Research Blog #2: Scouting the Territory

While doing research for my previous topic, I realized that though I am currently accruing student loan debt, it was not a topic that I looked forward to writing a research paper on. This made me sit and really think of a topic surrounding the college experience that really interested me. I know myself, and if I am not passionate about something I won't be able to write about it. Thinking about something a bit more close to home, I want to talk about the disparities of the treatment of historically black (members of the National Pan-Hellenic Council) and white fraternities (members of the INTERFRATERNITY COUNCIL) by universities. This idea came to me recently with the death of Rutgers student Caitlin Kovacs (who was a previous resident of mine). While Caitlin's death is certainly a sad topic, I was more appalled by the way that the situation was presented in the news and other media. In the newspaper article that I read it was relayed that Caitlin's death was not surely alcohol related. It stated that she was attending a "small" "friendly" gathering at a fraternity house (a primarily Caucasian fraternity house) on College Avenue. There was even a quote from the president of the fraternity in the article. More telling, that fraternity is still active on campus although a student was found dead in their Rutgers-issued house. I challenge whether the same actions would have been taken if this incident were to have occurred in a historically black fraternity house (we wouldn't know because there are barely any historically black fraternities on this campus and NONE of them are issued a house through Rutgers University).

While I have been able to find information on both the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) and the INTERFRATERNITY COUNCIL (IFC), I have not really found a lot of articles that compare the treatment of either group by universities. I am afraid that if I can't find more of this information I will begin making claims and inferences in my paper, without scholarly information to support it.

 

I have listed some of the resources I have found below:

 

Ray, R. (2013). Fraternity life at predominantly white universities in the US: the saliency of race. Ethnic & Racial Studies, 36(2), 320. doi:10.1080/01419870.2012.676201

 

Ruffins, P. (1999). `Greek' Pride and Pain. Black Issues In Higher Education, 16(13), 103.

 

Gerstein, R., & Gerstein, L. (2013). Control of Local Fraternities and Sororities by Colleges and National Fraternities: Liability and Regulatory Issues. Campus Safety & Student Development, 15(1), 7.

 

When I type in my topic into google I did find many articles on hazing in both NPHC and IFC fraternities. I read a lot on the differences and similarities in of the groups and found that they differ more among region than between groups. As I didn't find a lot of information on my particular research question, I didn't any sure fire controversies, but from reading and being a black college student I can tell that some controversies might lie between whether or not it NPHC fraternities are truly more dangerous than IFC fraternities. Some may argue that the groups are treated differently because of the difference in age (IFC fraternities existed over 60 years before NPHC).

 

I am really looking forward to doing more research on this topic.