I used to recruit men into fraternity life for a living. As an assistant director of growth for an international fraternity, I started chapters, recruited members, worked with universities, advised chapters, and helped handle discipline.

I took that job because I believed fraternity and sorority life could make people better. I still believe they can, but I have also seen how easily those letters can become something people hide behind.

That is what I have been thinking about while reading about Chi Phi at Cornell.

A former student has accused seven current and former fraternity members in a civil lawsuit of sexually assaulting her at the Chi Phi house in October 2024.

The Tompkins County district attorney reopened the criminal inquiry this week. No one has been criminally charged.

Chi Phi says its Cornell chapter voted to remove men three days after the woman spoke with police.

The national organization says that response went beyond what Cornell or the law required. That may show speed, but speed is not the same thing as accountability.

Expulsion Is Not the Finish Line

There are circumstances in which a fraternity has no choice but to remove a member, particularly when safety is at stake. But expulsion can also become the cleanest institutional escape hatch available.

The fraternity can say he is no longer a brother, and the university can remove a student from campus. Everyone creates distance from the person at the center of the crisis, but removing someone does not address the conduct, the culture that may have enabled it, or the harm left behind.

If fraternities are serious when they say their mission is to develop men, then they should ask what they taught, what they missed, what they tolerated, and whether their own culture helped unacceptable — or criminal — behavior flourish.

That does not mean keeping someone as a member after serious misconduct. It means refusing to pretend that revoking membership erases an institution’s obligation to examine itself, cooperate with investigators, support those who report harm, and address the behavior that led to removal.

In the fraternity I worked for, headquarters had broad authority on paper. We could halt operations, work with universities, impose discipline, and send staff to campus, but we could not stand inside every chapter house every night.

That is why culture matters more than a rule book hundreds or thousands of miles away.

We Need to Educate Our Sons

“Brotherhood” was probably the word I heard most in fraternity life. It was the promise we sold: these men would become friends who challenged, supported, and helped you grow.

I have fraternity brothers I can call today and know they will answer. I value those relationships, but I have also seen how easily “brotherhood” can become “protect him because he is one of us.” It can become silence because speaking up might embarrass the chapter, or loyalty twisted into permission to shield someone from consequences.

That is not brotherhood, it is cowardice dressed up as loyalty.

Brotherhood should mean confronting another man when he is wrong, intervening before a bad situation becomes dangerous, and reporting behavior that needs to be reported even when doing so costs someone you care about.

We spend an enormous amount of time telling people to protect their daughters. We need to spend much more time educating our sons.

Cornell’s 2025 campus survey found nonconsensual sexual contact reported by 52% of Greek-affiliated women, compared with 29% of women who were not Greek-affiliated. A presidential task force later recommended required in-person consent education for members.

Those numbers should end the comforting fiction that Greek-life misconduct deserves our attention only when a case becomes a national headline.

I Helped Build This System

My job was growth, and growth means numbers. You want another chapter, another recruitment class, and more members wearing the letters. That pressure has consequences when recruiting moves faster than education.

My fraternity had systems for removing members over conduct, academics, and other problems. I saw men hold one another accountable as an undergraduate and later as a professional.

Still, I hesitate to call myself proud of every part of that work because I have carried one fear since leaving it: What if a man I recruited someday ends up in a headline for the worst possible reason?

I hope I recruited well and taught something worthwhile. I also know I was not there every night, and neither is an international headquarters. That is not an excuse. It is why organizations should be far more serious about whom they recruit and what they teach.

The allegations at Cornell will be tested through the legal process. Cornell has said its internal process resulted in expulsions and suspensions, while Chi Phi says its chapter removed members shortly after the report was made.

Neither fact should end the conversation. A fraternity cannot promise brotherhood for life, celebrate members when they bring credit to the letters, and then act as though those letters become meaningless the moment a member brings shame to them.

Your actions are not hidden behind brotherhood or sisterhood. Letters are not armor, and loyalty is not permission to look away.

If fraternity life is supposed to build better people, then it has to prove that when doing so is hardest. Otherwise, brotherhood is not a principle at all, just branding.

About the Author

Anthony W. Haddad is a Fresno-based reporter and columnist best known for the award-winning Millennial View column series. He covers a wide range of topics, from pressing local issues and community concerns to the everyday challenges and experiences facing millennials today.

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