I won’t go all the way with @JBStillFlying , but I do detect an element of gratuitous insult in the Maroon’s coverage. That doesn’t surprise me - if student culture today is anything like what it was in my day. Being a fraternity boy was the last thing anyone I knew would ever have wanted to be. We knew these guys existed, but we never seemed to run into them. We mocked them - or the idea of them. They lived lonely outcast existences in their little castles. You could say that at the University of Chicago they were our homegrown persecuted minority. One could believe anything of them - that they lived only for parties, that they had fathers with money, or - the worst possibly insult - that they would have preferred to be at Princeton, all things considered. They were certainly not the types who would ever be found at The Maroon, and they were bound to be detested by the types who in fact were to be found at The Maroon, who had much more status on campus than any of them. They were too lowly to take notice of.
If anything like those attitudes persist today, I find myself being sympathetic to the cause of the DU brothers in their present situation. O.K. something must have happened at a party, someone must have made a complaint, rumors were going around campus, and after all everyone knows that the DU boys are the worst of the worst. But doing a hit piece on them on undisclosed evidence sounds just too easy, too much like the stereotyping we deplore in other cases. It sounds like grandstanding carried out by people with an animus. Was it in the public interest to inform young women that the DU boys are mad, bad and dangerous to know? Didn’t they already know that? That’s not a rhetorical question but a real one: Did it take publication in The Maroon to bring this incident to the attention of the student body at large if, as the Maroon itself states, the rumor was already going around?
I do wish the Chicago DU President had showed some spine, but we’re not always at our best in a bad situation. And it may certainly be true that he didn’t know enough to comment and was worried or half-worried that a bad thing had been done. I can hold that thought in my mind at the same time that I hold the thought that the editors of the Maroon were likely motivated by a bias they should have suppressed.
Actually, @shawnspenser you are mistaking me for another poster on this thread and your “mansplain” falls a bit short. There are plenty of reasons to report a false accusation - I’ve personally known of a few myself, and we’ve seen some high profile ones in recent years with legal consequences for the particular schools and the news media. And you might start to look up a few accurate stats on some basic things like male vs. female success rates in school, the gender gap in college enrollment, incarceration rates by gender, incidence of violent death, etc. to better understand just how frightening it would be to raise a girl. Hint: It’s not. And I say that as a mother of both.
As for the disgusting behavior of our leaders in media and entertainment (how thoughtful of you to point out the only two men of color who stand accused or convicted while conveniently skipping over the dozens of white men in the same - or worse - boat), their behavior should put all of them away for a long time. How mysterious it is that so many powerful women leaders who were as aware of these “open secrets” as so many seem to be at UChicago about the DU episodes actually chose not to speak out for years. In MN we watched Sen. Amy Klobuchar squirm while her colleague - Sen. Al Franken the Breast-Squeezer - defy calls to step down before Kristin Gillibrand finally said “Enough” and then face other women turning on her for speaking out. There is no excuse for men’s criminal sexual behavior. There is no excuse for anyone - least of all women - to enable it.
@JHS - the simple distinction is that the Maroon is supposed to be known for reporting the news, not for warning all the daughters on campus against nefarious frat boys. That role is relegated to “mom” and “dad”, not “editor” and “journalist”. Admire your chivalry, though I do question the cheerful twisting of journalistic standards to defend the virtue of the 1st and 2nd year women. Do keep in mind that, according to “the news”, these rumors were already widely known so not sure how much good the Maroon did - other than to drag a name through the mud in case something else might stick to it. So you believe that the Maroon should spend its resources that way? Seems a bit lazy. I thought news people used sources and checked facts and so forth. We don’t want “fake news” to define the Maroon.
Incidentally, my kid was far too busy with her studies to be attending DU parties this past year and we are glad to notice that her college experience is reflected in her GPA and growing wisdom, rather than an obsession with the frat scene (which @DunBoyer has convinced me isn’t just on the side of those enjoying the parties). I would hope most of the women on campus make choices more similar to hers than to the bizarrely-behaved examples you provided in comment #18.
