When professors comically mention that they saw a student hammered at the bar the weekend before and ask their lecture hall how they get satisfaction from drinking heavily, usually the response is, “It’s just a part of the college experience.”
When opening weekend crawls around and the houses across the street are lined with, “Daddy drop-off” and “Will trade beer for your daughter,” most people shrug it off and say, “Well, that’s a college campus for you.”
So, when a fraternity party goes a little wild and targets specific girls to drug and date rape, it must just be an experience of college.
It isn’t fair to suspend the fraternity chapter because every girl goes through it at some point in their college career, right?
HuffPost Women wrote an article reporting that the fraternity chapter Tau Kappa Epslion [TKE] at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee hosted a party Sept. 12 where girls were sold “tickets” to gain access to the party and open bar. A girl interviewed during the investigation said, “You had to be hot” to be sold these tickets. A few girls remembered being marked with a red X.
The marked girls turned out to be victims of date rape drugs, as later that night they were found violently sick near a dorm hall on campus.
This chapter is currently under investigation and has been suspended from their campus.
I love the Greek communities because I know many good, genuine people who are a part of them.
They have high standards and they give back to the community that built them.
Whenever someone bashes on Greek life, I will defend the wonderful community that I have come to know and love at the University.
When I shared this article on Facebook, a Greek friend of mine commented, “As a TKE here at BGSU I am completely disgusted hearing about this. Absolutely disregarding all major values of the fraternity.”
However, while reading this article, I was completely horrified.
Not only was the article upsetting, but the responses that followed were equally as vile.
Someone put up a story on Huffington Post shortly after called, “Frats Behaving Badly,” which was a compilation of stories of frats all over the country committing horrible acts such as torturing chickens at their tailgates, selling date rape drugs on Facebook and letting brothers take a survey called, “If You Had the Chance … Who Would You Rape?”
A couple weeks ago, I discussed the invention of a nail polish that is supposedly made for detecting date rape drugs and for a small period of time, I thought that women were a little ahead of the game.
As it turns out, the war is far from over.
I believe that this TKE story is lucky to have made headlines.
I know there are thousands of cases where women fall victim to date rape drugs and sexual assault on college campuses that go unreported and unnoticed because “boys will be boys” and “that’s just how college is.”
The humongous weight that is put on young girls to keep quiet and behave is becoming more than we can bear.
If the call for responsibility doesn’t come soon, the war on women is not going to be clean fight.
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