The institutional villain in the fake Jackie/UVA rape story, that, despite the fact that it was a wholesale fabrication by Jackie, bought hook, line and sinker by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, and published without any attempt at verification by Rolling Stone, was a fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi. Even as doubt crept in, there was little doubt that such a thing as a vicious gang rape could happen in a fraternity.

Because they’re hotbeds of sexual assault. Put a bunch of horny, drunk guys together and rape comes out the other side. Everybody knows that, right?

At the New York Times Room for Debate, well after the Jackie lie faded from memory, but with the inherent belief that fraternities remain houses of rape and misogyny still intact, the question was posed: Should college fraternities and sororities be coed?

Amid growing debate over sexual assault on campus and excessive behavior among college students, universities are opting for — and against — coed Greek houses and social clubs.

The knee-jerk resort to addressing certain aspirational goals, from ending the “epidemic” of rape to achieving gender diversity, has assumed that by forcing private associations that exist with campus recognition to become exactly what they are not will fulfill a grander progressive agenda.  The new president of Trinity College, in revoking her predecessor’s mandate, wrote:

“I have concluded that the coed mandate is unlikely to achieve its intended goal of gender equity,” she wrote. “Furthermore, I do not believe that requiring coed membership is the best way to address gender discrimination or to promote inclusiveness.

The Greek system has long been loved/hated by students, usually in relation to whether they’re on the inside or out.  Fraternities can be pretty goofy in their ways, which most would attribute to the fact that its a bunch of guys left to their own devices. You know, guys, ugh. Immature. Loutish. Just a bunch of dunderheaded clods.

Then there’s that free association thing, that people should be entitled to be friends with, to live with, to associate with, people of their choosing.  This is a sticky issue, because the sense is that it’s understandable that guys and gals might prefer to live with others of their own gender, but if you were to substitute race for sex, the problem becomes clearer. It is impossible to justify a sorority that only pledges whites or a fraternity that refuses to pledge Latinos.

On the other hand, it’s not too hard to picture a sorority that only seeks cute girls, or a fraternity that only takes jocks.  Having been a fraternity member in college (Phi Kappa Sigma, Alpha Rho Chapter, which no longer exists), I have a sense of what happens behind closed chapterhouse doors.  That said, I was never big on the whole fraternity bro thing, but mostly needed a place to live.

That fraternities and sororities continue to exist, and aren’t a mere vestige of an archaic system designed to segregate and isolate privileged groups so they don’t have to hobnob with the riff raff, even in this age of male wimpiosity and neo-feminist hegemony, goes to one of the base desires that’s shared by all people, gender aside: people want to be able to live with other people with whom they’re comfortable.

This is gender equity.  Some guys prefer to house with other guys, where they can talk about guy stuff like football and bacon.  Some gals prefer to live with other gals, where they toilet seat is never raised and someone will care whether their shoes match their sweater sets. And that’s okay.

No, fraternity brothers don’t have late night meetings planning mass rapes of women.  No, sorority sisters don’t have Sunday brunches where they plan how to achieve their Mrs. degrees.  The vivid imaginations of outsiders are misdirected. Lise Eliot argued:

Gender segregation also has an impact on relationships, which is what’s driving the movement to integrate Greek life in a few colleges. If your pledged “siblings” include both brothers and sisters, chances are greater you won’t objectify and molest each other than if the other sex is some distant, deeply different species to be conquered by the end of a wild evening.

Her position is replete with assumptions that neither bear out nor exist for the purpose of her aspirational goal.  Not every choice in life is, or should be, dictated by the goal of gender equity.  No, it is not the center of the universe, except for those for whom it’s the center of the universe.

What this really suggests is that any aspect of life that either intentionally, or by disparate impact, reflects a gender disparity must be changed or eradicated because it constitutes gender segregation, and gender segregation produces female objectification and rape.

Whether gender equity is a worthwhile goal is an entirely different issue than whether it can be achieved by ramming it down people’s throat be eradicating institutions that people desire but fail, organically, to produce the outcome.

Perhaps it would make far more sense to force women into engineering careers rather than the humanities, to force integration into the disciplinary studies and workplace rather than to demand that they live together in the same house.  But then, no one really wants to eliminate individuals’ right to pick a career, a future, that they desire.  And they shouldn’t.

Yet, this support of free choice fails to extend to endeavors that aren’t valued in the gender equity narrative.  And once fraternities and sororities are eradicated from college campuses in this gender equity purge, they will be hard, if not impossible, to recreate after the hysteria dies out and politics of the day is replaced by whatever new flavor comes along next.