Greek life is putting people’s lives at risk, and we are letting them | The Soapbox

How many UC Berkeley students have to die before Greek life is regulated? Apparently, more than one.

George Mauricio Salinas drowned at an Alpha Delta Phi party where, according to a lawsuit, more than 300 people were present in a house with a 200-person limit. The lawsuit alleges he died in a pool full of soap with no lifeguard, safety coordinator or sober monitor.

Last year, during Cal Day, Bandna Bhatti, a senior studying data science, fell 14 feet from a balcony at Phi Kappa Tau. She suffered severe spinal injury, scapular fracture and traumatic brain injury according to a GoFundMe posted by her family.

A lawsuit against the fraternity alleges that a member of the frat told Bhatti’s friends that she needed to be removed from the fraternity’s property so the chapter wouldn’t get in trouble. 911 wasn’t called until approximately seven hours later. The lawsuit also alleges that Phi Kappa Tau has been aware that the fire escape and balcony were unsafe under city standards since 2016.

Every Cal 1 Card includes a quoted segment of UC Berkeley’s honor code. In it, you swear to “act with honesty, integrity, and respect for others.” Every student organization is expected to submit a constitution with an antihazing clause in order to protect members. Presumably, everyone is to be held to this same standard.

Yet UC Berkeley has adopted a lax attitude toward fraternity misconduct, evidenced by the fact that both Phi Kappa Tau and Alpha Delta Phi continue to be recognized by UC Berkeley and have active CalLink pages.

Campus spokesperson Lindsey Michels previously said in an email to The Daily Californian that UC Berkeley is “committed to the safety of all students,” adding that recognized chapters receive “resources and education on sexual assault, alcohol abuse and hazing.”

However, she also stated that campus didn’t take conduct action, such as probation or fines, against Alpha Delta Phi after Mauricio Salinas’ death, and that UC Berkeley has placed no restrictions on the chapter’s operations and events.

So in the same backyard, with the same pool where Mauricio Salinas died, Alpha Delta Phi is still hosting events such as its “Cowboy Cookout” and “Rodeo.” The fraternity has kept its recognition by the school and continued life as normal.

Such negligence is hardly an isolated problem. Beyond these high-profile incidents, Greek life has long fostered a culture of hazing, in which dangerous behavior is condoned as part of tradition. Many fraternities have been caught hazing recently, and it is only a matter of time until others will have to face the music.

Fraternities take advantage of freshmen searching for community and use that desire to get them to do the active members’ bidding. It is a blatant display of unearned power, and it is bullying.

In 2025, the Chinese Finance Club was found to have violated policies against hazing and alcohol during an off-campus retreat when its members were forced to eat, drink underage and play drinking games. As a consequence, the club faced social probation, disciplinary probation and a monetary fine. Sigma Chi faced similar consequences for its conduct in 2025 after an investigation found that it was engaged in hazing that left a pledge hospitalized.

This doesn’t look like proportionate justice. Why would a fraternity hospitalizing a fellow student not be penalized in the same way as the Chinese Finance Club’s conduct that did not lead to serious physical harm? Campus’s disciplinary actions seem to hold Greek life to a lower standard.

The fact that a few fraternities have been caught does not mean that UC Berkeley has taken steps to address the root cause of the issue. Most of its “prevention” is reactive, which is why these incidents continue to occur. Hazing has become institutionalized and normalized. The extent of UC Berkeley’s efforts to contain it is limited to a risk management plan and an antihazing training module. Taking an antihazing course that students can cheat their way through does not send an actual message. To many, it is just the cost of doing business.

Real accountability would be spontaneous audits wherein the houses would have to meet all safety standards and follow the sorority model of having a live-in house director. Regardless of whether or not it occurs inside or outside of Greek life, we must work toward a future where the frat-specific bystanderism that has plagued UC Berkeley is followed by severe academic sanctions and discipline.

If this is not implemented, then we are back to square one, with UC Berkeley continuing to react to incidents that could have been prevented. Fraternities cannot be trusted to regulate themselves, which gets into a deeper issue: The problem is the premise of the fraternity itself.

Frat houses can be the petri dish, with the perfect conditions to breed harm. A fraternity is a house full of people who are hazed into submission, with alcohol everywhere and an unspoken commitment to the principle that whatever happens in a frat stays in the frat. It is an unspoken, die-hard loyalty, a don’t ask, don’t tell policy, a shocking lack of accountability and a feeling of entitlement that creates a situation in which harm can occur.

This manufactured silence leads to a problem that fraternities across the country have, and continue to contend with: sexual assault. Because fraternities cannot be trusted to hold their own members accountable, victims of sexual violence and sexual harassment are forced to refer to third parties when seeking justice.

In a statement to the Daily Cal, the Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination claims it brings a trauma-informed lens to its work, complainants making the key decisions. It is the complainants who decide whether to start a resolution process, whether to respond to OPHD’s outreach and whether to request an investigation.

Yet OPHD often fails to deliver results.

“I do not think OPHD is meaningfully trauma-informed. Survivors are expected to explain deeply complicated experiences inside a process that reduces them into narrow policy questions, and anything outside of those questions can be treated as irrelevant,” said UC Berkeley student Amaya Halepota in an email. Halepota previously filed a Title IX report against a former member of the executive council of a UC Berkeley fraternity.

Halepota said OPHD’s approach is too narrowly tailored and fails to represent different experiences.

“My experience with Title IX made me realize that our institutional definitions of consent are dangerously insufficient,” Halepota said in an email. “Verbal consent is often swayed by fear, coercion, trauma, and patterns of manipulative behavior that completely change whether a person feels free to say no at all. Consent is not about what you said, what you drank, where you were, or what you were wearing—consent is about what you want.”

Halepota is not alone. The Daily Cal previously reported that, across all case types handled within OPHD, only 53 of the 1465 cases closed in fiscal year 2025 went to a formal investigation.

This is an institutional defect. The statistics above give you roughly a 3.62% chance that if you file a report with OPHD, it will get formally investigated. So why would anyone go on the record? With those odds, you’re more likely to get into Harvard than you are to get UC Berkeley to investigate your allegations of violence, harassment or discrimination.

Thus, when victims turn to OPHD, it often fails them. So we must find the solution to this crisis ourselves. Fraternities are not accountable because we’re not honest about what we see. Keeping it off the record and not speaking up protects frat membership and invitations to house parties before it protects the human beings around us. The reason no one comes forward is because no one talks about the problem, and nobody talks about the problem because we lack institutional protections that are genuinely on our side.

In a world where UC Berkeley won’t put in the time and resources to investigate the vast number of sexual assault allegations that it’s presented with, the only thing you can do is protect yourself. Until you’ve seen a sufficient amount of public accountability that you can leave your red Solo cup in the middle of a coffee table, walk around, mingle and then go back and drink it, expecting to go home safe and conscious, you should boycott the frats.

Don’t rush, don’t pay them money, don’t contribute to the environment in which a fraternity member allegedly told a fall victim’s friend to get her out of their house so the chapter wouldn’t get in trouble. These chapters with problematic track records don’t care about you.

As a UC Berkeley student, you overcame a 10.5% acceptance rate and made sacrifices to be here. You should not have to gamble with your safety just to participate in campus social life, make friends or have fun. UC Berkeley has a responsibility to protect its students, and until it meaningfully holds fraternities accountable, students must take matters into their own hands. Stop giving dangerous chapters the attendance and legitimacy they depend on. If they expect you to participate without ensuring your safety, stay far, far away.