HAZED AND CONFUSED
ON A WEDNESDAY in mid-October, the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity near the University of California’s Berkeley campus looks all but deserted. The heavy wooden doors are shut and there’s not a “Fiji” in sight. This house was bustling, though, on the previous Saturday. Cal’s football team was playing UCLA, and the front lawn and wide concrete staircases were crowded with students, parents, and alumni drinking and socializing. On the sidewalk out front stood a small group of protesters bearing signs, such as “Boycott Frats” and “Frat Brothers Are 300% More Likely To Commit Sexual Assault.”
Predictably, the Fijis gave the protesters some shit—several bros posed mockingly around the sign-bearers for a photo that eventually found its way to Walker Spence, a senior who had abandoned his fraternity because he was tired of making “excuses for my own complicity.” Spence posted the photo on Facebook. “Men in our society have, especially recently, shown that they couldn’t give a shit about victims of sexual assault,” he wrote. “The privilege and sociopathic lack of empathy displayed in this image is profoundly upsetting.” Soon the editorial board of the was weighing in: “Greek life is insular, archaic and toxic,” the student paper wrote.
