Review independents, too

What is the appropriate "price" of a fraternity? And what is that investment worth to campus?

These are exactly the questions the new Residential Group Assessment is starting to ask. Predictably, however, this administrative inquiry is as misguided as most. Think of the Campus Culture Initiative, but on crack.

Here's the premise: the University sets the price of selective living groups, including fraternities, as the opportunity cost of the space they occupy, in terms of what another group or a bunch of Gosh Darn Independents could do in that section.

Then, groups are valued by their performance on a variety of categories, such as community service, academic and community activities, their members' involvement on campus and the viability of their living situation.

Roughly, the groups that score highly-that are worth the most-will retain their current section, and the ones who don't score so well will be moved around to a less-desirable place on campus or potentially kicked off, as a sort of write-down on their intrinsic value (i.e., a punishment).

But this theory assumes that fraternities and SLGs should only exist because they provide positive benefits to the entire Duke community. That is, the administration ignores student demand and the subsequent benefits students receive from fraternity membership and association.

A key question has thus been overlooked. Why is it insufficient for SLGs to exist on campus simply because the student body wants them there? In my view, the standard exchange of costs and benefits is pretty close to even without the University's artificial pricing system imposed from above.

For starters, there's the sizeable greek/selective population that clearly enjoys the presence of their groups on campus and obviously resents their extra responsibilities. This membership value is generally ignored by the annual review system.

So if the annual review system is sound in theory, why don't we review the independents as well? They are given housing, they can reserve commons spaces and they can hold events on campus, so theoretically there is an opportunity cost to the spaces they occupy as well.

If fairness matters in academia-this isn't a proposition I'm necessarily willing to accept, given the dictatorial, Reign of Terror-influenced kangaroo court system they call "justice" over at Judicial Affairs-then we ought to consider the relative values of the contributions of independents to campus as well.

But that's not all. Independents actually receive some nice little subsidies from the University: They don't have to pay for cable, tip the housing staff, pay Interfraternity Council and house dues or submit to countless, unfair schemes of regulation (read: harassment). Because these costs aren't factored into the annual review scheme, the value of fraternities is artificially depressed since they ought to be given a credit for these costs they don't incur.

Clearly, then, the system isn't quite the Goldilocks the University claims. Not only does it unfairly single out fraternities and SLGs for review vis-a-vis independents, but it also improperly values their contributions to campus relative to their perceived price, or the cost the University pays to allow them to exist.

It isn't all gloom-and-doom, however. I take pleasure in knowing that there is a sinister implication of all this: Switching out fraternities for independents on campus actually increases the University's costs and decreases the Duke community's benefits. Because then the administration would be paying much higher subsidies to float the increased numbers of independents on campus, but it would also lose the contributions-however minimal-of the groups it disrupted, as well as the benefits to students of which it refuses to take account.

That's right-the plan will ultimately backfire, a classic case of misguided government intervention into the free market.

Jon Detzel is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Tuesday.