The vote was unanimous.
Less than three weeks after a fraternity brother took Jennifer up to his room and locked the door, he was out of Greek life for good.
She didn’t want to report to the police after it happened. She figured they wouldn’t believe her. Plus, she knew her attacker, and she didn’t want to ruin his life, she said.
And telling the Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct, which investigates sexual assault at the University of Maryland, would be detrimental to her healing, she thought. Jennifer knew that this university is under federal investigation for its handling of sexual misconduct cases.
So, she relied on a system she didn’t think would let her down: the Greek one.
Jennifer, a sophomore at this university, is identified by a pseudonym to protect her identity. The Diamondback does not generally identify victims of sexual assault. Jennifer’s and her attacker’s chapters are not identified at Jennifer’s request.
After her attack in February, Jennifer told members of her sorority she had been sexually assaulted and approached the president of her attacker’s fraternity. He collected evidence and assembled an incident report. On March 13, an executive committee of the chapter’s leadership presented its findings in a hearing before the chapter. Every member voted to expel the accused man.
“It’s so weird for me to say Greek life helped me even though I was assaulted by someone in Greek life,” she said. This account has been verified with members of both chapters and a document describing the hearing.
Interviews with almost 40 members of Greek life reveal an insular culture where members attempt to protect their reputations while also attempting to eliminate sexual assault within their own community. This university has 59 registered Greek chapters under the Panhellenic Association, Interfraternity Council, Multicultural Greek Council and National Pan-Hellenic Council. The accounts in this article reflect the views of members interviewed from 11 PHA, 17 IFC and two MGC chapters. The other chapters and chapters of the NPHC did not respond to or declined multiple requests for comment.
Leaders from 14 fraternities say they would use a process similar to Jennifer’s case to address allegations of sexual misconduct within their own chapters.
Jennifer’s is one of several chapters making sexual assault a focus of new member education, chapter discussions and Greek community outreach, in lieu of institutions and systems they say are at best, unequipped, and at worst, failing to address the problem. Her attacker’s chapter is one of several fraternities that grapples with what to do when a survivor of assault wants justice within the Greek community, but not through legal or university systems.
Typically, chapters use standards boards, internal judicial processes and risk management policies to manage everything from breaking something in a chapter house to getting too drunk at a social. This is also the process fraternity leadership said they would, and in at least two chapters have, used to address allegations of sexual assault.
Public intoxication and property destruction, which those interviewed said would result in a standards or judicial hearing, could result in misdemeanor charges in the state of Maryland. Sexual assault, or rape, is a university violation punishable up to expulsion and a felony with a maximum punishment of life imprisonment in the state.
While assault survivors should be able to choose how to pursue justice, “a crime has been committed if a person is raped or sexually assaulted,” said Rashawn Ray, a professor in the sociology department who has done research on Greek life and sexual assault.
“And at that point, it’s the responsibility of our judicial system to hold people accountable. It shouldn’t be up to fraternity men to make decision on how things are litigated. I think that is the fundamental problem.”
Department of Fraternity and Sorority Life Director Matt Supple said he’s aware of the internal hearings, but cannot stop them because chapters are subsets of private national organizations with their own governing bodies. Instead, the department encourages brothers and sisters to refer each other to CARE to Stop Violence and stresses accountability through educational programs such as 10 Man or 10 Woman Plan, a weekly discussion-based training that addresses sexual assault prevention.
This university’s Title IX Director Catherine Carroll and the Office of Student Conduct Director Andrea Goodwin said they were not aware that at least two fraternities handle sexual assault this way, and others said it’s their plan to handle it internally. Goodwin said that all allegations and incidents should be reported to the Title IX Office and the handling of all cases should be done through the university’s policies and procedures to ensure a fair and thorough process, she said.
“I don’t think there should be student bodies adjudicating cases of sexual misconduct,” Goodwin said. “That makes me nervous.”
“We want to make sure that as a community that we’re adjudicating sexual misconduct in a very appropriate way and that we are getting justice for the complainant and we are giving the respondent due process,” Goodwin said. “I think that can only happen through the university’s proceedings.”
