Well, yes, it is obviously unjust to punish everyone at the university. It is a lot more comfy to expell everyone at a frat, because, you know, EVERYONE knows that “they” are all alike. Right?
When the national fraternity owns a nice house in a good location, they typically suspend all of the current members, order them to leave at the end of the semester, mothball the house for a while, and then try to reconstitute the chapter a year later with completely new members. At some universities, they may need to wait 2 or 3 years before they can restart a chapter that was kicked out.
No one should be expelled simply for being a member of the frat, we can’t presume that someone was a part of this if they belonged, or they even knew of it. If someone knows of a crime or a bad action and doesn’t report it, it often is not criminally chargeable as far as I know (depends on the location and the type of crime),but a university could impose sanctions on students who know of something going on and don’t report it, lot of it depends on their code of conduct and being a member of the community.
I found an earlier comment a bit interesting, that it was shocking these kids were dumb enough to have it on the net…it is interesting in this day and age of the internet, social media, cell phone cameras and so forth, that is the first thing we will think of, rather than the nature of what they did (and I am just as guilty, not singling out the OP:).
The dynamics of what happened here (or at other frats for that matter) and the PSU scandal with Sandusky are similar, but very different situations. Both involve privilege and power of a closed community (sorry, I hate sounding like a teacher pontificating…), at PSU it was the privileged position of the football team and the ‘closed’ circle it was, where in some ways it was outside the laws of the school;with the frats, it is a group that is in some ways self contained, with a code of silence and also quite honestly with the idea that whatever they did was okay, they had a right to do what they wanted, and the ‘thin blue line’ (to reused the term used for cops staying silent about transgressions of fellow cops) would protect them. To be honest, this kind of behavior puzzles me and saddens me, I may be an old fart, but I remember what it was like to be that age, and I don’t understand the behavior involved at all, I wouldn’t understand it back then and I don’t understand it now. Are these bozos such losers that that is the only way they can get their jollies? Were they given such a sense of entitlement by their parents, or taught that as men they had the right to do what they wanted with women? I wasn’t exactly a social butterfly in college, but to me getting girls drunk or drugging them to basically be able to do what you want with them is just so alien I wouldn’t understand it back then, and I certainly don’t understand it now…and apparently, this kind of thing is not uncommon at frat parties all over the place. I don’t know, I always felt that there was a heck of a lot more pleasure out of getting to know someone and having a willing partner was a lot more fun…to be honest, what this frat and the other things remind me of is the very real world of biker culture, the kind you see on “Son’s of Anarchy”, where women are basically owned property you do what you want with…
I am sure that the frat will now come out with all the good things they do, how they do so much for charity and such, and quite frankly I am getting sick of hearing it, because that to me is part of the problem, what it comes off as something out of a Monty Python skit for a criminal gang called “The Pirannha brothers”, where they did things like nail people’s heads to a coffee table, and an apologist saying “Nah, they were smashing blokes, brought their mothers flowers and all that”…it is almost like they do the charity stuff seeing it as a get out of jail free card, and that is crap, I don’t care how many good works you do as a group, that doesn’t have anything to do with the horrible things IMO.
Hopefully fraternities will wake up and realize that if they have a bad image, as Shakespeare said, “The fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves”. Maybe the national chapters should come out with strong zero tolerance codes, that if a chapter ever gets caught with this kind of thing, it is the nuclear option, and spend time and money creating a culture in their houses where this thing won’t happen. With fraternities and the cases we are seeing, it is always reactive, maybe it is time they be proactive and start a culture going forward where this won’t be tolerated, and instead of the ‘nod nod wink wink’ that the fraternal organizations have with this kind of thing, they should be making a stand, so that the words outside the frat house about honor really mean something, not acting like a member of the Hell’s Angel’s high on crank.
I don’t think everyone in this particular frat should be expelled. I think everyone who joined the FB group should be on probation, and everyone who can be proven to have participated should be expelled for violation of Penn State’s code of student conduct.
