For more than 40 percent of US presidents, the fraternity hall was an early stop on the road to the White House. Fraternal organisations, more commonly known as fraternities or frats, have a long and storied history on college campuses in the United States. One industry group, the North American Interfraternity Conference (NIC), represents 58 fraternities spread across 600 schools.
It claims nearly 200,000 undergraduate students as active members and an alumni population of 4.2 million. The draw for college-aged men is the promise of brotherhood, a bond that transcends keg parties and late-night revelry. Like sororities and other members-only student organisations, fraternities are often touted as pathways to personal, academic and professional success.
But critics argue that some fraternities have leveraged their exclusivity to encourage and normalise violence, dangling social acceptance as a reward for compliance. In September, an anonymous woman known as Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit against the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell University and seven of its members, accusing them of gang raping her during a party on the night of October 19, 2024. Doe’s sorority, Delta Delta Delta, and Cornell itself are among the co-defendants.
Her lawsuit raises questions about fraternity and sorority culture at US schools, collectively known as “Greek life” for the groups’ use of Greek lettering and symbols. Upon her admission to Cornell, Doe argues she encountered a “glorified – yet materially false and misleading – facade” for Greek life. The complaint accuses the fraternities of instead perpetuating a pattern of sexual assault and abuse.
Now a multibillion-dollar industry, fraternities in the US trace their origins to men-only clubs established at some of the country’s oldest universities. The tradition began at the College of William and Mary in 1776, when Phi Beta Kappa was founded as a secret society for debate and scholarly exchange. Its adoption of the Greek alphabet, oath of secrecy, and arcane membership rites helped establish a blueprint for future fraternities and sororities.
Often with houses of their own, fraternities eventually grew into informal extensions of the campus residential system. Historian Nicholas Syrett wrote about the origins of such groups in his book The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities. In an interview with Al Jazeera, he explained that fraternities have long embraced so-called masculine ideals.
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