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ADJUDICATING THEIR OWN
Both sororities and fraternities typically handle risky behavior internally. Presidents, risk managers and members have become unofficial counselors, educators and in some cases, arbiters of justice, doling out sanctions against or holding meetings with chapters associated with accused perpetrators of sexual misconduct.
Fourteen fraternities interviewed said they would reach out to the accuser and the accused for their sides of the story, gather additional information from potential witnesses and involve the university or the police only at the accuser’s discretion.
In 2012, brothers of Sigma Alpha Epsilon used their standards and ethics board to try a brother who had been accused of touching another brother’s girlfriend inappropriately and committing Sexual Assault II — unwanted touching of intimate body parts — under this university’s policy.
“I am not sure if we should issue him a real punishment, possibly just a stern warning that if something like this is brought to our attention again, he will receive social moratorium,” wrote a board member in an email before the accused brother’s hearing.
When asked this month if the chapter still handles incidents of sexual misconduct in this manner, chapter president Yuval Elkun wrote: “SAE uses our Standards Board to investigate any impropriety within the chapter. After the investigation is complete, we take the appropriate actions necessary, at the chapter level, fraternity level and/or university level as prudent.”
University Police Chief of Staff David Lloyd, though he declined to comment on Greek life specifically, advised cases be handled by Title IX or the police.
“We’re professional law enforcement officers, we have professional investigators,” he said. “Who would know better? Probably us.”
Although most fraternity chapters said they have not had to use this kind of process in recent years, only a handful said they would handle serious infractions, like sexual assault, through their national organizations. A few others were unsure what their formal process would be, but guessed they would use a standards or judicial board.
Such situations have different implications for students living on or off campus in university-owned residence halls or apartments. Fellow students work as Resident Assistants in each floor of a dorm, with the responsibility to report any code of conduct violation, including sexual misconduct. Fraternities and sororities have house directors, who are university employees, and are also required to report any knowledge of sexual assault to the Title IX office.
These house directors are not intimately involved in social aspects of Greek Life. Instead, a fraternity or sorority member serves as a risk manager, reminding members not to drink too much, along with giving tips on bystander intervention techniques, before social events.
Risk managers are not required to report code of conduct violations to the university and there are no university rules prohibiting Greek chapters from adjudicating cases on their own.
If DFSL does become aware of an assault within the Greek community, the department forwards the case to the Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct, Supple said. Supple has not had to do this in the last two years, he said.
“Our goal is to have that process be handled by the people that know it best,” he said. “And most of the time our chapters are not prepared to handle those situations.”
But if a survivor of sexual sexual assault did not want to report to the police or the university, the chapter leaders say they would adjudicate sexual misconduct internally using a group of brothers tasked with enforcing the values of the organization, involving police, the university or other authorities on a case-by-case basis.
Of 37 Greek men and women contacted from 30 university chapters, all had either personally experienced or known a brother or sister who experienced sexual assault, often in chapter houses or while attending off-campus parties, while at the University of Maryland.
Yet, reports of sexual assault are low, mirroring national underreporting statistics. This university’s Title IX Office received 33 complaints of an incident of sexual misconduct off-campus, compared to 53 incidents on campus, in the two academic years after the office was founded in 2014.
Members of 30 chapters across the IFC, PHA and MGC said the onus is on chapters to change a culture that perpetuates sexual assault. NPHC chapters did not respond to request for comment.
Interviews with members of 11 sororities revealed executive boards make decisions to ostracize fraternities unwilling to expel brothers who have been accused of misconduct. Others work outside the rules, excusing women who experienced sexual assault from mandatory events that might be triggering or involve an attacker’s fraternity.
As risk manager in the spring and fall of 2016, Molly Higgins, a junior in Phi Sigma Sigma personally dealt with four instance of sexual assault within her chapter. In one case, a chapter member recognized a man at a party who had assaulted her friend and notified the entire chapter, Higgins said. The girls immediately started making sure everyone was accounted for and stopped scheduling social events with the fraternity.
“The first instinct was to believe these allegations were true and I think a lot of time the first instinct is to doubt,” she said. “It was good to see the first priority was the safety of the sisters.”