Frats in general – they subject their pledges to scrutiny, don’t they? Pledging takes time and effort and involves various bondy activities. But the screening seems to be failing in many (not all) places. Imagine if frats decided that in order to keep creeps away, all pledges had to do hours and hours of public service before activating, and imagine if brothers had to do hours and hours of service every semester to stay in, and imagine if the IFC only allowed one or two parties a semester. Perhaps party people, immoral creeps, criminals, would find another outlet. And perhaps then the outside world would believe their desire to be perceived differently.
Party people = immoral creeps = criminals? 
Greenbutton, that is right. There is a list of people who joined the FB group.
No, no, niquii…just a list of potential problematic pledges. Apologies that it seemed I lumped them all together.Party people, as in, only want to join a frat for the party potential, not for leadership, friends, philanthrophy, career advancement, etc…
Does anyone object to expelling everyone who was part of that FB group?
Our local high school kids (very affluent suburban district) had a secret website like this that was busted a year ago. A whole lot of girls willingly allowed nudes of themselves to be posted on it. They all thought it was hilarious. I would bet there is one on almost every college campus. Apparently boys today just love sharing those nudes.
There doesn’t seem to be anything (yet) to suggest any girls willingly allowed nudes of themselves to be posted in this case.
"Party people = immoral creeps = criminals? " There is logic to this, and the key to all this is that party people is generally associated with alcohol and/or drugs, and both of those are contributing factors to all kinds of bad behavior, date rape, vandalism, assault, you name it. A ‘partier’ is by that going to be someone a lot more likely to do those things than someone who isn’t particularly a party animal, assuming that they otherwise are similar, because drug and alcohol fuel a lot of stupid behavior and at frat parties that is de rigeur (note, it isn’t just frats, but a party that isn’t focused around drinking, like the science fiction club holiday party, is going to have a lot less problems like this).
The problem isn’t in the pledging (though note, when my cousin went to Dartmouth, at the frat he was in one of the guys who they decided to pledge got in because they had this crazy ritual where they made the potential pledges drink, then they got in their underwear and ran a course through the woods with 'way stations" that had bonfires and a glass of something gross to drink (like soapy water mixed with booze), and the idea was to get as far along the course as possible without vomiting. This kid became the awe of the frat when he ran the whole course (no one else ever had), and when he got to the last fire, vomited so much he put the fire out…not exactly a character reference, is it?
The fraternities talk big about being fraternal organizations that promote honor and brotherhood and lifelong ties, maybe they also should be about building character and teaching their members how to be adults and good citizens, who can have a good time, but also not behave perpetually like teenagers acting out cause mom and dad aren’t home…want to stop this? Set up codes of behavior at the frat, and if you violate it, you are gone. There are fraternities like this, friend of mine belonged to one, and if a member pulled this kind of crap, if they were found to be drugging a girls drink or getting them drunk or groping them, they not only would be kicked out, they also likely would get the crap kicked out of them by the other members for being such a JA. The guy that was the president of the frat and I got along okay (even though I refereed frat intramural sports leagues) and he said most of the guys in the house had sisters and thought about how they would want them treated, they actually had signs around the house that featured pictures of young women at a party, that said “what if this was your sister?”.
I know a lot of folks will think I am victim shaming/blaming, and I am not. However, let this be a lesson to girls, that you cannot go to these parties and get pissy drunk, and think that somehow you are going to be okay. How many more of these stories have to happen. I know, kids will be kids, I certainly drank in college. If you are going to get wasted out of your mind, then make sure you have a girlfriend to look after you. I like the motto “No woman left behind”. College boys, lately fraternities, have shown that no bar is too low. I have no issue with girls going to parties, frat parties, whatever, but you dont have to get so drunk that you pass out in order to have a good time. If you do want to drink like that, make sure you have a friend that is not drinking to look after you.
I tell my daughters regularly if you and your friends are out dont take drinks and you didnt see them made. As a matter of fact, if one of you drinks, then make sure one person in the group is not drinking, in case there was some drug put in the punch or whatever. Again, Im super paranoid, but better safe than sorry. It seems to me that this generation still doesnt get the fact that nothing is secret, if you document it, then it can be discovered.
