The Incident
In October 2024, a Cornell University student, identified in court papers as Jane Doe, was allegedly drugged and gang-raped by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity at their house on campus. Her lawsuit says she was pressured to take ketamine and plied with more alcohol and marijuana. The men deny her account.
Two days later, she and one of the men exchanged text messages. He apologized for “how things went down.” He said his memory was “kinda fuzzy” and that he felt bad for being too intoxicated to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.” She replied that none of the sexual activity had been illegal and that her own memory was “super clouded, too.” Nearly two weeks later, she texted him that 90 percent of what happened that night was not consensual.
That night, members of the fraternity traded messages in a Snapchat group about the woman upstairs. At 1:42 a.m., one message suggested she was available for sex. Later came the question “Shop still open?” The answer: “Yea.”
That is the story circulating in the media. It is ugly and tawdry. Is it the hidden reality of fraternity life?
I asked my friend Jack Mullen, who belonged to a fraternity during a tumultuous era on campus, the late 1960s. He told me the story in the news isn’t the whole story. Fraternities, he said, serve a good purpose. He wanted to share fraternity life as he experienced it, and he has a suggestion for making fraternities better.
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| Theta Chi Class of 1969 |
Guest Post by Jack Mullen
Reporting on the recent rape allegations at a Cornell University fraternity party has cast a pall over fraternity houses and the entire Greek system.
Living in a fraternity enriched my college experience, so I am disturbed by the public perception that fraternities breed predatory behavior. Were there hints of such behavior during my years as a member of Theta Chi at the University of Oregon? Perhaps.
I entered the University of Oregon in 1965 as a timid freshman, unsure how I would fit in. Could I hack it academically? Could I muster the nerve to ask a coed out on a date? Joining Theta Chi helped me meet both challenges.
I’d be lying if I said I pledged Theta Chi because it was the highest-rated academic fraternity on campus. I decided to pledge when George Dames, a childhood friend from Medford, described in great detail the house’s upcoming dance, the Red Ox. “Count me in, George.”
Much has changed since the late 1960s, not least the dating apps today’s students use to meet one another. Much, however, remains the same. Alcohol is still readily available and, when consumed responsibly, can add a bit of zest to a date.
My fraternity had guardrails to limit drinking. Alcohol was prohibited in the house. For the Red Ox, we rented a bus to take us to a barn in Creswell, where we could drink whatever crazy concoction we had mixed up. The same bus brought us back to the house, which we had decorated top to bottom for a western party. That included the basement. Yes, the basement, which we turned into a dark mattress room.
Nothing heinous happened in the mattress room. As best I can recall, no one was ever dragged down those stairs against her will. College kids being college kids, I suspect our dates enjoyed their visits as much as my fraternity brothers did, though I never asked them. That I never persuaded a single date to go downstairs with me is a story for another time.
After I graduated, Oregon’s dorms went coed, with men and women on alternating floors. I wish they had been coed my freshman year; it might have cured my shyness around women. Until the early 1970s, Oregon freshmen lived in the dorms and could not join a fraternity or sorority until their sophomore year. A New York Times column by the president of Wesleyan University carries the title “Want to Address Sexual Assault? Make Fraternities Coed.”
At first I didn’t want to read such nonsense. When I finally did, I realized that in this day and age it makes a ton of sense.
Fraternities once excluded Catholics, Jews and African Americans. Fortunately, they have changed for the better. This is, after all, America, and I hope we are now an inclusive society. I believe coed dorms at Oregon helped students stop seeing the opposite sex as objects. Just maybe, bringing men and women together under one roof in the Greek system can put a damper on the kind of sexual assault alleged at Cornell.
I wouldn’t change anything about my days at the U. of O., including my life as a Theta Chi. Those years shaped my life for the better. But times have changed, and the Greek system needs to meet today’s challenges. Make fraternities and sororities coed.
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1 comment:
Rape is an abhorrent act. I would never defend it. However, that's not what occurred here. The female in question was particularly attracted to two of the fraternity members, and she made it expressly known that she wanted to have sex with them. She also willingly had sex with the rest of the fraternity. She was not raped. She was a willing participant in a "gang-bang", and she only had remorse after she felt embarrassed weeks later, and she changed her story. The fraternity members (and the cops) have her text messages where she claims she was a willing and eager participant, so Cornell needs to back-off before they get sued by the fraternity members for defamation. Nobody was raped.
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