Fraternities continue to grow despite scandals.

Membership in the 6000 frat houses nationwide is up 46% in the last 8 years.
http://chronicle.com/article/Fraternities-Ranks-Swell-at/230443/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Why?  I'm sure there are many proposed explanations.  Thinking back a half century to my decision to pledge Phi Psi at F&M, I think it was the belonging --- not the booze --- that attracted me.  Frankly, we never had any difficulty getting alcohol.  In fact, our RA allowed us to set up a keg in our residence hall before heading home for Christmas in my freshman year.  When we couldn't kill the keg, we poured the remnant on the linoleum floor and surfed the hallway.  No, it wasn't the alcohol, although there was plenty of that, including ten-cent beers from a vending machine in our party/pool room.  No, it was the belonging, I feel sure.

Student Life professionals have tried for decades to find suitable substitutes for Greek life.  Yet it not only persists, but prospers.  They have tried to drive it out --- as happened at F&M in the 1980s --- succeeding only in driving it underground.  It has gotten many a bad rap, most recently the journalistic travesty perpetrated against none other than Phi Psi by Rolling Stone Magazine.  And still it flourishes.

The criticize the hazing.  I got my nose broken.  A fellow pledge suffered two broken arms (an accident... honest).  In another house that same year, deltas were burned on the pledges' chests with cigars.  Nobody dropped out.

There must be something special about it that no other alternative student organization can quite match.  Many administrators can't quite get their minds around that... or refuse to try.  But there seems to be no arguing with success.