Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    Student Housing
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
News

What Responsibility Does a University Have to Regulate Fraternity Culture?

By Sarah Brown February 12, 2019
A new Title IX lawsuit against Yale and nine of its fraternities seeks to force the groups to accept women as members. It also says the university has abdicated its duty to protect students from sexual misconduct.
A new Title IX lawsuit against Yale and nine of its fraternities seeks to force the groups to accept women as members. It also says the university has abdicated its duty to protect students from sexual misconduct.Kathryn Donohew, Getty Images

The most eye-catching part of a new Title IX lawsuit against Yale University and nine of its all-male fraternities is that it seeks to force the organizations to accept women as members.

But the lawsuit, brought by three female students, also makes an interesting argument: that Yale has abdicated its obligation to protect students by letting fraternities off the hook and ignoring repeated complaints about sexual misconduct at their parties.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

A new Title IX lawsuit against Yale and nine of its fraternities seeks to force the groups to accept women as members. It also says the university has abdicated its duty to protect students from sexual misconduct.
A new Title IX lawsuit against Yale and nine of its fraternities seeks to force the groups to accept women as members. It also says the university has abdicated its duty to protect students from sexual misconduct.Kathryn Donohew, Getty Images

The most eye-catching part of a new Title IX lawsuit against Yale University and nine of its all-male fraternities is that it seeks to force the organizations to accept women as members.

But the lawsuit, brought by three female students, also makes an interesting argument: that Yale has abdicated its obligation to protect students by letting fraternities off the hook and ignoring repeated complaints about sexual misconduct at their parties.

Regardless of the suit’s outcome, the women’s fight against Yale cuts to the heart of an issue that’s top of mind for campus leaders: what responsibility colleges have to regulate the culture of their fraternities.

Fraternities are private organizations governed by student leaders and national fraternity groups. They have traditionally operated with limited involvement by college administrators. At Yale and a few other colleges, the fraternities aren’t formally affiliated with the institution at all.

Marvin Chun, dean of Yale College, the university’s undergraduate arm, said just last month that Yale has no legal standing to influence the local chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon, even though a recent university investigation had found that many students believed the fraternity’s parties were sexually hostile environments.

“I condemn the culture described in these accounts,” Chun wrote in a letter to the campus. “I also offer some plain advice about events like these: Don’t go to them.” He declined, however, to require fraternity members to receive additional training or to establish a Greek-life council, as some students had suggested. He also didn’t impose any punishments on Delta Kappa Epsilon.

“Although Yale College makes itself available informally to fraternities and sororities,” he wrote, “it plays no formal role in the operations of organizations not affiliated with the university, including Greek organizations.” (A Yale spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit but provided Chun’s letter.)

But the new lawsuit asserts that Yale officials can’t use the fraternities’ independent, unaffiliated status as a shield, and bury their heads in the sand whenever there’s a problem at a fraternity that directly affects their students.

The chapters are composed entirely of Yale students, and they use the university’s name to recruit and do campus outreach, said David Tracey, the plaintiffs’ lawyer. Moreover, Yale officials know students are experiencing sexual misconduct in fraternities, Tracey said. That means administrators have a responsibility to intervene under Title IX, the federal gender-equity law.

“Yale’s hands-off approach is completely unacceptable — it violates the law and their own policies,” he said. “Universities everywhere need to recognize that.”

Years of Concerns

Yale’s refusal to rein in its fraternities stands in contrast to Harvard University, the lawsuit says. Harvard officials began cracking down on its unrecognized single-gender organizations in 2016, announcing a policy that barred members from serving as student leaders or athletic-team captains, and from receiving the university’s endorsement for postgraduate awards like Rhodes and Marshall scholarships. Fraternities and sororities recently sued Harvard over the policy.

paddles-icon - Idea Lab
Making Fraternities Safer
Bringing problems out into the open and promoting confidential reporting have helped lift the veil of secrecy that perpetuates abusive behavior.
  • Fraternities Can Change on Their Own
  • Colleges Confront the Perils of Frats
  • How One University Is Challenging an Ugly ‘Tradition’ Among Students

The Yale lawsuit, which was filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in Connecticut, details years of concerns about sexual misconduct and gender discrimination at fraternity parties. The university, in an attempt to shirk liability, has allowed fraternities to run the social scene and host alcohol-fueled parties, while administrators have looked the other way when things go wrong, the lawsuit alleges.

