It’s one thing for those of us with no love lost for the Greek system to look at the SAE racist chant scandal and suggest that maybe these organizations have outlived their usefulness, but it’s quite another thing for someone who hails from that system to make such suggestion. And thus we go to one William Ferrell, whom you might know as a beloved SNL favorite and giant comedy movie star, but who was also a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity while attending the University of Southern California.

For a recent SXSW interview with The New York Times spent answering reader questions, Ferrell was asked about the SAE business, and offered up this response:

Q. Will, we are fraternity brothers of Delta Tau Delta, albeit different chapters and years. The recent awful situation with SAE has brought out the “frat haters” in droves. Could you comment on your own fraternity experience and why (or why not) fraternity membership is still a worthy consideration for a college student? — Stephen Browning, Seattle A. The incident in Oklahoma, that is a real argument for getting rid of the system altogether, in my opinion, even having been through a fraternity. Because when you break it down, it really is about creating cliques and clubs and being exclusionary. Fraternities were started as academic societies that were supposed to have a philanthropic arm to them. And when it’s governed by those kind of rules, then they’re still beneficial. But you gotta be careful. I was lucky in that the one I was in, we were really kind of the anti-fraternity fraternity. We were considered good enough to get the exchanges with the good sororities. We couldn’t get anyone to vote on anything, but if you needed 40 guys to show up and build a 20-foot-tall papier-mâchéversion of the Matterhorn, we were there and ready. But we didn’t take it too seriously. It was just about having fun. But I think it’s an interesting dilemma for universities these days.

[via Uproxx]