Fraternities in spotlight after UVA rape report

An alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity is propelling the school to the center of a growing national debate over sexual assault, drinking and hazing.
Clemson University, Penn State Altoona and Wesleyan University are among colleges that have cracked down on fraternities in the past year. Faculty at Dartmouth College held a nonbinding vote Nov. 3 to abolish the fraternity system.
Phi Kappa Psi, the same fraternity at the center of the UVA news, is also under fire at Brown University in Providence. In October, two students said they suspected they were served an alcoholic punch mixed with a “date rape” drug at a fraternity party. One of the women said she had been sexually assaulted. The fraternity chapter, which the university didn’t name, has been suspended, according to a statement.
The Brown chapter said in a letter to the Brown Daily Herald student newspaper that it had been suspended “for hosting an unregistered event with alcohol present” and that “we were all shocked by the circumstances of the allegations.”
“We are confident that in no way did any member of Phi Kappa Psi engage in or perpetrate such atrocious and criminal behavior,” according to the letter.
College administrators are re-examining their relationship with Greek societies in light of increasing reports of harmful behavior. There have been more than 75 fraternity-related deaths since 2005, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
A Rolling Stone article last month told the story of a UVA freshman who said she was gang raped at a Phi Kappa Psi frat party in 2012. UVA should ban the chapter and investigate all fraternities, said Rachel Soltis, a former suitemate of the woman featured in the magazine.
“Frat parties are a big part of the problem,” Soltis, who lives near Leesburg, Va., said in a phone interview. “Young, innocent freshman girls, they’re kind of in this all-guy territory. It’s like a hotbed for the degradation of women.” Eight fraternities said in September that they had formed a group to confront sexual misconduct, alcohol abuse and hazing. Lambda Chi Alpha, Phi Delta Theta, Pi Kappa Alpha, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Alpha Mu, Sigma Chi, Tau Kappa Epsilon and Triangle fraternities said they would use a new curriculum to inform undergraduate members about the risks of these behaviors.
Fraternities “are moving with a fervor and a sense of hurry that I’ve never seen,” said Gentry McCreary, associate dean of students at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, who works with colleges and national fraternity groups as a consultant with the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management in Malvern, Pa.
The Rolling Stone story focuses on the experience of a female student called Jackie, how her friends were more concerned with their future social status than in reporting what happened, and the university’s alleged poor handling of the incident.
Four weeks into her freshman year, Jackie was invited to a fraternity party by a frat member she met when they both worked as lifeguards. At the party, her date led her to a bedroom where she was raped by seven men, who cheered each other on, according to the article.
At the end of her first year, Jackie reported the incident to Dean Nicole Eramo on the advice of a psychiatrist, according to the article. The dean explained various options such as filing a criminal report, filing a formal complaint with the school’s Sexual Misconduct Board that would lead to a campus hearing, or using an “informal resolution” process to speak to the alleged attackers.
In a statement last week, UVA President Teresa A. Sullivan said many of the details of the incident hadn’t been disclosed to the university. UVA’s Phi Kappa Psi chapter said in a Nov. 20 statement published in the school newspaper, the Cavalier Daily, that it has suspended activities.
“The acts depicted in the article are beyond unacceptable,” according to the statement. The national fraternity, based in Indianapolis, had about 5,900 active members in 105 chapters in the 2013-2014 school year, according to its website. It said in a statement that it takes the allegations at UVA “very seriously.”
Clemson suspended fraternity activities in September at its campus in South Carolina after a student, Tyler Hipps, died in a fall from a bridge during an early-morning run with fraternity members. Hipps was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon, which has banned hazing.
California State University at Northridge suspended a chapter of Pi Kappa Phi chapter in September after a student died on a hike. The chapter later agreed to disband. The same month, Penn State Altoona barred a fraternity for six years amid probes into a student suicide that was under investigation for links to hazing.
At Hanover, N.H.-based Dartmouth, about 20 percent of the faculty’s 600 members were present at the Nov. 3 meeting and they voted 116 in favor and 13 against to abolish fraternities, said Ryan Calsbeek, an associate professor of biology who is chairman of the school’s committee on student life.
The Ivy League school’s faculty has been doing research on the impact of Greek societies on student life and the occurrence of harmful behaviors, Calsbeek said in an interview.
“It would be oversimplifying to say that the Greek system is the cause of all this, but it’s correlated,” he said. “There has been enough evidence linking negative behavior to the Greek system that it’s time to do something.” •

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