While she was president in 2015, at least five sisters disclosed their assaults to Jillian McGrath, now a senior in Zeta Tau Alpha and a member of Preventing Sexual Assault. But they did not want to report. Some girls wanted to stop scheduling events with a specific fraternity, which was a “relatively easy fix,” McGrath said. But others came to her for advice on how to move forward, and she had “no idea what to tell [them] which was really hard and scary,” she said.
For now, Zeta keeps a list of fraternities to avoid.
“It’s so hard because … Zeta has a list of three, I’m sure like [others have] a list of a different three, and so on and so on,” McGrath said. “I’m sure they exist in every fraternity and there’s not a lot you can do.
“It’s not like you can take it to [the Department of Fraternity and Sorority Life] and be like I’ve had two girls who aren’t willing to disclose, who don’t want to go to Title IX, who don’t want to go on the record say that such and such a fraternity is sexually assaulting girls. There’s nothing they can do about that.”
Sub for education/training
DFSL tries to infuse “the four horsemen of the Greek apocalypse” — sexual assault, hazing, drugs, alcohol and diversity and inclusion — into all educational programming, Supple said.
Greek chapter presidents receive the same training as the rest of the chapter but do not receive any mandatory training specifically about how to help members who have been sexually assaulted. Chapter presidents take a class where managing sexual misconduct is not a part of the curriculum, though the students discuss it while talking about crisis management and how to support members, Supple said.
“You have to hope that a president has the right mindset and the right ideology,” said Kappa Sigma President Evan Silverman, who feels the university is failing to provide the proper resources to chapters grappling with misconduct from members.
“I haven’t had real training,” said Silverman, who calls home for advice so much, he feels “like my mom is running my fraternity at some times.”
McGrath felt “blindsided” when chapter members disclosed their assaults to her.
“There are very specific things you shouldn’t say to people that are disclosing to you and things you should say,” McGrath said. “I knew none of that.”
To maintain university recognition, a chapter must meet certain programming requirements, one of which requires the chapter participate in some type of sexual assault prevention programing. Inability to do so puts their status as an official university chapter in jeopardy said Lola Taiwo, DFSL’s sexual assault prevention and education graduate coordinator.
DFSL coordinates two programs, the Ten Man or Woman Plan and a sexual assault prevention liaison program. There are 18 chapters enrolled in the 10 Man or Woman program and 22 chapters enrolled in the liaison program.
The Ten Man Plan brings together at least 10 chapter members once a week over nine weeks to discuss sexual assault and how to prevent it. The idea behind it is a kind of pay-it-forward model that encourages participants to take what they learned and tell their friends.
In Kappa Alpha Order, 10 brothers signed up to participate and another volunteered to run the 10 Man program the day President Joseph Piscatelli sent out a message about it over the chapter listserv. In KA, the program has been “one of the most enriching” experiences the chapter has ever had, said Piscatelli, a junior accounting major.
ZBT President Will Gomolka remembered a joint session with a sorority where someone asked how many in the group knew someone affected by sexual assault.
“You get a lot more hands from a sorority than you would from a fraternity and that’s really eye opening,” he said.
But the program has its drawbacks.
Program facilitators, who run the weekly sessions and act as a resource for the chapters, are volunteers and their numbers are limited. Typically, about 20 of the 58 chapters are able to enroll, Taiwo said. Facilitators are mandatory reporters — required to report any disclosure of assault to this university’s Title IX office — something that deters some sororities from seeking Ten Women Plan to fulfill their requirement.
Alpha Chi Omega, the first chapter to implement a 10 Woman Plan, made their organization independent because facilitators are mandatory reporters. The chapter’s version of the program is aimed at fostering a space where members have agency and can control their stories, said [title] Kathleen Godwin.
AChiO wants to make sure the person affected by sexual assault can “choose what comes next.”
DFSL this year introduced a new sexual assault liaison program, created in part by Delta Delta Delta member Fiona Bett and Chi Phi brother Rajan Parikh. Bett, who helped develop the program as part of her internship with DFSL, saw a lack of depth in her chapter’s approach to preventing assault.