@dunboyer so I can assume for the group that you were a part of there was an article written by the Maroon accusing someone in your group of assault? Of course not, I doubt the college decided to keep this under wraps for two years; for what purpose…to allow the perpetrator to continue the assaults??? These are not easy things to come down on one way or the other, but to throw everyone under the bus is always a bad idea.
I am always amazed how easily people will discuss and chew over every nuance of a rumor about any alleged crimes online, but when the alleged crime is (possibly) rape, or especially rape at a fraternity, defenders of fraternities will get up in arms about false accusations and slander and try to turn the tables.
I’m not sure why that is, but I see it over and over in online discussions.
People chewing over rumors is fine. Publishing a news story about an alleged rape based on some modicum of credible sources is fine. Using your student newspaper to publish what by all means appears to be a hit piece isn’t fine. This isn’t exactly rocket science, @ThankYouforHelp.
Your problem is that you can’t tell from the piece as written whether it is based on “some modicum of credible sources” or not. There are effectively four sources relied on: 1. A source “with direct knowledge of the situation.” That could be an eminently credible source. Of not. If it turned out that source was the dean for residential life, or the fraternity president off the record, those would be credible sources. 2. A source who claimed to have spoken with people at DU, and who had knowledge of unpublished details. That could possibly be a credible source, but it sure doesn’t look good. 3. Widespread rumors, reported as such. 4. The DU president’s non-denial. Also not strong, but worth taking into account. If nothing happened, most people would say, “Nothing happened!”
I agree that this doesn’t look like a piece that’s be sourced adequately to publish. But we don’t know anything about the sourcing. It could be fine, and just awkwardly described. I’m sure they thought that by not naming names or giving any details they were not publishing a “hit piece.”
@JHS - given that we can’t tell, doesn’t that suggest there’s something wrong with the piece? I like @Marlowe1’s point above: it’s very likely that something happened but that “something happened” doesn’t quite rise to the level of news and smacks of irresponsibility or even vindictiveness. They have a platform; it should be used responsibly.
When we start justifying with “I’m sure they thought” we are making assumptions that might not be accurate. Any news article needs to stand on its own.
BTW, I’m really hoping they are able to produce more clarity one way or the other. And, in fact, that would be necessary given the original piece.
@JBStillFlying , I agree with you it’s not an award-winning piece of college journalism.
(In general, the Maroon is not a place you are going to see award-winning college journalism. One of the consequences of the anti-Iviness that Chicago partisans cherish is that editing the school paper is really a part-time job, and the editors and reporters don’t really expect an offer from the New York Times on graduation. They aren’t anywhere near as deeply into the culture of mainstream journalism and its codes and ethics as their counterparts at many other colleges, and often they don’t have the resources and hours available to do a better job.)
That doesn’t mean it’s wrong or unethical or part of a campaign to slander a fraternity and its members. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. If it were done better, it would be more convincing that it wasn’t any of those things, even if it really was.
I think you have been way to quick to condemn the piece, however. It was completely fair to ask the president of the campus DU chapter why the national organization was denying having gotten any reports. There clearly were widespread accusations against the local chapter, to the point where the local chapter was cancelling events. At the very least, assuming there was no basis to any of the rumors, the local chapter needed crisis-management help from the national. And was almost certainly getting it, notwithstanding what was probably a lie from the national contact. So if the local president is refusing to address the accusations themselves, “why didn’t you inform the national office, according to them?” is probably the next best question to ask.
That said, I really hate the practice of reporting refusals to answer journalists’ questions, however valid, when the reporting quotes or shows the question and the subject simply ignoring it or hanging up. That’s an awful practice. But it’s pretty widespread in the journalism world, as far as I can tell.
This is a dead thread, but the Maroon has been doing a great job this year by all accounts, vastly better than it has been recently - lots of genuine investigations and long pieces - maybe the NYT should start snapping their editors up!