What Responsibility Does a University Have to Regulate Fraternity Culture?

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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.

Making Fraternities Safer

Bringing problems out into the open and promoting confidential reporting have helped lift the veil of secrecy that perpetuates abusive behavior.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.