Bett and Parikh developed a curriculum to train liaisons, who act as a chapter’s go-to for members who might have experienced sexual violence.
Some, like Theta Chi brother James Hackler, have embraced their role as a sort of front-line defense.
“I’m not one of the boys,” Hackler said. “And that’s how we want to keep it. It’s important for girls to feel safe.”
But the liaisons are “not counselors,” said Taiwo, and are armed with little more than a list of contact information for university resources such as the Title IX office, the police and the CARE to Stop Violence office.
“It’s a sensitive issue,” Hacker said. “We can’t force anyone to do anything.”
THE CULTURE:
The more than 30 fraternity and sorority members interviewed in the last four months said chapters combat with what they’ve deemed “the culture” For different people it meant different things.
McGrath called it a “bizarre microcosm” where sex between blacked-out drunk students is unquestioned and speaking out is uncomfortable.
Silverman described dimly lit parties where unregulated drinking leads to a “dangerous environment.”
Kathleen Godwin, a senior in Alpha Chi Omega, faulted social interactions centered around alcohol and substance abuse that can muddy decision making.
“We’ve so normalized this heavy, heavy drinking culture,” she said. “When something happens we’re not comfortable with, we’re unsure of what we do next.”
“Greek life gives people who are sexual predators the perfect cover,” said Higgins. “If a guy is going to commit a sexual assault, he’s going to do it in a basement with flashing lights where drinks are flowing.”
Across the country, schools grapple with what to do with Greek communities typically associated with increased rates of assault. At Big Ten peer institution Penn State, an administrator said Greek women are twice as likely to be raped and Greek men, 62 percent more likely to commit assault. The University of Michigan’s 2015 climate survey revealed sorority and fraternity members were 2.5 times more likely to experience nonconsensual penetration than their peers.
Sexual assault is a risk factor for experiencing and perpetrating sexual assault among sorority and fraternity members respectively, according to President Wallace Loh’s joint task force report on sexual assault.
Parties are central to the culture. Fraternities host socials with sororities, often in group houses far from the well-lit Fraternity Row.
IFC, the local governing body for fraternities, requires chapters to register official chapter house parties, for which national rules might require security or additional precautions. Hard liquor is prohibited. A bouncer and a graduate student supervisor must be present. Drinking games are banned. All sororities’ national organizations prohibit alcohol in chapter houses, Supple said.
“When you have a registered party in a frat house, there is a bouncer there, there is a grad student there, there is some kind of surveillance on you versus when you have it in a satellite house, a mile back into the darkness,” McGrath said.
In house parties, bodies pack into low-ceilinged basements and alcohol slicks nearly every surface. The themes can verge on crude — think Tennis Bros and Yoga Hoes — and contribute to the problem, said Phi Delta Theta President Anthony Busani, who has banned sexist themes at their chapter’s parties.
In these tight spaces, physical boundaries become easier to broach and communication between partygoers becomes more difficult, said Ryan Goldberg, president of Lambda Chi Alpha.
“It’s difficult to have rationally thinking men and women in a situation where there’s binge drinking and partying,” he said.
There’s little to no accountability at these parties besides sober brothers and sisters, who are members of the participating chapters tasked with surveying the other partygoers and mitigating potential misconduct. The parties have no supervision and no paper trail to track who was there and for how long.
Even when DFSL revokes chapter recognition after some major infraction, some organizations go underground, further distancing the rules and regulations that attempt to curtail risky behavior. Both the PHA and IFC have passed legislation that makes co-sponsoring an event with an underground group illegal and subject to social moratorium, a punishment banning the offending chapter from participating in any social events.
Even in accepting and supportive chapters, confronting assault can be difficult.
“It’s kind of like, when you report it, it kind of seems like you’re going against Greek life,” said Cristina Johnson, a sister in Alpha Phi and Greek relations chair for student group Preventing Sexual Assault, who said the only sisters she knows who have reported their assaults are those also in PSA.
“When you report a sexual assault from Greek life, it seems like you’re saying, ‘Yes, it does happen here,’” she said. “I think a lot of people want to keep up this facade, like, ‘Stop blaming us, it’s not us.’”