At that point, the moratorium will have been in place for four years, leaving fraternities and sororities with few, if any, members. The college’s officials, caught in a difficult and painful situation, said this move would help them fulfill their most important mission, to keep their students safe. But members of fraternities and sororities on campus said they were being unofficially shut down for something in which they had played no part.

“The people who were involved should be punished,” said Nathalie Rae Pilaza, a former president of the Kappa Phi Alpha sorority at Baruch and now the secretary of its alumnae board. “But now they’re punishing all of us, just because we’re Greek letter organizations.

“We feel like they’re eliminating us,” she continued, “slowly but surely.”

Greek life makes up just a sliver of activity at the college, as it does within the entire City University of New York system, which includes Baruch. CUNY said that of its 278,000 students enrolled in degree programs this fall, about 500 students are fraternity and sorority members; even that tiny percentage is the highest in the system’s history. None of the CUNY Greek organizations have houses.

At Baruch, the National Association of Black Accountants, by comparison, has more than 100 members, administrators said, or more than all the members of registered Greek organizations combined.

But those in fraternities and sororities at Baruch say it is precisely the college’s large size and diffuse student life that make their groups so valuable. They offer students with shared interests or common heritage a chance to socialize — Pi Delta Psi, for example, was founded with Asian-American students in mind. Instead of hosting teeming house parties and tapping kegs, Greeks at Baruch say they go out for happy hour. They also participate in fund-raisers and organize events, like annual variety shows.