Wesleyan University Fraternities Ordered to Become Co-ed
Video by Madisen Keavy
Fraternities at Wesleyan University in Connecticut must become co-ed in the next three years or risk being thrown off campus.
University president Michael Roth says he is taking these steps to eradicate the issue of sexual assault from Greek life.
Only 4 percent of the student body is involved in Greek life, but sexual assault is still a prevalent issue. In the past two years, at least two different female students have sued both the university and one fraternity, respectively, for alleged cases of rape.
Chloe Murtagh, a Wesleyan senior, told the Wall Street Journal that many students feel uncomfortable going to fraternity houses after so many allegations of sexual assault.
Sexual assault on college campuses has become a prevalent issue on a national scale as well. According to the U.S. Education Department, cases of sexual assault have increased since 2010 on college campuses. President Obama helped launch a campaign called “It’s On,” which seeks to raise awareness about the problem and how to combat it.
The sole sorority on campus will not be forced to include men, since they do not have residential housing.
I think this is a sexist decision. Rape can occur anywhere. It just happened to occur a couple of times in a Frat house. I bet a lot of rapes occur in cars. Are you going to ban all male-owned cars?
I believe both fraternities and sororities would prefer to remain single sex. Someone in college administration suggests that maybe incidents of rape will go down if we made these organizations coed. The fact that 99% of the boys don’t rape and that this change will significantly hurt the culture of the fraternity is not deemed to be important. But how do they hurt the fraternities without forcing this change also on the sororities?
They could say what they are thinking – boys are bad, girls are good. But that would come across as sexist. So they have to come up with a difference. The difference they found was the living arrangements - the girls don't have a house, Therefore this new rule applies to only fraternities and sororities with a house. Alas the girls don’t have a house so only guys are negatively affected. But it is a bogus difference. As I stated at the outset, Rape can occur anywhere, not just in a frat house.