Guest Post: In praise of college fraternities.

The Incident

In October 2024, a Cornell University student, identified in court papers as Jane Doe, was allegedly drugged and gang-raped by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity at their house on campus. Her lawsuit says she was pressured to take ketamine and plied with more alcohol and marijuana. The men deny her account.

Two days later, she and one of the men exchanged text messages. He apologized for “how things went down.” He said his memory was “kinda fuzzy” and that he felt bad for being too intoxicated to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.” She replied that none of the sexual activity had been illegal and that her own memory was “super clouded, too.” Nearly two weeks later, she texted him that 90 percent of what happened that night was not consensual.

That night, members of the fraternity traded messages in a Snapchat group about the woman upstairs. At 1:42 a.m., one message suggested she was available for sex. Later came the question “Shop still open?” The answer: “Yea.”

That is the story circulating in the media. It is ugly and tawdry. Is it the hidden reality of fraternity life?

I asked my friend Jack Mullen, who belonged to a fraternity during a tumultuous era on campus, the late 1960s. He told me the story in the news isn’t the whole story. Fraternities, he said, serve a good purpose. He wanted to share fraternity life as he experienced it, and he has a suggestion for making fraternities better.

Theta Chi Class of 1969

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

Reporting on the recent rape allegations at a Cornell University fraternity party has cast a pall over fraternity houses and the entire Greek system.

Living in a fraternity enriched my college experience, so I am disturbed by the public perception that fraternities breed predatory behavior. Were there hints of such behavior during my years as a member of Theta Chi at the University of Oregon? Perhaps.

I entered the University of Oregon in 1965 as a timid freshman, unsure how I would fit in. Could I hack it academically? Could I muster the nerve to ask a coed out on a date? Joining Theta Chi helped me meet both challenges.

I’d be lying if I said I pledged Theta Chi because it was the highest-rated academic fraternity on campus. I decided to pledge when George Dames, a childhood friend from Medford, described in great detail the house’s upcoming dance, the Red Ox. “Count me in, George.”

Much has changed since the late 1960s, not least the dating apps today’s students use to meet one another. Much, however, remains the same. Alcohol is still readily available and, when consumed responsibly, can add a bit of zest to a date.

My fraternity had guardrails to limit drinking. Alcohol was prohibited in the house. For the Red Ox, we rented a bus to take us to a barn in Creswell, where we could drink whatever crazy concoction we had mixed up. The same bus brought us back to the house, which we had decorated top to bottom for a western party. That included the basement. Yes, the basement, which we turned into a dark mattress room.

Nothing heinous happened in the mattress room. As best I can recall, no one was ever dragged down those stairs against her will. College kids being college kids, I suspect our dates enjoyed their visits as much as my fraternity brothers did, though I never asked them. That I never persuaded a single date to go downstairs with me is a story for another time.

After I graduated, Oregon’s dorms went coed, with men and women on alternating floors. I wish they had been coed my freshman year; it might have cured my shyness around women. Until the early 1970s, Oregon freshmen lived in the dorms and could not join a fraternity or sorority until their sophomore year. A New York Times column by the president of Wesleyan University carries the title “Want to Address Sexual Assault? Make Fraternities Coed.” 

At first I didn’t want to read such nonsense. When I finally did, I realized that in this day and age it makes a ton of sense.

Fraternities once excluded Catholics, Jews and African Americans. Fortunately, they have changed for the better. This is, after all, America, and I hope we are now an inclusive society. I believe coed dorms at Oregon helped students stop seeing the opposite sex as objects. Just maybe, bringing men and women together under one roof in the Greek system can put a damper on the kind of sexual assault alleged at Cornell.

I wouldn’t change anything about my days at the U. of O., including my life as a Theta Chi. Those years shaped my life for the better. But times have changed, and the Greek system needs to meet today’s challenges. Make fraternities and sororities coed.

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Don't be fooled.

Heads up to Democrats: It looks like a nasty hit piece by the Hicks campaign. 

That's only half right. 

It is bait, to trick Democrats into throwing away their vote and thereby elect Brad Hicks, the Republican candidate. 

