The whole idea of using a Facebook page (even a private one) to post illegal photos struck me as strange. I’m curious whether the fraternity guys made up false identities for posting on the page.
I agree someone could have joined the group without having paid much attention over time to what was on the site. I’m a member of 100 facebook groups, and I regularly visit 5 of them.
In any case, it appears serious enough that this current chapter should be gone, which I believe is sufficient punishment for those fraternity members who didn’t actively participate, but knew it was going on, and didn’t try to stop it. The site administrators and the guys who posted photos of women without their consent should be expelled or receive long suspensions from the U.
I have no idea how this situation relates to PA. criminal law.
If there were photos of real hazing of pledges (which is alleged), that by itself could get a chapter closed by the national or the university.
I also see no equivalence to girls/women deliberately sexting or posting nude photos of themselves online. That seems to me an entirely different discussion that has nothing to do with what members of this fraternity did.
Since you are not on Facebook you are apparently unaware that it is very much possible to belong to a FB group and not see the majority of what is posted to it. A person could easily have joined such a group, and checked it a couple of times, seeing only pictures of other things. They might easily never have posted anything themselves. It really depends.
I simply don’t believe in these blanket condemnations. I also think that the major effort of an educational institution should be to educate. I can’t see expelling an 18 or 19 year old boy because he looked at the FB group. Suspension, probation, education including targeted community service. A kid who took a picture of someone vomiting and posted it? Suspension, etc. A kid who took pictures of a nude woman and posted them without her knowledge? Much more likely an expulsion case. A kid who did this to multiple victims? Out the door.
No, it is not equivalent, but it does illustrate the atmosphere and (unfortunate) norms of social media that many kids have grown up with. Kids have been seeing pictures of blasted friends and acquaintances at parties for years, in many cases. I think that the line is a lot less clear to them than it is to us. In fact, I’m willing t bet that even the victims draw it differently than we do. I don’t approve, but that doesn’t make the reality different.
Consolation: please see my post #58. To clarify, I don’t think random students who viewed the page and failed to report should be expelled, I think fraternity members who viewed the page and failed to report should be expelled. I think the first fraternity brother (other than those posting) aware of the page should have insisted it be taken down. Then there wouldn’t even be a story. I don’t know if it is possible to identify who viewed the pages. I think it might be possible to identify what computers logged onto that page.
Regarding where our kids draw the lines: I agree it may be different than it is for us. However, this was a secret page. I think those posting and viewing these photos were clear it wasn’t okay. Someone was clear enough to report this page to the police, after an earlier secret page had been taken down at the insistence of a woman whose topless photo had been posted without her knowledge.
In addition to the nude pictures, the allegations say there are pictures of hazing. Hazing is not allowed at frats at Penn State. I find it difficult to believe that members of that fraternity wouldn’t know there was hazing going on. They’d have been hazed themselves when they were pledges. Some fraternity members could have been secretly taking pictures of nude unconscious women and posting them without the knowledge of other members, but the hazing wouldn’t have been a secret.
Quite apart from what this incident–and the media response to it–says about our society’s well nigh schizophrenic attitudes towards all things sexual, I’m struck by the utter immaturity of the frat’s behavior. Circulating “secret” photos of girls in a state of undress is a scheme that sounds like it was cooked up by a bunch of 12-year-old boys . . . circa 1972.
@MrSamford2014
I wouldn’t say it is immature behavior. It’s more about the desire to control and dominate another human. The girls had no say while they were being humiliated for the mere amusement of the fraternity members. It gets these guys off. It’s more of a power trip probably coupled with a lot of immaturity.
I said the same thing to my S, though I phrased it differently: “Don’t rape women.”
But that message is, by its very nature, too late. Empathy is developed around age 8, not 18. If the news is accurate, these frat boys were already told that what they were doing was wrong. They clearly lacked any empathy to see their mistake when they set up the first page; and didn’t care that it was wrong when they set up “2.0”.
My husband saw a news clip with the frat house …it is close to where his daughter lives. She has had her car vandalized three times in less than a year , always the same thing ( ripping off the arm of her windshield wiper ) I am not certain , but there has been suspicion that the vandals are from this frat.
No one can prove anything , but it has been a royal pain…especially since she cannot drive the car in the rain when it has happened. It became a became a big problem when she recently had to drive home to see her grandmother , for the last time
CF: I think hazing is inexcusable behavior, by those doing the hazing and those accepting the hazing. And you are correct it couldn’t be secret. I am okay with shutting down this fraternity because of the hazing.
Posting nude photos without consent seems to me a different, perhaps more serious issue. I’m not sure why, probably because pledges do generally have the choice to walk away from hazing. Not always though. Sometimes they die when circumstances become unforeseeably beyond their control, and that is clearly not their fault at all.
There was clearly no consent by the women pictured if the news reports are correct.
ETA: a pledge might consent to drinking himself into oblivion but not to being forcibly tied up, blind folded, and dropped off at night on a rural road where he is hit by a car. That happened at my college.
@eastcoascrazy Just to offer you a possibly (though doubtfully) new take on this thread…
How about we pause to consider the poor frat boys?* A quick search on Wikipedia gives us the explanation.** Clearly these boys suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder.*** Consider- symptoms include:
Clearly what is needed to help these young men is treatment, not punishment. ****
Submitted firmly tongue-in-cheek.
- I hope this is clearly intended as parody
*- Wikipedia (or most anything on the Internet) should not be taken as medical or psychiatric advice - I’m not qualified to diagnose a hangnail, let alone a psychiatric disorder!
*- This may be, but my sympathy for these gentlemen does not truly go so far as to believe this.
Apparently these guys – at least this one – doesn’t think they did anything wrong as it’s something every guy does including your grandpa. He’s more concerned that someone broke the brotherhood by snitching. ■■■?!
@ honest mom “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.”
Well, CNN today said that if any of the girls in the photos are 17 that the website would then come under child pornography laws. They said the poster or downloader of the photos could get up to 10 years in prison in Pennsylvania, and up to 30 years in prison in federal court. The girl can’t consent because she is a minor. Those boys better hope that there were no 17 year olds at the party.
am725, the frat boy’s justification of this disgusting behavior was almost worse than the behavior itself, and certainly illustrates a mindset that would allow the Penn State Facebook page to happen. He eventually laughed it off as an internal frat issue that was no one else’s business.
He reminded me of what many of us women used to have to live with. I remember my boss once going on and on about his buddy the ob/gyn who used to deliver a baby, and while the mother was still unconscious from sedation, he would draw faces with iodine at the entrance to the vaginal canal, and take selfies of himself and the mother’s private parts with the face drawn over the area. When my boss saw my expression on hearing this lovely story, he just said, very dismissively, Oh that’s your problem - you women just have no sense of humor.
But seriously, the fact that they’re defending this is almost as bad and maybe worse than doing it in the first place. “Everybody’s Doing It” only works in Call of Duty commercials, and should not be used anywhere else.
