The Kappa Alpha house on fraternity row at the University of Richmond. The chapter has been suspended over an email containing "grossly offensive language." (Steve Helber/Associated Press)
BY NOW there is overwhelming evidence that sexual assault, involving everything from forced touching to rape, is pervasive on college campuses. Yet rarely do cheerleaders for that conduct announce themselves publicly, let alone with the zest mustered by a pair of fraternity brothers at the University of Richmond this month.
“Today is the day boys. . . . This is gonna be one for the books,” wrote the party animals at the Kappa Alpha fraternity, in an email reminding about 100 students, including freshmen, about a party at the frat lodge that night. The email went on to enthuse about watching “lodge virginity be gobbled up for ya’ll” and concluded: “If you haven’t started drinking already, catch up. Tonight’s the type of night that makes fathers afraid to send their daughters away to school. Let’s get it.”
What Kappa Alpha ended up “getting” was suspended, both by the university and by the fraternity’s national headquarters, both of which condemned the email and the unvarnished gusto it expressed at the prospect of sexual predation.
That’s an apt response to a pernicious missive written by a couple of glib nitwits whose obliviousness provides a useful reminder: Despite a full-court press on the issue of campus sexual assault, led by the White House and echoed by college presidents and advocacy groups, the message still has not been fully received where it’s most needed. It’s a fair bet that Kappa Alpha’s chapter at the University of Richmond isn’t the only fraternity, nor the email’s authors the only students, who regard alcohol-fueled parties as hunts, and the women who attend them as prey.
A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll in 2015 found that a fifth of female college students say they had been the victim of sexual assault, meaning unwanted contact that included forced sexual touching, oral sex, vaginal sexual intercourse and anal sex. The poll also suggested that women at colleges with fraternities and sororities were more likely to be assaulted.
Those results were consistent with other surveys, including one at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where 17 percent of female respondents at the school said they had been subjected to various forms of unwanted sexual advances. Using the same survey methodology employed at MIT, the Collegian, the campus newspaper at the University of Richmond, last year found female undergraduates there reported similar experiences, including 12.6 percent who said they’d been sexually assaulted and 5.9 percent who said they’d been raped.
It’s possible to acknowledge the definitional problems inherent in such surveys, and the ambiguity in the minds of many students involving how to characterize their sexual encounters. It’s fair to question whether some students accused of sexual misbehavior at some campuses have been treated fairly or accorded due process.
What’s beyond doubt is that too much unwanted and forced sexual contact is taking place on campus, and that college men, in particular, could benefit from a wake-up call. Alpha Kappa, with a thick dollop of obnoxiousness, has provided one.