Saturday, April 23, 2011

Shut Down the Fraternities

An excerpt from Ms. Flanagan's riveting testimony (Wall Street Journal Op-ed - trigger warning!) on the need to shut down the fraternities that serve as campus rape headquarters:

The Greek system is dedicated to quelling young men's anxiety about submitting themselves to four years of sissy-pants book learning by providing them with a variety of he-man activities: drinking, drugging, ESPN watching and the sexual mistreatment of women. . . It is against this boorish cartel that 16 Yale students and recent alumni asserted themselves in a Title IX complaint brought against the institution last month—a complaint that could cost the university $500 million in federal funds.

The claim concerns both the ways that sexual assaults are handled by the university and also the effect that various fraternity "pranks" have had on its female students. The last straw for the complainants seems to have been a Delta Kappa Epsilon initiation last fall in which a mob of pledges chanted "No Means Yes! Yes Means Anal!" and other enlightening slogans.

Can the mere presence of slur-chanting fraternity men really create an environment that robs young women of equal opportunity to education? Yes, it can. . .

If you want to improve women's lives on campus, if you want to give them a fair shot at living and learning as freely as men, the first thing you could do is close down the fraternities. The Yale complaint may finally do what no amount of female outrage and violation has accomplished. It just might shut them down for good.

Frat boy wannabes' rape chant: “No means yes, yes means anal,” and “F---ing sluts,” outside the college’s Old Campus—where most first-year women are housed:


The Title IX Complaint Against Yale
Frat Culture's Woman Problem
Yale Being Investigated As 'Hostile Sexual Environment'
It's Not Just Yale

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