For those student affairs professionals among you who think you have it bad, consider the state of universities in Nigeria.

Prior to independence, future Nobel prize-winner Wole Soyinka and some friends started an anti-colonial political confraternity known as the “Pyrates” at University College, Ibadan. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, confraternities began to spread rapidly, adopting names like the “Black Axes,” the “Supreme Vikings” and (I’m not making this up) the “Klansmen Konfraternity.” Female counterparts also emerged, like the “Barracudas” and the “Black Bras”; they also began to practice much more cult-like initiation rituals, such as drinking blood, torture and even sexual assault.

During the post-1983 period of military rule, confraternities were seen as useful counterweights to pro-democracy student unions and given official access to weaponry to keep campuses tame. Though democracy has returned, cults still have a major and menacing physical presence on campuses. They are responsible for dozens of deaths – both on campus and off – and kidnappings (including of university officials) as well as significant amounts of violence and threats thereof towards academic staff (despite the fact that a few lecturers are themselves cult members) – not to mention involvement with ethnic militias.

Those of you who think I’m making this up – most of you, I’m sure – need to check out links here, here, here, here and especially here. It’s all true. Imagine Animal House with John Belushi replaced by Marlo Stanfield and co. from The Wire – that’s the state of many Nigerian campuses.

Why am I telling you this? Well, when reading up on this two things occurred to me. The first was what a great April Fool’s blog it would make (“Vince Tinto uncovers new African campus movement promoting belonging, closer teacher-student interaction”), but the second was: at the end of the day, it’s students that make a campus culture.

You can have the greatest researchers in the world, but at the end of the day, people know a university by its graduates and its students. Universities can reject in loco parentis all they want, but there’s no getting away from the fact that whatever students get up to among themselves reflect on the institution – as anyone who’s been at York or Concordia over the last decade knows all too well.

So why do Canadian universities leave so much to chance in student affairs? Why do we elevate grades over character in admissions? Why does university-led student programming essentially end after frosh week? Even absent a threat of campus death cults, why don’t reputation-concerned universities make a bigger effort on student life issues?

It seems to me that a university looking for a genuine niche could find one here.