Harvard University’s Phi Beta Kappa society in 1893

It has been a rough few years for fraternities. In March of 2012, Rolling Stone published a much-discussed account of the supposed hazing and binge-drinking rituals of a fraternity at Dartmouth College. Two years later, Caitlin Flanagan wrote a feature article in The Atlantic, “The Dark Power of Fraternities,” cataloguing their various depravities and concluding that they are a “grossly outdated” institution. In the summer of that same year, Andrew Lohse, the Dartmouth student featured in the Rolling Stone article, released a memoir, Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy, which Publishers Weekly said shed light on the “tribal stupidity of young men.” Then the University of Virginia fraternity Phi Kappa Psi was thrown into the national spotlight, again by Rolling Stone, when its members allegedly gang-raped a woman named “Jackie”—an infamous work of fabrication that has now been thoroughly discredited, but not before further damaging the reputation of frat boys everywhere. To a large extent, the media has been successful in establishing a negative image of fraternities, one that often depicts fraternities and sexual assault as two sides of the same coin.

There are indeed examples of unacceptable behavior by fraternity members. Early in March, a video surfaced of members of the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon at Oklahoma University singing a horrific racist chant that claimed black students would never be allowed to join their fraternity, and also referred to lynching black students.