Wesleyan College in Middletown, Conn., recently announced its new mandate to make all on-campus fraternities coed. Along with Trinity College in Hartford, Wesleyan is the second school to enforce this policy, which is expected to be in place in the next two years.

This decision comes in response to concerns with fraternity behavior and is on the heels of an incident in which a woman was injured after falling from a third story window while attending a Beta Theta Pi fraternity party at Wesleyan. According to Fox News, Wesleyan spokeswoman Kate Carlisle said the changes aren’t a reaction to any one incident in particular. “This has been the subject of ongoing concern and discussion among the people in the administration, the school community, the alumni community and so forth for a number of years,” Carlisle said. To me, it seems more influenced by a need to save face and alleviate negative connotations with Greek organizations than to actually make definitive forward progress for women’s equality.

Though there are many wonderful qualities to Greek life, including the feeling of belonging to a group, a brotherhood that will stay with you for the rest of your life and a sense of philanthropy in involvement with charitable events, Greek life is often noted for its negative implications. Fraternities are often linked with excessive drinking, drug usage (and reports show higher percentages of increased alcohol and drug use in single-sex fraternities) and sexual assault cases, but there is certainly no way to prove those same members would alter their intake or behavior just because there were more females in their presence. It seems implied that if women were permitted to join and were well-represented in terms of leadership roles in each fraternity, it would discourage those who were most prone to excess in their alcohol and drug consumption and other reckless behavior. But if sexual assault prevention really is the key reason that The Wesleyan Student Assembly pushed for the integration last year, then I must be missing something. How will permitting more women to join a fraternity prevent a sexual assault? It seems as if, numbers-wise, it would increase them. Instead of a mandatory coed fraternity policy, why not start holding present fraternities and the brothers within them more accountable for their actions? Also, if the rule is only going to affect on-campus fraternities, isn’t that just going to promote those fraternities bent on non-regulatory behavior into underground off-campus fraternities, where there will be little to no university jurisdiction over the behavior of those most in need of rules, restrictions and repercussions?

The problem with the compulsory policy is that it’s acting as if it’s in place to promote a sense of equality, the opportunity for women to join previously off-limits social groups. In a time when feminism gets attention and Emma Watson is suddenly more famous for her pleas for equal rights than for her movie roles, it’s easy to wonder if this is all a perfect step forward in terms of progress for women. One by one, we knock away rules and barriers: property rights, voting, legal rights, working conditions, what we’re allowed to say, to drink, to wear, to think. (Equal pay is going to be next, mark my words.) The forced admission and representation of women into fraternities, however, does not seem to stem from a strong vocal desire amongst women to join said fraternities. They are not lining up and picketing and sending letters to their state representatives. There are already coed fraternities in existence for those who want them, and certainly, in terms of equality, there are a multitude of sororities for women that provide the same opportunities for fellowship and community, friendship and mayhem, philanthropy and fun that their counterpoint fraternities offer. So why are schools starting to force the issue?

Because they seem to think that, under a façade of women’s equality, the women will provide a tempering influence for boys that are behaving badly. Women should not join a fraternity just so they can serve as peacekeepers and babysitters. This isn’t feminist progress, it’s actually rather insulting. The last thing a woman should have to do is keep the men in her fraternity organization on the straight and narrow. There is a huge difference between being a concerned friend and being expected to have a mitigating effect on those around her simply because of her gender. Until women are actively seeking admission to fraternities on their own terms, there is no reason to enforce this obligatory rule.