The Hunting Ground Page #7

I don't wanna

single out fraternities

because it's actually

a minority of fraternities,

but what you inevitably get

are certain fraternities

where the sexual assault

is really rampant.

Within just, say,

the last five to ten years,

Sigma Alpha Epsilon's

had a number of problems.

SAE is known at a lot of places

as "Sexual Assault Expected. "

- Sexual Assault Expected.

- Sexual Assault Expected.

SAE. Sexual Assault Expected.

Is there any, like, parties or

places that you've been warned not to go?

- Yes, SAE.

- Sexual Assault Expected.

Sigma Nu. SAE.

Deke, at the very top.

Those are, like, the main ones,

where as a freshman you're told,

like, "Don't go there. "

There's one fraternity on campus

that is called "the date rape frat. "

DKE is known as the roofie frat.

There is one

that was called the rape dungeon.

Once you get a group

of people like this in that kind of

synergistic kind of culture forming,

it intensifies this problem.

Pledges at a fraternity at Yale

surrounded the dorm

where many of the freshman girls lived,

at night, shouting...

"No" means "yes!"

"Yes" means "anal!"

"No" means "yes!"

"Yes" means "anal!"

I ended up pledging SAE,

Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

It's one of the largest

national fraternities

somewhat notorious

for its bad reputation.

Every Wednesday night we would have

what we would call meetings

where all the brothers, usually about 70

if all were in attendance,

would gather in the basement

and begin a highly structured ritual

exchanging stories of sexual conquest.

If a brother had had anal sex

with a woman, that would be mentioned,

and that would be a kind of

a pat-on-the-back moment.

And I think that that's something

that the women at Dartmouth

who hooked up with the fraternity brothers

didn't really know.

That guy who tried

to sexually assault me at ATO,

he was a pledge at the time, right?

And so all the pledges had to, like,

photograph girls without

anything on their tops, right?

- What?

- Had to photograph shirtless girls.

- I hate that.

- And so apparently in the basement

there were pictures of girls

and just, like, their tits.

And apparently this kid...

this kid who was, like, so pushy with me,

he had, like, the most pictures of girls.

So when he comes at me,

his behavior of being

sexually aggressive

gets rewarded by his brothers.

Fraternities are

essentially unregulated bars.

And the individuals that are responsible

for managing that alcohol

are themselves

legally incapable of consuming it.

Most sororities

don't throw parties

because you can't have alcohol at all

on the premises, even if you're over 21.

So if sorority women want to drink

or go to a party even, at all,

they have to do it at a fraternity

where the fraternity brothers control

the dispersion of alcohol.

Usually the drinks

had Everclear in them.

What's Everclear?

It's a very strong form of alcohol,

and I...

The reason why they put it in there

is because it would get you drunk quickly.

The idea would be to get everyone

so incredibly intoxicated, you know,

blackout drunk,

that would increase the chances

that people would be getting laid.

There was certainly something

predatory about it.

The fraternity brothers took great pride

in having a predator/prey relationship

with the women that would come

to these parties.

- I was at a fraternity party.

- I went to a fraternity.

I went to a fraternity party at MIT.

I'd never really, I guess,

been in a situation like that.

He came up to me

and we started talking.

He was just this guy I thought was cute,

and then we were just dancing at FIJI.

This big frat brother came up to me,

and he put his arm around me

and he took me away from my friends,

but he was really nice.

A friend at the time, um,

really fed me a lot of drinks.

He said, "Why don't we go outside?"

He asked if I wanted to go upstairs.

- We went upstairs.

- And he invited me to go into a room.

He took me downstairs

to their basement.

He pinned me against the wall

and took off my clothes and assaulted me.

That's when they both assaulted me.

I was assaulted by at least

two members of their fraternity.

It's extremely difficult,

if not impossible,

to get accurate information about whether

or not there have been sexual assaults

in a particular...

particular fraternity house.

What you find in many

circumstances that universities

have created contractual

relationships with fraternities

that involve them

promoting the fraternities,

but not then also disclosing the risks

that they've had with those fraternities.

On the Johns Hopkins University

campus today,

following allegations of a gang rape

at an off-campus fraternity.

Students say the university failed

to tell students about the investigation.

Problem after problem after problem

for the Sigma Alpha Epsilon

fraternity at UNM.

And that was before

a new claim of rape.

Digging for answers

after the same Yale frat house

has had a whole bunch of problems.

I'm telling you, almost every time

there's a rape in a fraternity chapter,

there's someone at the university,

certainly the person who's

in the Office of Greek Residence Life,

who's paid for by the university,

he or she knew that that chapter

was likely to have a rape sometime.

But they won't tell the young women.

Or if they do, there's hell to pay

for these college presidents.

It happened at Wesleyan. There was

a problem fraternity, Beta Theta Pi.

The university sent a letter in the

spring to all students and all parents.

The fraternity went ballistic.

The parents of the fraternity brothers

went ballistic,

and the new class of freshman women

came in, and they didn't send the warning

to the new class of freshman women.

It was Halloween weekend

before a girl

was violently raped upstairs.

Frat house

at Wesleyan University

is facing a lawsuit by a student

who claims she was raped.

And this isn't the first time

that frat has come under fire.

After that rape,

a young woman shows up

at an emergency room

in Middletown, Connecticut.

"I was assaulted at Beta Theta Pi. "

It's, to me, outrageous the extent

that our colleges and universities

are complicit in the sexual assault

of young women at these fraternity houses.

So why don't the schools

just disassociate themselves

from the fraternities

and kick them off campus?

Right. Well, the colleges

and universities have much more to gain

from the fraternities

than the fraternities have to gain

from the colleges and universities.

One out of every eight college students

living on campus lives in Greek housing.

That's a tremendous amount

of housing stock

the colleges don't have to pay for,

don't have to supervise.

You also have to remember you tie alumni

to your campus in a very powerful way

when you have a fraternity system.

Alumni giving is a massive part

of your annual giving,

and a large part of that

is fraternity membership.

It's a deeply powerful industry.

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