Sunday, December 18, 2011

Sig Eps Shut Down Following "rape survey"

This from USA TODAY:

A University of Vermont fraternity whose members are accused of circulating a survey that asked who they would like to rape has been closed indefinitely.

The national Sigma Phi Epsilon made the announcement Friday after an internal investigation and lengthy discussions with the university in Burlington.

"Without suggesting that every member had knowledge of this questionnaire, the questions asked in the document are deplorable and absolutely inconsistent with our values," said Brian Warren, executive director of the national fraternity organization based in Richmond, Va.

The national organization has said there's no indication the questionnaire was sanctioned by the fraternity or distributed to the more than 50 members of the Vermont chapter.

A student reported the questionnaire to university officials over the weekend, which led the school and the national organization to suspend the chapter temporarily, pending the investigation.

The school is investigating how widely the survey was circulated, and campus police are trying to determine if any crimes were committed.

Fraternity members say it was a select few individuals who came up with the question, not an act of the chapter as a whole, former Sigma Phi Epsilon member Wes Lewis says.

"We do not endorse that in any way," Lewis says. "We did not send it out to our members." ...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Makes you wonder what we really should be teaching kids in k-12 when you have students who no doubt scored well enough on these all important assessments to be counted as successful transitions and reach the percieved idealic goal of college admission. This isn't my idea of "college readiness".

Conversely, how would any of us respond if three or four idiots created something like this and all of our members were painted with the same brush of deviance and shame as well as our organization closed. They need to punish the transgressors instead of assuming guilt by association. Lazy leadership at a variety of organizational levels, more worried about bad PR under the guise of principles than actually addressing the specific individuals responsible. Berea Professor sends a racist tweet, you don't close his department or the university down.