The theft of a few ledger books filled with personal jottings would be unlikely to spark a police investigation in most places. But in the tiny village of Hamilton, New York, where two shopliftings at the Busy Bee convenience store might be considered a crime wave, the ledger-book incident in April triggered a local police probe. It also forced the town’s main industry—as Colgate University likes to call itself—to face the threat posed by an unsavory fraternity scene badly at odds with the school’s lofty intellectual mission.

The ledgers in question belonged to the college’s oldest fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, or DKE (pronounced “Deke",), and were surreptitiously removed by persons unknown from a windowless building called the DKE Temple. Photocopied excerpts were then sent to university administrators, faculty and the press. The material was so repellent —racist, sexist, boastful about sexual degradations and hazings, and crammed with passages reflecting the group’s mania for secrecy—that student rallies were held in protest. The fraternity’s defenders complained about the theft rather than the ledgers’ content. DKE members have remained virtually silent publicly (the chapter president declined my request for an interview).

On Colgate’s campus, the incident quickly snowballed into a debate about Greek-letter groups at the 170-year-old school, where about 55 percent of the 2,700 students belong to fraternities and sororities. The college, which was all male until 1970, now has a nearly even split between men and women students. Many of them agree with Marianne Weiss, a sorority member, who says, “We live in a hick town in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of cows. If there were enough alternatives, people wouldn’t be going to the Greek system.” As it happens, Weiss’s sorority was reprimanded last fall for co-sponsoring a “jungle party” with a fraternity, three of whose members attended in blackface. She doesn’t defend that, but she also opposes making DKE the campus scapegoat. “I think in the Greek-letter system there are abuses, ” she says. “Those opinions [in the ledgers] are still common.”

Last month, after an investigation, the college suspended DKE for “hazing, blackballing and other infractions” for the 1989-1990 academic year. The faculty, witnesses to numerous testosterone-fired outrages on Fraternity Row, voted overwhelmingly in May to abolish all fraternities and sororities by September 1994. However, only the school’s board of trustees can impose such a ban; in July, it set up a special committee to review residential life and the role of fraternities and sororities.

The problem posed by Greek-letter organizations, especially fraternities, is not Colgate’s alone. Nor is it one that is confined to small, rural campuses. Universities across the country are proclaiming diversity—social, sexual, ethnic, racial, economic and cultural—as the guiding spirit behind their pursuit of academic growth and excellence. At the same time, fraternities—whose members usually select one another on the basis of conformity to homogeneous group standards— are experiencing their highest membership levels ever. As a result, colleges find themselves trying to impart the bias-free oals of the 1990s to students who are clustering, in ever greater numbers, in the exclusionary communities of the 1950s. Those forces are clashing on more and more campuses.

Colgate president Neil Grabois, in his first year, may wish the DKE crisis hadn’t happened, but he’s not avoiding it. “It’s an opportunity to ask what we are and what we ought to be,” says Grabois, who was previously provost of Williams College, which eliminated fraternities in the 1960s. “The question for us is, Are there features of the Greek-letter system which are either accelerating or accentuating trends in the culture that we would like to push against?” To those who would reply with an unequivocal “Of course,” Grabois offers this caution: Before answering, he says, it’s necessary to determine “what is specific about fraternities and not just sloshed 19-year-olds or sexually insecure 19-year-olds.”

A look into the DKE ledgers may be helpful in drawing that distinction. The notes, scrawled in different handwritings, form a litany of odious attitudes and possibly criminal behavior. One entry, from January 1989, states: “watch your sexual practices—be careful of horrifying girls too much—University is very sensitive to anything sounding like rape. Don’t abuse women (too much).” Another reads: “This girl who me and X ganged—this babe and someone leaked it at dinner. That fuck in sucked.” And from 1987, this description of a night of booze and sex: “going to have a crazy get together at the home of the virgin goddess [the DKE Temple] with imported fuel [slang for alcohol] and special guest star X the only female who is tits enough [DKE slang for “cool”] to do the subway shuffle [slang for a “train,” or several men having sex with or forcing it from a woman, often when she is drunk].”