Here is the two-sided hit piece sent to Democrats, shown as being paid for by the campaign committee of a Republican state senator who has been funneling big blocks of money to Hicks:

Here is what is going on: The front side brings up 20-year-old allegations, later dropped as not prosecutable, against a person working at a Colorado-based campaign consultancy firm that Denise Krause employed in the primary election. Why she hired an out-of-state firm is beyond me, but she did. No one claimed that Krause had anything to do with anything improper, but it was an attack point in the primary election in part because the firm she hired advises Republican candidates, too. Hicks brought it up again. That is the hit: You cannot trust Denise Krause. 

The trick to fool Democrats is the supposed "warning" about the third-party candidate Clay Bearnson. If it were a real warning, the Hicks campaign would have used a grainy, distorted photo of Bearnson the way it does in genuine negative ads. This "warning" is an invitation to leftist Democrats to support Bearnson. It tells them that he is a progressive who supports universal health care. The ad presents this as a negative -- and Republicans do in fact oppose it -- but it is signaling to Democratic voters that if, for some reason, you don't like Krause, then vote for Bearnson. And see his happy, smiling face. What a nice guy!  And pro-cannabis, too!

Hicks has abandoned the Mr. Nonpartisan, nice-guy message. His advertisements reposition him into a Republican streetfighter in his attacks on Krause. People who hate Democrats and relish liberal tears will be happy to see Hicks has taken off the gloves. He has solidified the Republican vote many times over, and he has given everyone else reason to be disgusted by him and his campaign. Krause is a retired healthcare executive, but he likens her to a sleazy lawyer from a TV show -- take that! Ka-pow! Associate her with someone else's sex crime -- another Ka-pow! 

I suspect that GOP polls show that Hicks' effort to get independent, non-affiliated votes failed. Democrats and non-affiliated voters aren't voting for Republicans this year. His only chance for Republican victory is to get Democratic-leaning voters not to vote for a Democrat. 

How? Put serious money into promoting a third-party spoiler by portraying him as someone Republicans dislike. The Democratic voter in favor of progressive policies who wants to say "NO" to MAGA and Hicks can do it by voting for an alternative candidate -- thereby electing Hicks!

The irony is that Krause is progressive herself and supports healthcare for all, and in Hicks' negative ads about Krause he calls her "extreme" for holding views like that.

The trick is to get Democratic voters to sabotage themselves. The ad reveals the purpose: The Bearnson option is bait, 

Clever. Diabolical. 

It will work if Democrats fall for it.

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A Republican responds.

I wrote that I thought that most Republicans had better character than President Trump. 

I wrote that I presumed they were disgusted by his corruption, dishonesty, and wealth-seeking, as well as by many of his policies. Yet nearly all Republican officeholders and candidates say and do nothing to stop Trump's damage.

My post on Monday attributed the acquiescence of GOP officeholders to their calculation that public disagreement with Trump would be politically disadvantageous. They are choosing personal ambition over duty. Either they like what Trump is doing, which shows poor judgment, or they recognize its damage but do and say nothing, which shows poor character.

To be a member in good standing in the Republican Party one cannot denounce Trump's claim that he won the 2020 election in a landslide, nor his calling the January 6 rioters "patriots." One must accept Trump's argument that Oregon's vote by mail system is suspicious at best. In addition, one needs to ignore Trump's crypto grift, his conflicts of interest, his money-seeking, his lies, his social media rants, his tariffs and their damage to Oregon exporters, his insults to our allies, his damage to Medicaid and the Oregon Health Plan and local hospitals, and his choosing to back Putin and Russia in its war against Ukraine. Stay silent.

I called out two candidates by name: gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan and state senate candidate Brad Hicks. They aren't speaking up for Oregon or saying a peep about how Trump's policies hurt our state. They are on the Republican team, awash in Republican money. They made their choice.

Southern Oregon businessman and philanthropist Alan DeBoer makes the point that political choices in our mostly two-party system are binary. One might support Drazan not because she is so perfect, but because one thinks the alternative, Democratic governor Tina Kotek, is bad for Oregon and has done a poor job. Drazan's ad assert that she would be a better manager than Kotek.

