As regular readers should know, your correspondent is an ardent advocate for supporting greeks in proper fire safety. The confluence of collegians and common living can be a potential tinderbox (forgive the tasteless pun) for disaster. But the city of Columbia, Missouri, home of the flagship University of Missouri campus, has eschewed the carrot for the stick. A new ordinance forces frathouses—and not any other sort of multiple-use dwellings—to install expensive fire safety systems on their own dime on pain of eviction.
Resistance has centered around the manifestly discriminatory nature of the law, imputing to greeks some greater risk of conflagration. The Columbia Fire Marshall Steve Sapp scrabbled ineffectually to explain delicately what makes greeks so special: "That’s a long answer.... Not to be argumentative, and it’s hard to do this, but I know from being in them, there is a difference between sorority houses and frat houses. There is a tremendous difference in the way the house is up-kept and the things that go on." Well put, Mr Sapp. That explains everything. Meanwhile, the Building Construction Codes Commission has recommended the law be scrapped.
But there's nothing wrong with encouraging fire safety. The problem is encouraging it without actually provinding any money for reforms: what is called in government an "unfunded mandate." Certainly drumming up scarce cash and handing it preferentially to greeks to upgrade purported firetraps is not likely to be any more popular with independents than the current ordinance is with the greeks. The proper compromise is encapsulated in the proposed federal Collegiate Housing and Infrastructure Act, which would make alumni donations for fire safety tax-deductible, if passed.
In the absence of such a happy medium, Mizzou frats are considered disaffiliating with the university to avoid the effective tax on fraternity status. Great result: drive the organizations underground into yet more unregulable territory.
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