Cristobal Young is Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. Dan Hirschman is Associate Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. They can be reached at cristobal.young@cornell.edu and dan.hirschman@cornell.edu.
Cornell’s own leaders have acknowledged that its Greek Life system has “a persistent culture of misconduct.”
Cornell has suspended or revoked recognition of fraternities 28 times since 2008, involving 25 distinct fraternities. That amounts to roughly one or two suspensions a year. Hazing was the most common reason, sometimes involving sexual humiliation and coercion. Dangerous drinking practices also featured prominently, both in hazing and in other violations. We compiled a list of all 28 cases, drawing primarily on Cornell's own records. Of the 29 currently recognized fraternities, 11 have returned after losing recognition, including Sigma Alpha Epsilon, whose recognition was revoked after a student died in a hazing ritual in which he was bound with zip ties, made to drink until he lost consciousness and left unattended.
The accompanying list documents each case and links to the underlying records. Note that despite the prevalence of sexual assaults at fraternities, as far as we can tell, Chi Phi is one of only two cases in our list where Cornell’s action was tied to an alleged sexual assault.
This pattern looks like a game of regulatory whac-a-mole: misconduct is a structural feature of the system, followed by an annual ritual of disciplining one of the chapters that gets caught. A fraternity is suspended or loses recognition for a few years, while the larger system absorbs the loss and continues much as before. What looks like a stern punishment for an individual fraternity becomes, from the perspective of the Greek system as a whole, the cost of doing business: a few glasses get smashed, but the bar stays open.
Cornell has repeatedly punished fraternities while preserving the institutional arrangement that keeps reproducing the problem. Chapter-by-chapter enforcement is not enough; deeper structural changes are needed. We need a system that fosters social connections while uprooting the conditions that enable abuse and violence.
What we find surprising is how accepting the campus has been of gender segregation in this institution that controls so much of social life on campus. Cornell is the only Ivy League university founded on the principle of co-education; and yet exclusive, male-only residential organizations dominate the infrastructure of social life on campus.
Fraternity members occupy and control the space and young women enter as guests; men control admission, alcohol, party rules and access to private spaces. Scholars of sexual assault have long identified this asymmetry as a core problem: Fraternity men “have a home turf advantage, know each other better than the women present know each other, see the women as anonymous, and control desired resources.” The result is a party scene organized around an ancient logic, ‘you’re in my house, you follow my rules.’
The problem seems well understood by many on campus. As one student wrote in a 2025 Cornell Health survey, “Everything about the way [frat parties] are structured endangers women: events at their house where they control alcohol, hard to leave bc you are in a building they own/are familiar with/filled with their friends who would cover for them.”
Students also describe feeling funneled into the Greek Life scene by the lack of alternatives. One student wrote, “Being in Greek Life is borderline necessary to have a decent social life here.” More vividly, another wrote: “It feels like if you want to party, there nowhere else to go but, ‘rape club,’ as my friends call it.”
Strikingly, even the student president of Cornell’s Interfraternity Council, back in 2019, attributed sexual harassment to “structural inequalities in how these parties are set up,” where fraternities host the parties and “sororities don’t really have much agency.”
The University has stated that fraternities and sororities are “extensions of Cornell's educational environment,” and are empowered by the University to help structure campus life. Indeed, our dataset shows many of the houses are owned by Cornell, including 11 out of the 28 houses involved in suspensions and revocations. Three of the most disturbing cases — the death of George Desdunes (Sigma Alpha Epsilon 2011), the death of Antonio Tsialas (Phi Kappa Psi 2019) and the alleged sexual assault at Chi Phi (2024) — were tied to Cornell-owned fraternity houses. Continuing this system in its present form seems incompatible with Cornell’s responsibility to the safety and wellbeing of its students.
A different model comes from one of our peer institutions. Princeton does not permit fraternities or sororities as “they do not add in positive ways to the overall residential experience on the campus.” The eating clubs on campus serve a parallel social function, but with two key differences: they are non-residential and provide meals. They still maintain and create social connections and host parties and events, but nobody lives there. More importantly, the eating clubs are all co-ed: Men and women join and manage the eating clubs together, rather than the set up of the Greek system, which physically separates students by gender and gives men the power to control the party scene on their terms.
We need to change social life on campus. End the gender-segregated system and bring Cornell into the modern era. Keep the houses. Keep the social clubs. But remove them from the residential system and make membership co-ed. Call on alumni to help found a new generation of co-ed social clubs. Put an end to the power imbalance between male hosts and female guests. Preserve a vibrant social life while leaving its outdated and toxic traditions behind.
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