by Claude Opus 5.5
Is the abolition of fraternities a justified structural remedy or a form of guilt by association? Use the legal analogy of disbanding an organisation versus prosecuting members.
When the complainant in the case behind these seminars reported in November 2024, Cornell closed the fraternity chapter involved. The case also revives a long-running debate about something more radical: the abolition of fraternities at Cornell, or more widely. Supporters see abolition as a structural remedy for a structural problem. Critics see it as punishing many people for what a few are alleged to have done. The law has long had to distinguish between acting against an organisation and acting against its members, and that distinction helps clarify the debate.
Two legal models
Legal systems deal with wrongdoing connected to organisations in two broad ways.
The first targets individuals. Each member is responsible only for what they did, or for what they knowingly assisted, encouraged or conspired to do. Membership alone is not a crime. This model is deeply embedded in liberal legal thought because it protects people from being punished for their associations, a principle hard won against practices such as the persecution of political groups.
The second targets the organisation. Companies can be prosecuted, fined and, in extreme cases, dissolved. States can proscribe organisations, making membership or support unlawful, as the UK does under terrorism legislation. Charities can be wound up. The justification is not that every member is guilty but that the organisation itself has become a source of harm: its structure, culture, resources or purpose generate wrongdoing that cannot be addressed by pursuing individuals one at a time.
Crucially, these models answer different questions. Prosecuting members asks: who did wrong, and what do they deserve? Disbanding an organisation asks: does this structure produce harm that justifies ending it? A person who loses their membership when an organisation is dissolved is not being declared guilty. They are losing a benefit that depended on an entity which, it has been judged, should no longer exist.
The case for abolition as a structural remedy
On this framing, abolition need not be guilt by association. The argument for it is that fraternities, as a class of organisation, generate a pattern of harm. Research on campus sexual violence has repeatedly found associations between fraternity membership or fraternity parties and elevated risk, and scholars from Peggy Reeves Sanday onwards have argued that features of fraternity culture, such as control of social space, intense loyalty, hierarchical initiation and a party economy built around alcohol, contribute to it. If that is right, fraternities are not neutral associations that occasionally contain bad members; their structure is part of the problem.
Some institutions have taken this view. Williams, Amherst and Bowdoin colleges, among others, phased out fraternities in past decades, and Swarthmore’s two fraternities disbanded in 2019 after student protests. Their experiences suggest that campus social life can be organised in other ways.
Abolition also addresses a weakness of the individual model. Prosecutions and disciplinary findings are slow, uncertain and focused on particular incidents. They do not change the conditions that make the next incident likely. A structural remedy can.
The case against
Critics raise several objections.
First, there is the question of scope. Disbanding one chapter in response to evidence about that chapter resembles winding up a particular company. Abolishing all fraternities resembles proscribing a whole category of association because some instances have been harmful. The second requires much stronger justification, because it affects many organisations that may have no record of wrongdoing. In law, proscription is reserved for organisations whose purpose or conduct is itself dangerous, and it is subject to safeguards.
Second, there are rights of association. Even where they are not constitutionally protected in the same way at a private university, freedom to form associations is an important liberal value. Harvard’s attempt to discourage membership of single-gender social organisations was abandoned in 2020 after litigation, which shows that such measures can be legally and politically contested.
Third, abolition may not work. Organisations deprived of recognition can continue underground, beyond the reach of oversight. If the harm flows from the culture rather than the charter, removing the charter may make the problem harder to monitor.
Fourth, there is the expressive concern. Even if abolition is not intended as a judgment on members, it may be experienced and perceived as one. Members who have done nothing wrong may feel, with some justification, that they are being treated as complicit.
Weighing the analogy
The legal analogy suggests a way to think about these objections. Dissolution of an organisation is justified when three conditions are met: the organisation itself, through its structure or culture, is a substantial cause of harm; less drastic measures have been tried or would be ineffective; and the response is proportionate to the harm. These conditions apply differently at different levels. For a particular chapter with a record of serious incidents and failed reforms, they may well be met. For fraternities as a class, the evidence about structural harm is significant, but the case for abolition depends on showing that reform has failed and that the alternatives would not simply reproduce the harm elsewhere.
Seen this way, abolition is not inherently guilt by association. It becomes guilt by association when it is justified by reference to what some members did, rather than by reference to what the organisation is and does. The test of a structural remedy is whether its rationale is structural.
Conclusion
The choice between disbanding and prosecuting is not a choice between being tough and being fair. They are tools for different problems. Prosecuting individuals answers the demand for accountability for particular acts. Disbanding organisations answers the demand to change conditions that make such acts recur. A just response to this case may need both, at different scales: accountability for any individuals found responsible, closure of any organisation found to have failed, and a serious, evidence-based assessment of whether fraternities can be reformed or should be replaced.