Boston University is a long, slim campus with small gathering places that are increasingly being taken over by buildings (R.I.P. COM Lawn), and our community is made up, for the most part, of those with no interest in sports and Greek life. True, a minority of students are involved in Greek life and turnout at our major sports games is minimal, especially compared to schools where Greek life or athletics dominate the school and its community.
Personally, one of the things that brought me to BU was the lack of Greek culture or a dominance of athletics. However, as a student at BU, I believe that the administration does very little to foster a sense of community that takes the place of those things. At BU, it’s on the students to find a community among their peers, and being a Terrier often comes secondary to other identities.
Regardless of your personal opinion of Greek life, it is hard to find evidence that the university encourages its existence. The only tangible evidence of Greek life on campus is a rock behind Marsh Chapel. Walking on Bay State Road, however, you might get the impression that fraternities are more present at Boston University, but those fraternities belong to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, not us.
In fact, BU sold those Greek houses to MIT in the 1960s, and now fraternities and sororities not only have no on-campus housing, but are also told not to have their own houses off campus. While no house in Allston has Greek letters on display, students can name and locate places that serve as the fraternity houses.
It is no secret that Greek life has a bad reputation at BU, let alone on other college campuses. Recently, many fraternities and a sorority have been investigated, and a few have been punished after allegations of underage drinking or hazing. By no means is this indicative of all Greek life communities, but by kicking fraternities and sororities off campus, does Boston University actually attempt to fix any of the issues related to Greek life? Greek housing on campus, like those on Bay State Road, would integrate the Greek community into the main part of our campus, fostering a greater sense of community and discouraging any questionable activity.
But there are also ways to foster community that have nothing to do with Greek life. Athletics, for example, bring students together through the shared love of competition. Compared to other schools, though, Boston University is not a sporty school. It would be a hard argument to say that a school that cuts funding for its teams and evicts its basketball teams from playing conference games in their arena has a large athletic community.
After the administration cut the swim team’s scholarship funding, many questioned the future of the team, and for good reason. Boston University has a history of cutting teams in this way — wrestling was defunded and destroyed in a similar process. Worse, BU is one of the largest universities in the country, and it has no football team.
Now, sports are not necessary in maintaining school spirit, but when a school does not have an active sport culture, something should replace that system to encourage school spirit. With the possible exception of the College of Arts and Sciences, being a member of one of BU’s colleges and schools is more indicative of your college experience than being a Terrier as a whole. Terriers see themselves as members of their own colleges, which are distinct from the university at large and are for most purposes separate. Obviously, members of each college interact with each other, but the colleges at Boston University are clearly sectioned off.
As a large university, the role of the colleges and schools in creating communities in the first place is crucial for the administration. When Boston University works through its policies against that university-wide community, there needs to be a different way for the student body to identify as Terriers together. That falls on the administration.