Alan DeBoer is a former Ashland mayor, a former member of the Ashland School Board, a former state senator, and generally a civically-engaged person. Oregon secretary of state records show that he donates generously to Republican candidates. I have made no secret of the fact that I have contributed to the campaigns of Tina Kotek and Denise Krause.

A comment by Alan DeBoer

First of all I agree with your take on our current President, I do not on the vote on Christine Drazan and Brad Hicks. Oregon is in total failure and other than Workers Comp (SAIF) is failing on all counts. The super majority is dangerous and they are failing Oregon by not listening to the minority (later on I will give examples). Please vote for these two individuals and let’s fix Oregon, as they both say “ I hope that you love Oregon more than you hate Trump “.

Examples that I have witnessed are Then Speaker of the house Tina Kotek paused a vote on the house floor because she did not have the votes to pass a bill, she then went off the floor and had a conversation with one of her party members and reconvened the session with that woman crying as she changed her vote to pass the bill. The next example is the vote on the senate committee to pass the Transportation Bill out of committee. The Democrats did not have the majority vote due to a Democrat that would not vote for it, the president of the Senate then removed the person, replaced him and passed the bill on to the Senate floor. This bill then was then sent to the Ballot and was overturned by over 75% of the population.

To our Nurses, Doctors, Teachers, State Employees, and every Oregon Citizen the election of Christine and Brad is critical for the State. Closing of Hospitals, failing Education, and the list goes on!

I have spent most of my life helping non profits and hiring the right individuals to be CEO’s and am proud of the results in every case. Leadership is a funny thing, A great Leader you don’t notice, but when you see problems everywhere it is time for a change.

I wrote this without A I so excuse the writing and if you have questions give me a call 541-944-1600

Alan DeBoer 8 years on Ashland School Board, Former Mayor of Ashland, Oregon State Senator and on various Boards of Non profits (all of which were successful when I left)

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Picking Day: Pinot Noir

The Pinot Noir grapes got ripe when they got ripe. 

There is wisdom in patience, but I don't have it. The longer the grapes are on the vine, the more that can go wrong. Birds. Rain. Frost. Hail. Mildew.

I am thrilled to be picking today.

The parts of the vines that were still putting up new growth when we had the frosts a week ago turned brown and curled, which is why the top of the canopy looks different from the middle. The top is brown, the middle is green. The wind machines worked for three days last week trying to keep the temperature above 31 so that the leaves would stay alive and could keep sending carbohydrates to the grapes. It partially worked. The goal wasn’t just sweetness; it was ripeness.

A crew will start at 7 a.m. today.

The netting protected the grapes from starlings. I have seen swooping murmurations this year, but so far little damage. A neighbor used up a box of shotgun shells blasting away at the starlings this past weekend. They have discovered our side-by-side vineyards. He frightens them, and they fly away, but return. He said he fired one shot into the tall tree next to the vineyard and eight birds fell. In another context I would be sympathetic to the birds, but not now, not here. They want my crop and I want to protect it. We are in a competition. I would have an animal-lover’s live-and-let-live attitude if they were eating blackberries or anything else besides my crop. I don’t hate the starlings; it isn’t personal. I am in the most ancient and fundamental of struggle: a fight with another species over a resource. I have hardened my heart. The grapes are mine.

Today, amid the back-to-back-to-back commercials for candidates, I will likely see a heart-wrenching ad seeking donations for starving animals. I will feel sorry for them, which is the point of the ad. Meanwhile I am happy my nets are up and that my neighbor scares starlings with a credible threat of death. Some animals I want to feed; others I want not to feed. Irony is not dead.

We are in an era where my mixed-emotion sympathy for the birds may come across as lacking the testosterone-infused warrior spirit that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says is the proper way to approach battle. If I encounter a bird trapped in the net later this morning, and it is frantic, trying to escape, should I let it go? Should I wring its neck? Should I kill it and hang it on a T-post as a trophy and warning to its fellows in the flock? Hegseth would have the public display: It would be deterrence and a display of triumph. Achilles dragged the body of Hector behind his chariot. Achilles did not need a testosterone boost. But even the gods who favored the Greek side were offended by his disrespect to the vanquished Hector, and Achilles came to grief.

