Dive Brief:
- Rather than just singling out individual fraternities or sororities, more colleges have been turning to campus-wide sanctions of Greek systems for incidents this fall.
- Higher education institutions are getting more aggressive in their responses to issues related to sexual assault and harassment because of concerns about Title IX compliance.
- Targeting Greek systems is an efficient way to target the problem of large parties, which create conditions where sexual assaults are more likely to occur, because fraternities are often the main large-party organizers, Inside Higher Ed reports.
Dive Insight:
Some examples where Greek systems have been punished—or punished themselves—this fall: John Hopkins University’s Greek council banned open parties at fraternities for the semester after a 16-year-old girl reported being raped at a frat party. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has banned fraternity gatherings of 50 or more people following an incident where a woman fell from an MIT fraternity window. Emory University’s Interfraternity Council has suspended the social activities of Greek organizations following a reported assault at a fraternity.
Fraternity members are three times more likely to commit rape than non-members, more likely to binge drink, more likely to have unplanned sex and more likely to be injured while drinking, according to a study published by Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education (NASPA). But one potential problem with the punishments of the Greek system is that it may push parties off-campus, where colleges and universities have less oversight.