Frats Will Go Back to Partying at UVa in January
Thanks in part to Rolling Stone's rape reporting disaster, fraternities will resume partying at the University of Virginia on January 9. After protests from Greek groups including the North American Intrafraternity Conference, UVa President Teresa Sullivan has decided to end the frat suspension that was meant to "give the university and Greek leadership a pause to identify solutions that would best ensure the well-being and safety of students."
It's not clear what solutions have been identified. After Rolling Stone's story was published, Sullivan suspended all fraternity and sorority activity and asked the Charlottesville Police Department to investigate the claims made in the article. Now Greek life will go back to normal while the PD continues to investigate.
The truth about what happened to Jackie, the woman who told Rolling Stone she was raped by seven men at the Phi Psi house her freshman year, may never be clear. Her father now says she may have misidentified the frat where her rape took place. Regardless, UVa students still feel that something like a gang rape could happen at a UVa frat house. Julia Horowitz, the managing editor of the student newspaper, wrote for Politico last week:
I am drained. I am confused. But I keep returning to one question. If everyone here believed Jackie's story until yesterday—a story in which she is violently raped by seven men at a fraternity house as part of a planned initiation ritual—should we not still be concerned?
There was something in that story which stuck. And that means something.
Sullivan couldn't punish frats forever without cause. But if the entirety of UVa's student body believes that a violent rape could happen at a frat house, that's worth considering before letting bros run amok again.