Responsible drinking applies to all students
While I agree with Dan Occhipinti that President Frohnmayer infringed on individual rights by forcing University fraternities to go dry (“Frohnmayer’s dry frat policy is a riot,” ODE, Oct. 8), I found his claim that the decision directly influenced last month’s riot disconcerting.
Occhipinti argues that fraternity members’ “accountability forces these men to take personal responsibility” for their parties while non-greek parties have “little control and almost no personal liability.”
The notion that greeks exhibit responsibility beyond the capacity of non-greeks is, I think, insulting to the majority of the student body. Students from this same greek community argued last spring that frats should stay dry because their members would inevitably contribute to a rise in DUI when forced to drink at off-campus residences.
Furthermore, the last two highly publicized, alcohol-related deaths at major universities in this state both occurred during greek functions at Oregon State University. These are hallmarks of neither responsibility nor accountability.
If Occhipinti’s notion that former frat partygoers simply flock to house parties is correct, who’s to say that the same riot would not have occurred during a greek function? At a wet fraternity, these same students would still have been loaded with booze, and I doubt that a fraternity’s president or “risk management officer” could have prevented them from spilling into the street. There may not be a bonfire-ready traffic circle outside the Lambda Chi house, but that’s the only difference I see between drunken public assembly at greek and non-greek residences.

Zach Mull

junior, journalism