A national organization representing 26 sororities says that the ongoing ban on all Greek system activities at the University of Virginia is a violation of students’ rights.
“We believe it does not serve the goal of changing campus culture and eliminating sexual assault to shut down the business activity of our fraternity and sorority chapters,” the National Panhellenic Conference said in a statement provided to The Washington Post.
Last week, U-Va. president Teresa A. Sullivan told The Post that the suspension of fraternity and sorority activities would remain in place until Jan. 9, as the university pursues a wide-ranging discussion on sexual assault and campus culture.
Sullivan announced the freeze on the Greek system in November in the wake of the publication of a Rolling Stone article alleging a brutal sexual assault at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house on Sept. 28, 2012. In the magazine account, a student named Jackie described being ambushed after a date function and enduring a gang-rape by seven fraternity brothers while two other male students, including her date, watched.
Earlier this month, Phi Kappa Psi announced that the house did not host a date function that weekend and that no member of the fraternity matched the description of the attacker Jackie gave to Rolling Stone. The account has further been called into question as friends of Jackie’s have disputed details in the article and as information Jackie provided to friends about the date who allegedly attacked her that night led to a man who says he has never met her in person and to a high school classmate who attends college in a different state.
In interviews with The Post, Jackie, now a junior, stood by the account that appeared in the pop culture magazine.
In the aftermath of the article’s publication, the U-Va. Greek system has drawn scrutiny for potentially fostering an environment that facilitates sexual assault. But as inconsistencies in the Rolling Stone account emerged in recent weeks, a number of Greek organizations have questioned Sullivan’s original suspension of fraternity and sorority activities.
The ban has little practical ongoing effect for U-Va. students, who are on winter break until the next semester is scheduled to begin on Jan. 12, three days after the suspension lifts.
Below is the full-statement from the National Panhellenic Conference:
Hear our voices. Hear us when we say we are not tone deaf to sexual assault. The National Panhellenic Conference is composed of 26 women’s sororities with more than 300,000 active undergraduate women members, and 2,500 of whom are students at the University of Virginia. We care about the safety of all sorority and non-sorority women very deeply.
A recent article that appeared in a magazine alleging a fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia has escalated the national conversation about sexual assault. Whatever the merits of a portion of the article may have been, we believe it does not serve the goal of changing campus culture and eliminating sexual assault to shut down the business activity of our fraternity and sorority chapters. Our message on this matter has already been shared in our joint statement with our interfraternal partners.
Hear us when we say the Greek community all agrees that one rape is one too many. Sexual assault awareness has certainly gained more momentum in the past six to nine months, and the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) has actively participated in the national conversations and taken deliberate steps to confront sexual assault. We attended listening sessions conducted by the White House and Department of Education last winter, and we have talked about this topic in our monthly messages, blogs, and social media channels. We most recently have established a Student Safety and Sexual Assault Task Force that is charged with researching resources and brainstorming avenues for training and prevention. We have held conversations with other agencies and national organizations about where our teams can overlap our resources in unified efforts to reach and protect more women. And we have engaged in dialogue on sexual assault with our friends in the other umbrella fraternal organizations. It is absolutely a priority of the sorority community to ensure our campuses are safe for women.
These efforts are just the beginning of more to come. For anyone to assert that we are tone deaf to the issue of sexual assault is a false and simply unfair statement.
No matter all the facts and truth to the recent Rolling Stone article, we remain gravely concerned that the turn of events regarding the article may prevent women from stepping forward to report sexual assaults because of the impact to others in the university and Greek community. Women should not be victims twice because of the sexual assaults and then again because of potential concerns with reporting and causing strife among student groups. This is an all-student safety issue, not just Greek community issue, which will continue to be addressed on local and national levels.
No doubt, cultural change is necessary and critical. We seek to work with university partners and campus colleagues as we collaborate on next steps moving forward to heal from such events and accusations, and assist in education to help prevent sexual assault and protect women. While we are not experts on preventing sexual assault, we know the impact it can have on our sister victims and we look to those who can help guide and assist us in providing resources to our member organizations and all women.
NPC encourages our sorority women to support and care for one another. We will not turn our heads on this important issue, but rather speak up so our voices will be heard and our actions will be noticed.
The sanctions imposed on the sorority and fraternity system, particularly at U-Va., have punished all members with no cited wrongdoing and their rights have been violated.
We must take a stand. Our voice must also be heard, and the time is now.
