any chance the suffering of the fraternity members and uva community is being discounted because they are predominately white males?
we all know it’s very hard for white males to be the victim in 2015
I am not discounting the sufferng. The UVA community will recover.
This episode sucks. RS should never have printed the article.
My kid( and I) took these allegations very seriously- lost sleep over it. My very confident kid, very high stat kid, did not want to talk about it at thanksgiving. Very painful and confusing for him .There were alot of repercussions with all of this.
Sevmom, how is your son doing now?
Well, he is making big bucks in engineering and CS with shares on top of that so I am happy for him but he graduated in 09 before all of this was going on. He was blindsided by this article as were many of his friends .
Sevmom, I am glad you son is doing very well.
I actually think it matters quite a lot in the context of Columbia’s brief which was to find out what went wrong at Rolling Stone, both in reporting and editing.
Presumably the lawyers vetted the article. Much has been made of Erdely and the RS editors not taking advice that was proffered in other areas – e.g., from the fact checker, even from Jackie. If the lawyers advised the editors to proceed with caution or, worse, not to proceed at all, then that’s pertinent to the editorial process.
Of course I understand why the lawyers aren’t talking, and I also understand that Columbia has no way to access this information if RS doesn’t authorize it; however, I think Columbia could have been more emphatic in their report about the importance of the lawyer’s opinion on the story.
On the Phi Psi suit: I tend to think that a jury in Virginia will be sympathetic to the fraternity and hostile to Rolling Stone, and that either in or out of court they will get a major pay out.
In time, this will all be forgotten amongst the students on the UVA campus because of the normal turnover. I doubt there are many 13-14 year old kids following this, so when they get there this will not be an experience shared by the current students. UVA will move on.
Maybe you could say the guys were “asking for it” by joining a frat.
/sarcasm
I’m pretty much with xiggi on this. Despite the smoke billowing out of fraternities all across the land, there apparently wasn’t a fire at this one on this particular occasion. People were ready to believe it because it is pretty obvious that the fraternity world, at large, has not taken adequate steps to clean up its act–only the most egregious behavior results in any serious consequences. Why do national organizations continue to allow so many of their chapters to make them look bad? Why do the overarching Greek organizations on campuses continue to tolerate the bad behavior of certain houses, year after year? Why do the sororities put up with it? How much fundraising does it take to counteract a hazing death? What I really blame Rolling Stone for is the ammunition they gave to people who prefer to think there is no problem.
I think you are wrong that most people believed the story. Even the Washington Post didn’t believe it.
Same “kid”? If I do my math correctly, he’s pushing ~28…
Yes,he’s my older kid, and yes, he’s pushing 28. My point was that the article had far reaching effects on those with a connection to the university, past and present. It was a difficult time in the university’s history, whether you want to believe that or not.
And the info about how my “kid” was doing was a direct response to a question about how he was doing from another poster. And yes, he will still be my “kid” until the day I die.
"People were ready to believe it because it is pretty obvious that the fraternity world, at large, has not taken adequate steps to clean up its act–only the most egregious behavior results in any serious consequences. Why do national organizations continue to allow so many of their chapters to make them look bad? Why do the overarching Greek organizations on campuses continue to tolerate the bad behavior of certain houses, year after year? Why do the sororities put up with it? "
The last part, I really don’t know. A frat can’t be known as a “rapey frat” if the girls don’t show up to their parties in the first place. There will always be girls who are interested in “bad boys.” I truly don’t get it.
But note that when the national sororities did band together at UVA and say to “their” girls - hey, don’t show up for the certain pledging weekend (I forget what they called it), don’t participate in it and if you do, you’re in trouble – everyone whined about how dis-empowering that was to the girls who should be able to go where they want and drink what they want and put themselves into whatever danger with impunity.
Sevmom, I thought your son was going to UVA now but that’s ok. We act to events in our own ways.
He graduated awhile ago but we know families that currently have kids there. Last semester was a very painful and confusing time.
@DecideSomeHow Those are interesting statistics, but those links don’t include all the fraternities? The donations must be lower at smaller schools or something. I know at most big schools, houses are donating 100’s of dollars per person.
If you know it-- that is, if you know that at most big colleges, houses are donating on average over all fraternity members 100s of dollars per person-- then give us cites. Otherwise we’ll remain skeptical.
Another thought to consider: what percentage of fraternity members attend big schools? If fraternity members at big schools raised 100s of dollars per person, and fraternity members at smaller schools raised nothing, and most fraternity members were at smaller schools, then the average donation could easily be $15/member.
I suspect, however, that the answer is different. At some schools, some fraternities engage in lucrative charitable pursuits and others engage in nothing, so the average at those schools is not the 100s of dollars per person raised by the active fraternities, but 5s of dollars because of the fraternities that do nothing.
The links I provided are pretty clear. They include the top 25 for donations in a range of $1.4M to $24K. I am sure there are others, but the numbers would be smaller. If I assume there are another 50 frats donating at the level of the lowest one, it produces another $1.2M, which would bring the per person donation to about $18.50.
If you have citations for your numbers, I’d be happy to read them. I am sure there are some generating large amount of charitable donations. In fact, the stats I gave demonstrate that. But my gripe is that the fraternity system as a whole brags about the donations and I have never seen numbers backing that up.
What are average fraternity dues compared to average fraternity donations to charity?
I’m wondering what if instead of joining and paying the dues, the money spent on dues was donated to charity?
When I was paying fraternity dues for my son, I donated an equal amount annually to a charity of my choice. I saw it as an offset.