Total Sorority Move’s Criticism of “The Cost Of Sexual Assault At USC” Misses The Point
It’s not (always) fraternities that are the root of the problem. Unresponsive universities are equally at fault.
This article was written in response to both Neon Tommy contributor Nathaniel Haas’s commentary, titled “The Cost of Sexual Assault at USC,” and a criticism of Haas’s article published by Total Sorority Move director Veronica Ruckh, titled “USC Reportedly Really Rapey After Frat Video Advises ‘Eff Who You Must.’”
One day after Neon Tommy published Nathaniel Haas’s at-length investigation into USC’s failures in combatting sexual assault, Total Sorority Move, the end-all, be-all source of all things sorority has predictably issued a negative reaction to his conclusions, albeit one littered with at least some common ground.
Though I worked as one of Haas’s editors as this project came into being, I did not agree with all of his proposed solutions for many reasons similar to Ruckhs’. I appreciated her candid tone and the specificity of her objections to Haas’s claims. But that doesn’t change the fact that she got one major thing wrong.
By focusing her response on how Haas unfairly vilified fraternities, Ruckh completely missed what “The Cost of Sexual Assault at USC” actually problematizes — which is the USC administration’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge the university’s epidemic sexual assault numbers and utilize proven facts to curb campus rape.
Yes, Haas focuses on fraternities as the main perpetrator. But a great deal of (reported) cases of sexual assault do in fact, take place at fraternity houses. Rape reports at frats also get disproportionately more media attention, which has caused public antipathy to perhaps unfairly zero in on fraternities as the number one root cause of campus rape culture. What is on the frats themselves, however is the very public, very abhorrent speech and practices that devalue and objectify women for which they have been called out again and again, the latest salient example being the Phi Kappa Psi party video that served as the jumping-off point for Haas’s article.
More importantly, it was on USC to respond when one of its student organizations advocated nonconsensual sex as a lead-in to a promotional item that also shamelessly objectified female students. Given how rigidly USC polices its image, its PR department could easily have found the public Youtube video and had it taken down. The administration could have appropriately sanctioned Phi Psi for violating USC’s community standards, possibly deterring any other frats from acting similarly. Instead, the video was removed by the videographer himself days before Haas’s article was published. And USC has still not, in the face of unassailable evidence of serial offenders and obstacles to reporting rape, amended its sexual assault policy. Its chosen strategy for avoiding bad press wasn’t to stop offenses from happening in the first place, but to dodge reporters’ phone calls and offer equivocal responses the few times its administrators did give comment.
Responses like Ruckh’s validate an often-heard criticism against Greek life “insiders” whenever we attempt to debate issues within the Greek system, which is that our knee-jerk reflex to shout #NotAllFrats renders us incapable of confronting hard truths about our community and engaging in serious action to reform the myriad of harms that our social system regularly inflicts. Our need to dismiss outside criticism as “utterly ridiculous,” “unrealistic” and “fantastical” is what has stunted dialogue on a deeply uncomfortable, yet wholly undeniable fact — that our celebrated institutions have allowed perpetrators of sexual assault to continue living and partying among us with impunity.
As Ruckh correctly points out, we can’t just label a fraternity “good” or “bad” and assume that it accurately describes all of its members. But if the “good” members are passively allowing practices that devalue women and consent to proliferate, they are still part of the problem. It is admittedly easier to argue in support of bystander intervention than for a guy to actually stand up in a room full of his brothers at Chapter and tell them off for saying demeaning things about women or to pull one of them away if he’s trying to hook up with a girl who is too intoxicated to give consent, but those things have to happen if frats are to thwart their central role in the campus rape epidemic. Even if he causes one brother to rethink his actions or deflects one instance of hazily consensual sex, that’s still progress. And the Greek system is in dire need of progress if it wants to remain regarded as a positive college experience.
Her conclusion, which is to resign ourselves to our community’s current ills for the sake of not disrupting our “tangled social webs” and wait for the passage of time to ameliorate them is not a viable choice. Those who have been harmed by “negative experiences” (a popular euphemism for assault) can no longer be seen as acceptable sacrifices for the rest of us to continue to gratuitously have fun. Greek life is a privilege, and with it carries a hefty responsibility. It is incumbent on every individual whose social life it enriches to find his or her role in eliminating its dark side.
Opinion Editor Ashley Yang is committed to a fair and balanced conversation about Greek life. Her opinions are solely her own and do not reflect those of her sorority or the USC Greek system.
