So for example, I joined the Society of Physics Students even though I was not a physicist, or even a physics major. I was accepted by the Sports Car Club even though I drove a VW. The Chess Club would have accepted me even if I didn’t know how to play the game. All student organizations at USF were, by University regulation, open to all students–except fraternities and sororities.

I believe we all have the human and constitutional right to associate with whomever we please, and we also have the right to not associate with those with whom we do not want to. But I have the right, and I believe, the obligation, not to participate in groups that feel that way.

The USF fraternities and sororities I remember from almost 40 years ago restricted their membership, that is, you asked to join after being sponsored by a member, you had to pass a “rush” or “pledge” procedure that involved silly public humiliation rituals and private initiation and secret hazing ceremonies. Presumably, this was to demonstrate that the applicant was a “good sport”. My opinion was that it forced the pledge to become complicit in that humiliation, and gave him the right to inflict it on others once he or she was accepted. Its a lot like membership in a street gang, another kind of exclusive adolescent band. Admittance was determined by vote of the membership. It was rumored (Greeks never publicized their admission requirements) that even one dissenting vote was sufficient to blackball an applicant. Tough luck if you weren’t “cool” enough.

But like I said, that was four decades ago, and I never engaged in the program myself. Things may be different now.

I started at the height of the Civil Rights movement, and came back from the Navy in time to see the aftermath of the MLK assassination and the riots, Black Power and the Panthers. I never experienced this kind of overt, vicious, proud bigotry on campus, not even from the frat rats, who for the most part, shared our liberal views on race relations. It was the Deep South, and the universities were an archipelago of tolerance in a sea of hate and racism, in spite of the political and cultural turmoil of the times. Even during my stint in the service, I was pleasantly shocked to see how the military was systematically and successfully combating Jim Crow and racial discrimination. I went from a society that was brutally segregated to one I was very proud of, in just a few years, my most formative and impressionable years.

These are not a gang of knuckle-dragging bigots in a small Southern backwater. Or a Ferguson-style police racket extorting traffic fines from black motorists, shooting one occasionally to keep them intimidated. These are our finest, prosperous university students from “good families”, educated, privileged, upper and middle class young people training for leadership positions in our business and commercial elites.