(I will let the bird escape. The nets did their work. I am trying to protect a crop, not get vengeance.)

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Give Republicans back their spines

In their hearts, Republican officeholders know Trump is corrupt, foolish, autocratic, and dangerous. 

They know it. They just can't admit it.

Yet.

Republican candidates and officeholders tolerate his behavior because Trump has the power to engineer their defeat in a primary election. This November's midterm election is an opportunity to send a message to those officeholders that it is time to rediscover their sense of right and wrong. 

The way to do that is to lose their elections.

I wrote on Saturday that Christine Drazan, the Republican candidate for governor of Oregon, made a powerful argument for her election. She advertised that she wouldn’t have the power to enact MAGA/Trump policies, so Democrats and Independents can vote for her without fear. Some readers thought that meant I considered it was harmless to vote for her. I do not.

It is best for our country if she loses her election amid a nationwide Trump purge. The more thorough Trump’s rejection, the more courage Republican officeholders would have to begin asserting their own values. I start with the premise that most Republican officeholders are not as corrupt as Trump, so surely some of them are disgusted by his open grift and corruption. Surely some of them oppose our choice to support Russia in its war with Ukraine. Surely some oppose his abuse of democratic process. They would not tolerate a Democrat acting as Trump does. Maybe they would find courage to put brakes on Trump these final two years.

Oregon’s gubernatorial contest is the outlier in the nation’s Democratic shift, with polls suggesting that this may be the one major race in the country where there is no blueward shift. A Drazan win could be interpreted in a way that confounds the lesson the country needs to learn. It could be thought to mean that Trump’s problem was that the Trump era lasted too long. Trump has been at the center of national politics for 11 years. Oregon Democrats have controlled the governorship for almost four decades. Oregon governor Tina Kotek’s loss could be interpreted as voter fatigue with a party in control for too long.

That is an inadequate lesson, but Republicans might jump to it. It shifts blame away from the people who need to learn a harder lesson. Political parties look for easy excuses to avoid confronting a fundamental policy and moral failure. Democratic Party leaders said the real problem in 2024 was that Kamala Harris did not have time to sell herself, and besides, her loss was due to a worldwide inflation problem; no need to rethink anything. In fact, the 2024 election revealed a profound misjudgment in allowing Biden to hide his health status -- the Democratic Big Lie -- and the party’s inability to confront its own interest groups sufficiently to deal with a broken immigration system.

I don’t want Republicans to decide that the real problem was one of Trump being on stage too long. The problem is that Trump is obscenely corrupt, that he has damaged our democracy, and that he has made disastrous foreign policy mistakes in his treatment of trade, alliances, and decisions to go to war. Trump’s policies directly hurt Oregon, especially our nationally recognized Oregon Health Plan. The Portland Metro Chamber admitted that Trump’s H.R. 1 would remove 200,000 Oregonians from the Oregon Health Plan. Trump’s errors and crimes became his party’s shared responsibility because, top to bottom, Republican officeholders and candidates don’t dare speak up to oppose this. Oregon’s one Republican U.S. Rep., Cliff Bentz, was a critical vote in favor of it.

A big election loss is a learning opportunity. Is it fair that candidates like Drazan and Republican state Senate candidate Brad Hicks lose elections because of the undertow brought about by President Trump? I think it is fair and necessary. Their silence enables Trump. They are part of the problem.

If Drazan and Hicks win election, Trump wins. Trump is validated. Silence is validated. It is better for the country if Trump loses. That means Drazan and Hicks need to lose, too.

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Easy Sunday: Save the country..

"Kodachrome, they give us those nice bright colours
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera, I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away."
        Paul Simon, Kodachrome, 1973

It was another No Kings rally.

But the memories go back 60 years. I have done this before. So have many of my fellow demonstrators.

I have been scolded by readers for observing and describing something that is both true and obvious: The participants at No Kings rallies skew old. There are people of all ages, of course, including some young people, but there are a lot of people more or less my age. I had a mission now, to express my discontent with our national leadership. I had a second mission, to circle back to memories of my youth.





