IN RECENT YEARS, FRATERNITIES AND sororities have become synonymous with partying, often to extremes: reports of binge drinking and sexual assault have led some schools, including Harvard and Penn State, to discuss banning Greek life altogether. Yet in their early days, fraternities and sororities served a more practical purpose.
At issue was a housing crunch. In the 19th century, as universities expanded their offerings, there wasn’t enough living space for the influx of new students, says Nicholas L. Syrett, author of The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities. The first frat houses, like the one built in 1876 at the University of California, Berkeley, offered a fix. By allowing students to live in those spaces, colleges could enroll more students without investing in housing. Syrett found that…