Confrontation

Since my freshman year at Wisconsin, I have been a member of a fraternity. I’m not very active in the house these days, probably couldn’t even pick all of the brothers out of a line-up and haven’t been to a Greek community event since, well, my freshman year. But the fraternity has always been very good to me, the guys are all exceptionally warm and wonderful people and some of my closest friends are also members of the house. So when I am asked to help out with something, I do my best to lend a hand.

Without getting into details – for fear that this will dissolve into an Animal House-style commentary – I will simply say that the fraternity has recently been charged with violating various minor (and allow me to emphasize "minor") campus rules and is now facing the Greek judicial board. I was asked to help represent the house before this committee and did so in a hearing last week.

As things would have it, a Greek judicial board hearing at the University of Wisconsin is a touch 17th century in nature when it comes to a question of rights. The accusations being made against my fraternity are hearsay – which is to say that the person lodging them is not the alleged victim, but rather a University-employed intermediary (whose credibility I do not, for a second, mean to even suggest is in question). Hearsay isn’t admissible in legal courts under most circumstances for rather obvious reasons – the ability of someone with foul or confused motives to take advantage of someone with honest intentions is far too great; people should be able to question the source of comments.

But my fraternity can’t do that because the school won’t tell us who it is that has made these accusations in the first place. We have only the hearsay witness to confront, as our genuine accuser is entirely anonymous. Suffice it to say he/she cannot be cross-examined by members of the judicial board, let alone by one of my fraternity brothers or me.

If this school-sanctioned proceeding (occurring on university property with a university employee present at all times) were anything less than a marsupial convention, the 6th amendment’s principles – if not its actual text – would surely be in play. A right to confront one’s accuser is paramount in this country. But no such justice will be found within the Wisconsin Greek system.

I am still toying with the question of whether or not the constitution does indeed apply. After all, the Bill of Rights adheres to states as well as the federal government, Wisconsin is one such state, UW is part of the state and, as I have already mentioned, UW is largely conducting this hearing. The fraternity and sorority system is, of course, a collection of private clubs, but it would seem that if we are to be made to play by the school’s rules, we should at least be afforded the protections of those otherwise entangled with the state of Wisconsin.

In reality, a fraternity’s campus hearing is incredibly petty when juxtaposed to the more macroscopic concerns of a school, city, state or country. But for people who live in a fraternity house – as I once did – such proceedings are indeed of some relative significance. Financial fines, community service and punishments of the like are all on the table and each would affect the livelihood of the group’s many members, no matter how directly or indirectly.

I don’t know what the outcome of the hearings will be. Though I represented the house the first time around, a second hearing has been scheduled and I may not be available to appear. At some point this week, though, I will get a phone call from my fraternity’s president and the outcome will be relayed to me. But, to be honest, I am not sure that it is this outcome I care about most at this point. While I would love to see my house get off the hook, I am a touch more concerned about the system in which we are being tried. It seems simply un-American.

And so, reaching equally for hyperbole and absurdity, but with just a touch of realistic irony, I conclude with one of the great line’s from Animal House:

But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!