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Rutgers University's Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity has been shut down after an intoxicated student was hospitalized last fall.

(Kelly Heyboer | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Kudos to Rutgers for cracking down on fraternity and sorority parties for the Spring semester. But we all know how this story goes. A student death or stomach pumping causes bad publicity. Greek organizations promise to reform their ways. For a while, everyone is on their best behavior.

Then it's Animal House all over again.

Let's face it: The entire Greek system needs to be yanked out by its roots -- not just at Rutgers, but everywhere. Universities can ban fraternities and sororities from campus. They can press off-campus frats to behave or phase themselves out, and stop giving Greek groups any special treatment. Parents can refuse to pay dues to the frats. In all this, the goal is to help protect students from sexual assault and binge drinking.

Of course there are good kids in fraternities and sororities, just as there are in almost any organization. And they do serve some constructive purposes. These are places where students can make friends, network and do charitable work. Many require above average GPAs. They make a large university feel much smaller, and are a rallying point for school spirit.

But this is also true of many other school clubs, and they don't come with the heavy baggage of binge drinking and sexual assault. It's the party scene that most attracts the Greek pledges, and therein lies the problem. The hard fact is that alcohol abuse is far more common in the Greek system, and sexual assault may be, too.

One study of 17,000 students at 140 four-year colleges found that almost 90 percent of frat members engage in binge drinking, compared with 45 percent for nonmembers. Several studies -- one authored by an Oklahoma State University professor and alumnus of SAE -- suggest fraternity men are more likely to rape than other college men. And a 2014 study at the University of Oregon found sorority sisters there were much more likely than other college women to have been raped.

Some pundits think we should let sororities host the boozy parties instead of frats, since girls would have home turf advantage and be less vulnerable to sexual assault. That would be an interesting social experiment, but at best, a Band-aid. The real problem is that the benefits of the Greek system are vastly outweighed by its downsides; not just binge drinking and sex assaults -- deadly falls out of windows and hazing.

And what about its culture of exclusion and high cost of membership? Kids can pay up to $600 a semester. Is that really the social support system we want on campus?

Several small colleges have banned fraternities and sororities already. This would be much harder for a big state university like Rutgers, which relies on Greek groups for alumni donations and, to some extent, housing. Perhaps parents should force the issue by refusing to pay their kids' dues, because whether they realize it or not, they're assuming the risk for any disasters.

Colleges avoid liability by keeping the house parties off-campus, and frats can avoid it by kicking out a member as soon as he does something wrong, on the grounds that he violated house rules. The cost of any misdeeds then falls to a parent's homeowners insurance, or ability to pay legal defense.

If this all sounds like an elaborate structure for encouraging bad behavior and evading responsibility, it is. And that's why it's time we dethroned the Greek system.

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