^^This is savvy advice from a knowledgeable parent. All kids aren’t so fortunate.
Once again, boys wouldn’t be in trouble if girls would just be more responsible. It didn’t take many pages. In some cases, it may be true that women could protect men from themselves, but not always. I wonder when we will shift away from the idea women need to protect themselves, to the idea men need to protect themselves by not acting in ways that harm women?
@alh Im definitely not letting the boys off the hook. They should be punished to fullest extent allowable. I dont know if I would punish those who knew but didnt tell. I would definitely punish the person who set up the page, the administrator of the page, and anyone who posted naked pics on the page. We all know that alcohol and teens dont mix well. It would be nice if boys didnt do stupid things, but we know that wont happen. I would hope that parents are having these conversations with their sons as well. I would tell my son to NEVER sleep with a girl that is totally inebriated. The problem with that is, normally, both parties are wasted and neither is exercising good judgment at that point. Boys and girls have to be responsible for their behavior.
@alh I’m opposed to expelling every single sutdent that was part of the group. If they were inactive in the group I see no justifiable way to expel them.
I have no problem expelling any member of the fraternity who viewed a FB page, with photos of nude women posted without their consent, and didn’t insist the page be taken down or report it to authorities when that didn’t happen.
I am not on FB so don’t know if it is possible to determine who was on the site but may not have seen the page. The news reports a whole lot of views. It doesn’t seem to me we can blame irresponsible, under the influence of alcohol or drugs misbehavior for posting and viewing the pictures. That seems very deliberate to me.
If you are part of a fraternity that posts nude pictures of women without their consent and you have knowledge of this behavior, I think you are guilty, too, and deserve the same punishment as those who posted the photos. These are your brothers. You picked them. You knew what they were doing.
There are four generations of fraternity men in my family, including grandfather, father, brother, son.
@parryof5, We just had that exact conversation with our HS senior D the other night about what to expect when she goes to college. I tell her and any other girls that will listen, that a couple of hours of fun being wasted are not worth finding out that you ended up in some guy’s room, had your picture taken probably at least half naked, and the photos have been shared with 200 other guys. And that’s the BEST case scenario if you get passed-out drunk. The worst is you are actually raped, maybe by more than one guy, get an STD, injured, or pregnant. It sucks for girls, we really really need to be teaching our boys better respect for girls and women, but until that happens the girls do have to be careful about things like not letting their drink out of their sight and not drinking enough to pass out.
My son was involved in a sexting incident when he was 14, this was 7 years ago. We found his phone with the nudes on it. From a 14 year old girl he was just starting to hang out with. Anyone who thinks their kids are not hearing about this stuff or actually doing it, are naive.
If it was a private FB page, you have to be approved to join, by an admistrator. I can see punishing the administrators of the group as they have full access. You are going to have a hard time pinpointing if someone viewed the page. You can ask to be a member of a FB group and never actually see the detail of the page. So you can ask for permission, the administrator grants it, and you never go back to the page. Now the likelihood that a person never went back to view the page, slim to none, but its possible. Im sure there were a whole bunch of folks changing their settings when this story broke.
Thank goodness there were no cell phones when I was in college. I just dont understand the need to capture every single moment, the good and the bad!
Isn’t it possible for computer experts to tell what computers logged onto that page? I understand they couldn’t say for sure who was looking at the computer screen. I’m pretty sure all the sites I’m visiting track my computer even though I turn off all the cookies, etc, I can find to turn off.
I used to advise young female friends and relatives “don’t drink the punch” but I’ve started advising them just not to go to fraternity parties at fraternity houses at all, to just say no.
My sons are finished with college and grown. I am not in the midst of this any longer with my own children.
Both girls and boys do stupid things when they are drunk. When they’re really, really drunk, they can do really, really stupid things.
So here’s my question: Were the boys drunk when they took the pictures? Were they drunk when they posted them online? Were they drunk when they applied to join the invitation-only Facebook group and looked at the pictures?
I’m not seeing an equivalence here.