Thousands of protesters gathered outside a University of Kansas fraternity house on Monday and Tuesday nights, demanding that the organization be permanently banned from campus after a student reported being sexually assaulted there over the weekend.
Students no longer trust that the school will keep them safe and instead are looking to one another.
If those images seem familiar, that’s because they bear a striking resemblance to a series of demonstrations last month at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. In both cases, activists mobilized huge crowds in response to a single report of sexual assault involving a fraternity at a flagship campus in the Midwest, although some protesters called it part of a pattern that speaks to broader problems in Greek life.
On Friday at 1 p.m., activists at Kansas plan to hold a sit-in at the office of the chancellor. The protest, like the ones before it, was announced on Instagram.
They’ve also collected more than 18,000 signatures on a Change.org petition calling for the fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, to be banned from campus.
“We are trying to make our Greek system and University of Kansas a safer place,” it reads.
In an email to the campus on Tuesday, university leaders acknowledged the activism and said they have begun an investigation into the sexual-assault accusation. A Kansas spokesperson told The Chronicle the university’s investigation is focused on an individual and not the fraternity.
In their statement, university leaders said Phi Kappa Psi has been cooperative.
“We appreciate that so many members of our community were moved to gather in support of combatting sexual assault,” read the statement, which was signed by Chancellor Douglas A. Girod, Provost Barbara A. Bichelmeyer, and Vice Provost for Student Affairs Tammara Durham. “Sadly, sexual assault continues to be pervasive in our society, and we are heartened to know that so many of you feel compelled to engage on this topic.”
In a statement to The Chronicle, Drake DelosSantos, a spokesman for the national Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, said his organization became aware of the accusations against a fraternity member on Sunday and immediately notified officials at Kansas.
A System of Self-Protection
The situation in Lawrence, Kan., echoes the protests outside a Phi Gamma Delta (“Fiji”) fraternity last month in Lincoln, Neb., following a reported sexual assault at the house. While Fiji was temporarily suspended and placed under a university investigation, students demanded the fraternity be kicked off campus permanently. A Change.org petition calling for Fiji’s expulsion had racked up more than 475,000 signatures at the time this article was published.
Those protests had continued a trend of student activists’ demanding safer, more-equitable social environments as they return to campus this fall. In the wake of the George Floyd protests last summer, the Abolish Greek Life movement gained a following at many college campuses. Other activists, especially from within Greek life, have called for Greek life reform in lieu of abolition.
Sage Carson, manager of Know Your IX, an organization aimed at educating youth about the federal gender-equity law Title IX, said she has noticed in recent years that more students have come forward about being survivors of sexual violence. When Carson was in college in the mid-2010’s, students would write their assailants’ names on bathroom walls to demand attention from administrators. Now students are taking to Instagram to call out perpetrators.
She said students are trying to keep one another safe, as Title IX rules are in flux while regulators decide what to do with the policies of Betsy DeVos, the former secretary of education.
“The lack of enforcement around Title IX, around schools’ not taking this seriously, has then turned the responsibility of keeping students safe back onto the students,” Carson said. “Students no longer trust that the school will keep them safe and instead are looking to one another.”
Carson said direct action at fraternity houses has been effective before. In 2019 student protesters occupied a fraternity house at Swarthmore College for four days over concerns about sexist, racist, and homophobic documents apparently written by fraternity members. Both of Swarthmore’s fraternities voluntarily disbanded following the protests.
“Students right now are taking responsibility into their own hands for changing the campus climate when their university is failing to,” Carson said. “Campus safety should not fall entirely onto the students.”
Grace Reading, a 2021 Kansas alumna and co-founder of Strip Your Letters — which encourages sorority women to stop wearing their Greek letters or posting them online to pressure Panhellenic leadership to make Greek life more inclusive — said students have become frustrated with what they see as inaction by Kansas’ administration to confront a culture of sexual violence.
“When you get to these huge state-run institutions, you get a lot of red tape,” Reading said. “At the same time, universities are not providing enough support for survivors.”
Over the last few years, Reading said, political movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter have motivated students to take a stand against injustice.
“A lot of people have woken up and realized they have a voice.”
