Wabash in the New York Times
Rift on Indiana Campus After Student Dies
November 28, 2008
By DIRK JOHNSON
CRAWFORDSVILLE, Ind. — A sort of philosophy class in a frat house, the students at Wabash College milled around a pool table in the Phi Gamma Delta house, exploring the dimensions of choice and consequence through the prism of tragedy.
“When something terrible happens, people want answers,” said John Bogucki, a lanky freshman with arms folded across his chest. “But I’m a big believer in personal responsibility.”
This was no theoretical discussion. An 18-year-old freshman, Johnny Smith, died last month while drunk at another fraternity on campus, Delta Tau Delta. In the aftermath, the college ordered Delta Tau Delta disbanded and took over the lease on its house.
Since then, Wabash, an all-male school of about 900 students known for academic rigor and a pugnacious libertarian streak (“Wabash Always Fights” is its motto), has had some contentious meetings between school officials and students over the fairness of punishing the entire fraternity. The police have filed no charges in the case, but they say the investigation continues.
“Some of the students are very upset with me,” said the college’s president, Patrick E. White, who has been holding meetings with students, alumni and parents.
Both sides in the dispute draw heavily on the college’s chief governing principle, known here as the Gentleman’s Rule. Wabash students are expected to act as gentlemen on and off campus at all times. No other rules are said to be necessary.
In Dr. White’s view, the presence of a severely intoxicated minor in a fraternity house clearly qualifies as illegal conduct that violates the behavior code. But the closing of the fraternity, he acknowledged, has been regarded by some students “as an attack on the Gentleman’s Rule.”
As some students see it, the closing of an entire fraternity before the police have even completed an investigation punishes innocent students.
To Mr. Bogucki and many others at Wabash, who say the college has always prized treating students like men, not boys, the fraternity’s disbanding without discussion with student groups “left students in the dark” and came off as patronizing.
Founded in 1832, Wabash has long enjoyed a reputation as a place where students can speak their mind, though in a respectful manner. But on this woodsy campus, set in a charming little Main Street town that could pass for the setting of a Frank Capra tale, students lately are skittish about talking about the frat house drinking episode.
Kevin Andrews, the president of Phi Gamma Delta, spoke up for his friends at the shuttered Delta Tau Delta house, saying they had been put through torment as they tried to cope with the death of a fraternity member. While younger students were allowed to stay in the house, the college evicted those 21 and older.
“They had to drop everything they were doing to find another place to live,” said Mr. Andrews, 21, who intends to go to law school or divinity school after graduation. “They had papers to write, tests to prepare for. But they were left almost unable to function academically.”
Some fraternity members, staggered by Mr. Smith’s death, complained that closing the fraternity deprived them of solace. “When they took that away it stopped us from healing,” one member, Stevan Stankovich, told the college newspaper, The Bachelor. “Instead of losing one brother, I’ve now lost 20 brothers.”
The death also provoked talk here about heavy drinking among young people.
Rick Warner, an associate dean of students, who stopped to hang out briefly with the fraternity brothers at Phi Gamma Delta the other day, said there could be little dispute that “binge drinking has increased all over the country” and that even Wabash, known for its studious, earnest student body, was not immune.
The problems of binge drinking prompted 130 college presidents this year to sign the Amethyst Initiative, calling for a discussion about whether to lower the drinking age to 18, since, they said, “21 is not working.” As it is now, said the initiative’s leader, John M. McCardell Jr., a former president of Middlebury College in Vermont, “students lock themselves in dorm rooms and do shots.”
But Dr. White, who did not sign the Amethyst petition, said events like the death of Mr. Smith showed that 18-year-olds were not old enough to handle alcohol. Lowering the drinking age, he said, “isn’t going to fix the problem.”
Since last year, alcohol has been prohibited at fraternity houses at Wabash, even for students 21 or over. But inside the Phi Gamma Delta house, many made clear that rules, laws and lectures were unlikely to stop young people from drinking.
“Teaching us that alcohol is bad,” said one student, Brian Casey, “is clearly not going to change our behavior.”
Dr. White, meanwhile, welcomes the discussion, even among detractors of school policy. He said it reflected the Gentleman’s Rule.
The Wabash man,” he said, “values the ability to think critically,” as well as act responsibly.
In all the talk about policies and laws, however, many students said they wanted to make sure one thing did not get lost: His friends miss Johnny Smith.