A list of what pledges must carry includes a “knife (long enough to reach a Negro’s Heart).” A passage written following new college rules for fraternity behavior bragged about stealing thirty cases of beer from the university pub— “a fitting rebuttal to the new regulations,” a member wrote. Pages of meeting notes are also included. “You guys deserve beatings like we got,” said one apparently older brother to younger ones. “It helps you understand. You guys are pussies!” Another entry orders the beatings of two brothers. And from a list of reminders to members, these items: “if the hazing goes wrong, we are finished”; “pledge banquet—within the next week, experimental road trips—we have to find girls who will fuck”; “drug dealing—keep it in the house."

In baseball slang, to “deke” somebody means to fool him, decoy him. Interesting, then, that fooling outsiders, especially college administrators, is a key element in the DKE writings, part of a group fealty that at times borders on the cultlike: “I’ve just finished reading the Record of what happened my freshman year when the House was threatened [suspended], and I realize how easy we have it now. But during that period things happened in the House for which we should be thankful—brotherhood became stronger than ever; unity was stronger than ever in the face of many adversaries; and secrecy was fine-tuned to an extent ‘known only to our order.’ Let us remember that, so that while we ‘build our bridges’ with the rest of the Colgate Community, while we adapt to new rules and attitudes, we…remember these words—the words my Pledge Father told me... DKE WILL ONLY CHANGE SO THAT DKE CAN REMAIN THE SAME.” Nearly every passage carries the closing motto, “In the Bonds,” above each DKE brother’s signature.

Reading the excerpts, it’s easy to understand how fraternity culture can convince its members that a range of abuses— from marathon drinking-and-vomiting sessions to theft, beatings and even rape—are O.K. as long as the group sanctions them. “If these were working-class kids or poor kids in an inner-city ghetto, we’d call them a gang and we’d call them pathological,” says Rhonda Levine, an associate professor of sociology at Colgate. Certainly, the reports of women who’ve been raped in fraternity houses nationwide show that what’s sometimes called “wilding” when committed by poor or minority men is most often called “group sex” when the offenders have money and social status.

DKE has not been alone among Colgate fraternities in its transgressions. Late last year, the alumni of Phi Gamma Delta closed their house due to rampant drug and alcohol abuse, vandalism and poor academic performance. Kappa Delta Rho was put on probation for rules infractions. In 1988, Delta Upsilon was disciplined for a function at which a member dressed as Hitler and two pledges went outside wearing T-shirts, one decorated with a swastika, the other with a Nazi slogan. Theta Chi and the sorority Gamma Phi Beta were suspended for the “jungle party” incident. In recent years, DKE has been suspended for fighting with Phil Delta Theta, Delta Upsilon for what college dean M. Lee Pelton calls “an out-of-control party” and Sigma Chi for violating university alcohol policy. (No wonder, on a recent visit, I saw a female student wearing a T-shirt with the plaintive message “Colgate University—The 4-Year Quest for the Sober Kiss.”)

Anecdotal reports from students and faculty about fraternity culture are just as damning. A letter written this spring by a Phi Gamma Delta member to the college administration described a paralyzing use of LSD, Ecstasy, cocaine and other drugs in his house, including a “drug olympics” held between members and pledges and a “tequila night” on which a record was kept of shots consumed. One one occasion, the letter-writer drank thirty-three shots; the winner, he said, drank forty-three. When another member, sophomore Chris Chafe, quit the house in disgust over hazing, sexism and drug abuse, Chafe says, “People said, ‘You’re a fool, you’re a whiner, you’re an asshole. We went through it, you should be able to go through it. That’s part of being in the house.’”

A female student told me of trips by the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity pledges to Skidmore College at which, she had heard, a point system was applied to sex acts. The fraternity pledges would divide into teams and, by the end of the night, the team with the most points would win. I asked Michael Sippey, an A.T.O. member and vice president of the Interfraternity/Sorority Council, if the story was true. “It goes on. It bothers me,” he says, but insists that the “tone” of the road trip has changed recently. Nonetheless, he says, “The concept is definitely warped.” Other students report seeing freshman pledges return to the dorms from fraternity events incoherent from drinking or taking drugs and with bruises on their bodies. Professor Levine tells of one of her students found lying outside his fraternity house, unconscious from drinking.

