Banning University of Virginia Sorority Women From ‘Boy Bid Night’

This is the wrong way to manage campus sexual assault risk

Students walk to campus past the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va. on Nov. 24. Rolling Stone published a story alleging a rape by seven members of Phi Kappa Psi in November. AP Photo/Steve Helber

The Violence Against Women Act requires colleges to prevent sexual violence and rape. There are ways to do that and ways not to do that.

The University of Virginia proposed to keep sorority members safe from rape by not letting them go to Boys’ Bid Night fraternity parties for new pledges this Saturday.

The university and the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi were targets of a poorly reported, discredited Rolling Stone story that described a brutal, violent, sexual assault. The fraternity was sanctioned in November 2014 and reinstated January 12, after police said they could not substantiate the victim’s story.

So the gun-shy university and Greek organizations decided the way to keep women safe from rape was to keep them out of the picture. This is not respectful.

“Our concerns lie in the way sorority women are being used as leverage to change the actions and behaviors of fraternity men. This resolution has misconstrued us as a passive aggregate rather than active agents for change. It has also had the unintended consequence of subjugating women,” said a petition to the National Panhellenic Conference International and National Presidents, from sorority members and students at the University of Virginia.

"The mandate suggests, inadvertently perhaps, that women should not and cannot exist in certain spaces." 

— Sorority members and students, University of Virginia