Why not? My hair is gray now, and this time I am carrying a sign.




There were thousands of us on the sidewalks and in Hawthorne Park:

And then there is this one. Possibly these young people are simply doing the explorations of youth, trying out being outrageous, trying to get a rise out of the crowd of old fogies. Perhaps they are provocateurs placed by the local GOP. Perhaps they are the leading edge of a new era in the U.S., but I think not. I think it is more likely that in 60 years, if they are alive and well, that they will remember this moment with nostalgic fondness, imagining their daring as a kind of heroism, as described in that Robert Frost poem:

"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."








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Drazan tells Oregonians not to worry

Drazan: I can’t hurt you. I’m outvoted. So elect me.

It is the strangest darned thing: The Republican candidate for governor’s strongest case consists of saying she cannot fulfill the aspirations of her party or her own past votes, so it is safe for Democrats to vote for her.

This argument might succeed.

Republican candidate Christine Drazan's branding is summarized in this ad. Republicans are spending a lot of money to run an ad that says she won’t, and can’t, carry out Republican policies.

Click: 30 seconds

Here is the text:

You’ve probably seen a lot of me lately, grainy pictures, creepy music. So here’s the thing: I’m not going to ban abortions, I’m not going to get rid of the Oregon Health Plan, I will never let D.C. run us over. But we are going to make life here more affordable, freeze utility rates, and bring standards back to our schools. I’m running for governor because I love this place. I want to fix what’s broken. I want to feel proud of our home. Let’s get our Oregon back.

Drazan is telling Oregonians not to worry that she could implement Republican policies. The Oregon legislature will still have a Democratic majority, so she won’t be able to enact the abortion bans we read about in Idaho and other red states. The GOP has repeatedly tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, and Republicans passed the Big Beautiful Bill, which would push tens of thousands of Oregonians off the Oregon Health Plan. But she won’t fight the legislature’s effort to keep nearly all Oregonians insured.

Moreover, she has said elsewhere that she cannot overturn Oregon’s sanctuary law on her own. That law is another Republican point of attack on Oregon. She has said publicly the thing a Republican cannot admit and still be appointed to a judgeship or a cabinet post: Biden won the 2020 election. She accepts that vote-by-mail is the law in Oregon.

Democrats fear that any Republican governor will get a version of the call Trump made to Georgia’s secretary of state, insisting that she, through some pretext, “find 11,780 votes,” or whatever number is necessary in Oregon to reverse an election outcome. But rest easy: Oregon governors don’t have the power to change a vote count. That call would need to go to Oregon’s secretary of state, Democrat Tobias Read, who would surely refuse.

Her argument embeds a premise: Oregon has Democrats in too many key places for it to become a MAGA state. That holds even though she and other Republicans have a track record of supporting issue after issue that would, were they in the majority, produce MAGA policies. She isn’t defending her own positions, nor MAGA’s. She is arguing for moderating a state that is too blue. The theme is bringing back balance, not power.

The ad has two powerful things going for it. First, unlike the Republican ads we see locally, both for Drazan’s campaign and for state Senate candidate Brad Hicks, it doesn’t use the ugly-photo, creepy-music technique. It mocks the technique, a welcome relief. Second, simple truth is powerful and persuasive in a political ad because the genre runs to crude exaggeration. It is true that Drazan will not have the power to turn Oregon red, gerrymander Oregon, cancel elections, dismantle the Oregon Health Plan, outlaw drugs like misoprostol, eliminate environmental laws, ban unions, fast-track data centers on farmland, or act on whatever other back-of-the-mind worries Oregonians have about Republican power in the era of Trump.

Democrats have held the governor’s office for nearly four decades. There is restlessness in the political air. Drazan is trying to look like change with a safety net. All she can really do is moderate the Democrats a little. Nothing to worry about.

I don’t welcome her winning, but I think her message will find traction with frustrated voters, likely a majority of them. Voters may decide it is safe to experiment with a vote for a Republican, Trump notwithstanding. As long as the legislature stays blue, she can’t do too much damage.

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