'Rape Factory' Fraternity At Wesleyan University Ordered to Admit Women

To try to combat the problem of sexual assault on campus, trustees at Wesleyan University have told all residential fraternities that they must be co-ed by 2017. Women must become full members and leaders in the organizations, Business Insider reported. The mandate follows a “heightened discussion” about Greek life. Mu Epsilon, a chapter of Beta Theta Pi, was known as the “Rape Factory.”

The decision was made “with equality and inclusion in mind,” Wesleyan President Michael Roth and Trustee Chairman Joshua Boger wrote in an email Monday, Business Insider reported. “Our residential Greek organizations inspire loyalty, community and independence. That’s why all our students should be eligible to join them.”

"Six years of hearing about high-risk drinking at fraternities and dealing with fallout from highly publicized incidents of sexual violence have had an effect," Wesleyan President Michael Roth wrote on the school's website this year.

An anonymous woman known as “Jane Doe” filed a lawsuit against the liberal arts college alleging that she was sexually assaulted at a Halloween Party in 2010 at the Beta Theta Phi fraternity house.

Doe accused John O’Neill of rape. He pleaded guilty to lesser charges of third-degree assault and first-degree unlawful restraint, Buzzfeed wrote. He was sentenced to 15 months in jail.

Wesleyan is hardly alone in confronting the problem of sexual assault. Dartmouth and Middlebury, among many others, have grappled with complaints from female students and concerns about drinking and fraternity culture. A Columbia University student is carrying a mattress with her on campus to protest that school's handling of her sexual assault case, and a student at Harvard last year wrote an open letter in that school's newspaper headlined, Dear Harvard: You Win, describing what she saw as the administration's failure to punish the man she said had assaulted her.

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