This past week the University of Virginia, founded in old Charlottesville by none other than Thomas Jefferson, took the interesting step of suspending all of its fraternities and sororities for a seven-week period ending in early January. The action was taken as a result of allegations of sexual assault at the house of the local chapter of Phi Kappa Psi.
So here is the mandatory disclaimer: Sexual assault is a criminal act, both morally and legally. The perpetrators, if afforded due process and convicted, should be punished to the appropriate extent of the law.
Having said that, there is no excuse whatsoever for punishing anyone other than the person or persons responsible for the act. As reported in the Washington Post this past Sunday, the university not only suspended Phi Kappa Psi, but also all the 30 other fraternities, all 16 sororities and something called "minority-oriented Greek-letter organizations", although except for the predominant race of the members, I wasn't aware that historically black fraternities like Omega Psi Phi, Kappa Alpha Psi and Alpha Phi Alpha were anything other than "fraternities."
I don't quite get the "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" logic. Perhaps you do. The Post did not explain what purpose was supposed to be served by the suspension of the 16 sororities, and I'm at a loss to understand why that was done.
But more to the point, the university is a Commonwealth institution, not a private one, and accordingly should be even more sensitive to the concept of "due process." Sexual assault is not an organizational activity, it is personal -- here, disgustingly, by more than one "person". In this case, although there was evidence or strong suggestion of cooperation and group assistance in the assault allegation by several perpetrators, it is pretty easy to argue that the suspension should have been of the accused and of any possible accomplices, not the Phi Kappa Psi chapter itself.
And even if you're not on board with that line of thinking -- which I believe correct -- there is no rationale for punishing any person or institution outside the individual accused, certainly not other fraternities not party to the assault, and for Heaven's sake, not the sororities. I dare say that if the university president were asked to defend the decision to suspend all the other Greek organizations, including the sororities, she would say something clever like "Well, we have a problem and we had to do something."
Well, Madam President, here's the thing. If you have a problem on campus with sexual assaults, and according to the article you do and have for a long time, how about following due process and confining your punishment to those meriting punishment? If you believe that there is an institutional problem, then put in place a plan for addressing the institutional problem, which a seven-week suspension is not a rational part of.
My own fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, went alcohol-free at all its chapters some 15 years ago. The Post even took the time this past spring to write up - positively - all the efforts it made to remove this kind of issue from its chapter houses. Why did our chapter at U.Va. have to get suspended with the rest? And why, again, were chapter houses only housing women included among those who have to go through this process?
Sexual assault is an atrocious offense and should be punished appropriately after due process. That doesn't excuse the fact that overcompensation is inappropriate, and contrary to the principles of our Constitution. And suspending 16 sororities that almost certainly have no complicity in the offense is throwing the baby out with the bathwater in its worst illustration.
Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton
As you are probably aware nearly five years later, the accuser, a girl named Jackie Coakley, turned out to have made up the entire story. No party, no rape, no nothing. The Phi Psis sued Rolling Stone and won a 7-figure settlement, but Jackie Coakley has not even paid a penny, nor has she been charged for her fraud. She got married and is living happily somewhere, having left a disaster in her wake. Ah, America.
ReplyDelete