ADVERTISEMENT

Anna McNeil, a Yale junior, is one of the three women bringing the complaint. As a freshman, McNeil said in an interview, she went to fraternity parties, as many students do when they’re adjusting to college life and haven’t made many friends yet. At several of the parties, she said, she was groped by men without her consent.

McNeil was dismayed by the response of her freshman counselor, one of many upperclass students who serve as resident advisers for first-year students at Yale. The counselor didn’t do anything, McNeil said, even though she was a mandatory reporter of sexual misconduct. That led McNeil to believe that such behavior wasn’t worth reporting.

In late 2016, McNeil joined several other students to form a campus organization, Engender, to advocate against gender discrimination in students’ social spaces. “We’re working toward a goal where social life is no longer segregated by gender at all,” she said, so that “the gender binary is no longer what we’re operating under.”

For the past three years, McNeil and other students who identify as female or nonbinary have tried to participate in the fraternity-recruitment process in protest, she said, and they were rejected. They have met with Yale administrators about a half-dozen times, she said, and while the officials expressed support for creating more mixed-gender organizations, they have not done so. Nor have they cracked down on poor behavior at fraternities.

‘A Stretch’

Joan M. Gilbride, the lawyer for the Yale fraternities, called the allegations “baseless and unfounded.” She said some of the lawsuit’s claims had just been rejected by the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Yale lawsuit comes at a time when higher education is contemplating what the future of Greek organizations should look like, and what role single-gender organizations should play on campuses that are trying to become more inclusive.

The suit strikes me as a politically motivated stunt.

Gentry McCreary, a Greek-life expert who leads Dyad Strategies, a risk-management firm, said he doesn’t think the lawsuit has much chance of success. “In fact, the suit strikes me as a politically motivated stunt by a small group of students who reject the gender binary and seek an end to single-gender organizations,” he wrote in an email. “The law is not on their side.”

But Douglas E. Fierberg, a lawyer who specializes in fraternity litigation and often represents sexual-misconduct victims, said he believes “the law is going to catch up to this,” particularly Title IX.

The law is going to catch up to this.

Fierberg is suing Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, a fraternity, and several of its members on behalf of the parents of Maxwell Gruver, who died at a fraternity party in 2017. While the Yale claims are “more of a stretch,” he said, he believes the LSU case will set a precedent that forces colleges to take responsibility for sexual discrimination at fraternities.

ADVERTISEMENT

“If the manner in which they’re managed and operated by the universities results in unprecedented dangers to women and interference with women’s educational rights in a discriminatory way,” Fierberg said, “you’d argue that Title IX applies.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.

A version of this article appeared in the February 22, 2019, issue.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
SarahBrown2024
About the Author
Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown is The Chronicle’s news editor. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

UCLA students, researchers and demonstrators rally during a "Kill the Cuts" protest against the Trump administration's funding cuts on research, health and higher education at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in Los Angeles on April 8, 2025.
Scholarship & Research
Trump Proposed Slashing the National Science Foundation’s Budget. A Key Senate Committee Just Refused.
Illustration of a steamroller rolling over a colorful road and leaving gray asphalt in its wake.
Newly Updated
Oregon State U. Will End a Renowned Program That Aimed to Reduce Bias in Hiring
Dr. Gregory Washington, president of George Mason University.
Another probe
George Mason President Discriminated Against White People After George Floyd Protests, Justice Dept. Says
Protesters gather outside the Department of Education headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 14, 2025 to protest the Trump administrations cuts at the agency.
An Uncertain Future
The Education Dept. Got a Green Light to Shrink. Here Are 3 Questions About What’s Next.

From The Review

Photo-based illustration with repeated images of a student walking, in the pattern of a graph trending down, then up.
The Review | Opinion
7 Ways Community Colleges Can Boost Enrollment
By Bob Levey
Illustration of an ocean tide shaped like Donald Trump about to wash away sandcastles shaped like a college campus.
The Review | Essay
Why Universities Are So Powerless in Their Fight Against Trump
By Jason Owen-Smith
Photo-based illustration of a closeup of a pencil meshed with a circuit bosrd
The Review | Essay
How Are Students Really Using AI?
By Derek O'Connell

Upcoming Events

07-31-Turbulent-Workday_assets v2_Plain.png
Keeping Your Institution Moving Forward in Turbulent Times
Ascendium_Housing_Plain.png
What It Really Takes to Serve Students’ Basic Needs: Housing
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin