I thought I recalled reading a few things a while back that gave me the impression that it was not just alumni donor threats preserving the frats but student’s protection of their liberties, so I quickly tried to review what I might have seen. Here’s one example from an Atlantic article, referencing when President Roth sent an email banning congregation on unaffiliated properties, intended to prevent people partying at Beta, following another rape allegation (which later resulted in a conviction):
“…its implications were unintentionally far-reaching, and Wesleyan students immediately protested it, holding “Free Beta” rallies; in one instance, a car full of young men shouted the slogan as Jane Doe walked miserably back to campus after visiting the police station. That student sympathies would array themselves so strongly on the side of a fraternity in whose chapter house a sexual assault had occurred, and so negligibly on the side of the young victim of that assault, was the kind of eccentric Wesleyan reaction that no one could have predicted.”
Full article (very long) here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-dark-power-of-fraternities/357580/