Wall Street Journal and invited to have a spectacle made of them at the Republican National Convention.
What happened next was all too predictable. Copycat behavior by fraternity members on other campuses was anything but virtuous. The worst example of this was at the University of Mississippi, where a fraternity member was filmed taunting a Black female protester by hopping from foot to foot and grunting like an ape. While that member was quickly expelled from his fraternity, the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP has also identified two other fraternity members as engaging in behavior that was equally problematic – taunting a Black female protestor by calling her, among other things “Lizzo,” presumably in reference to her weight and skin color, and chanting “lock her up.”
Fraternities becoming openly associated with the MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) movement is something that should concern everyone involved in the fraternity industry. My colleague Joshua Schutts and I have spent the last few years studying the intersection of fraternity culture and political ideology. Extending the work of Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations theory, which examines the moral roots of political ideology, Josh and I found a number of problematic relationships between political conservatism and fraternity social and hazing culture.
In our research, we have found that political conservatism has strong and predictive relationships with hazing motivations designed to reinforce group hierarchy, power dynamics, and in-group loyalty. Conservatism is correlated with tolerance of more severe forms of hazing. It is correlated with increased concern with campus social hierarchies, alcohol use, and moral disengagement. As fraternity chapters become more politically conservative, problematic attitudes and behaviors around hazing and social culture worsen.
This is especially problematic given the fact that fraternity members increasingly self-identify as conservative. Between 2019 and 2024, in a national sample of nearly 50,000 fraternity members representing 12 national fraternities, the percentage of fraternity members who identify as “very liberal” or “liberal” has fallen from 19 percent to 12 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage of fraternity members who identify as “very conservative” or “conservative” has swelled to over 43 percent. Even prior to these recent counter-protests, fraternities were rapidly becoming more conservative.
If the fraternity industry makes the decision to cheer on fraternity members staking out a position on the far right of the campus culture wars, they should do so with a clear understanding of the potential repercussions. This is especially true as we enter what promises to be a tense and hotly contested presidential election. If fraternities, through their behavior, become increasingly associated with Trumpism and right-wing political activism, that will have a significant impact on the pipeline of students joining. It would be reasonable to expect that, in this environment, fraternities would become increasingly monolithic–less racially diverse, less socio-economically diverse, and less politically diverse. In other words, we risk the danger of college fraternities becoming conservative echo chambers. If that happens, we need to be prepared to address the changing hazing and social cultures that will inevitably follow.
It is often said that one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. I think this is especially true in this conversation. If one or two fraternity chapters on a campus decide to take on the banner of the Proud Boys and engage in the type of “activism” we saw at Ole Miss, then it is reasonable to expect that this could taint the entire brand of fraternities on that campus. Even those chapters that find such behavior repulsive would have their reputations damaged as a result. Ultimately, this means fewer members, particularly on campuses where student bodies are becoming increasingly racially and socioeconomically diverse.
I would love nothing more than to see college fraternity men come forward and engage in meaningful, thoughtful, civil dialogue about the issues happening in the world. What we have seen in recent months is not any of those things. If fraternity members want to engage in the important conversations happening all around them, there are numerous ways for them to do that. But showing up as roving bands of vigilante campus patriots reeks of Proud Boy thuggery, not civic virtue. What happened at Ole Miss should not be lauded–it should be categorically disavowed. I hope fraternity leaders will utilize this opportunity to engage their membership in conversations about how fraternity men can be civically engaged in ways that add value to these conversations. We can build a fraternity experience around political diversity and utilize fraternity as one of the few spaces in American society where people with different beliefs can actually sit down and learn from one another. I feel strongly that fraternities offer one of the best opportunities on college campuses for students with differing worldviews to connect with and learn from one another. If we allow fraternity chapters to become monolithic conservative echo chambers, that opportunity may be lost forever.
About the Author
Dr. Gentry McCreary is the CEO and managing partner of Dyad Strategies. Gentry’s work experience has been in fraternity and sorority advising and student conduct. His award-winning research examines the psychology of hazing, the moral development of college students, and the roots of fraternal brotherhood and sisterhood.