“I think a lot of these guys are normal,” says Adam Shyevitch, a senior who favors abolishing the Greek-letter system. “One thing I’ve gotten out of this is that so many people don’t have a clear image of when things are just wrong.”

Those who defend the Greek-letter system, like senior Todd Betke, a Phi Tau member and president of the Interfraternity/Sorority Council, argue against a ban at Colgate by saying the fraternities aren’t exclusionary (since 55 percent of students belong) and don’t foster sexism, racism, violence or other abuses. “There are incidents that people who are members of these institutions take part in, but that is not what the institutions stand for,” Betke says.

And Betke’s right. Most fraternity chapters stress social service over socializing and virtually all have removed discriminatory language from their membership codes. Many houses cite as their chief assets their good works, the career importance of their alumni networks (George Bush and Dan Quayle were DKEs at their colleges) and what they call the “management skills” that their members learn. Still, it’s not the blood drives, charity fund-raisers or improved résumé potential that brings in new members; it’s an attraction to a culture that often seems to say, “Become one of us and you’ll get loaded, you’ll get laid, you’ll become a man.”

Yet, as Grabois asks, are such attitudes due to the specific nature of fraternities? Certainly, young men sometimes form groups that express hostility toward women, African-Americans, homosexuals or anyone not exactly like themselves. These groups may be an informal cluster of friends or have a structure, as do fraternities, athletic teams and gangs. Fraternities, though, are especially dangerous because of the sheer number of men who join them (far greater than the number who belong to athletic teams); because they are socially approved and even admired groups (as opposed to gangs); and because members must show unquestioning loyalty (unlike casual friends).

Despite all the “good deeds” news clippings that fraternities and their alumni trot out, most fraternity cultures are still centered on proving manhood in accordance with three basic beliefs: that women are sex objects to be manipulated at will; that drinking and drug-taking are endurance sports; and that all nonmembers, be they other male students, professors or college administrators, are deficient weenies. Because fraternities are essentially closed shops, both morally and intellectually, members are unlikely to have those beliefs disputed in any way they will find convincing.

Some schools, including Colgate, have tried imposing reforms, but those efforts have largely failed. However, the decision to eliminate Greek-letter systems altogether is still a hard one for most schools to make. “I don’t think any campus is ever ready for it to happen,” says James Reynolds, a psychology professor and chair of the Faculty Affairs Committee at Colgate. Schools worry that such bans will anger alumni and jeopardize donations as well as cause housing and recreation shortages that the colleges will then have to remedy. Nonetheless, Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, took the plunge last year. It withdrew all material support (a full-time administrator, use of facilities, programming and other aid), although most fraternities continue to maintain privately owned houses off campus. Despite the fears beforehand, alumni donations show a slight increase this year. Franklin and Marshall has increased social-event funding and may open a student entertainment center. “We’re going to make the college programs and facilities the best we can,” says its president, Richard Kneedler, “and the fraternities are not in our plans.”

The fact that fraternities are flourishing on campuses today is not an argument to allow them to exist. Although increased diversity at universities might frighten some students into retreating to reassuringly familiar and homogeneous groups, schools need not support such a backlash. Those fraternity members who are truly committed to public-service projects can volunteer directly, through the American Red Cross or literacy programs, while those interested in developing management skills can gain all they want in open-membership student government groups. In short, there is no benefit offered by most Greek-letter groups that does not already exist in a better form, or could not easily be developed, on any other college campus. Amherst and Colby Colleges, like Franklin and Marshall, recently severed their Greek-letter systems There’s no reason that the same couldn’t happen at other schools where scholarship and social diversity are valued and the inherently destructive influence of fraternities is finally recognized.

At Colgate, the question of eliminating the Greek-letter system remains under review, but there are signs that more and more people feel the fraternity culture no longer has a place in a modern university. Says Professor Reynolds, “What as surprised me was the number of faculty who [previously] supported fraternities feeling the time has come for a change.”