Interview with Anna McNeil, BR ’20, Ry Walker, SY ’20, Ellie Singer, BF ’21, and David Tracey, TC ’08

YH: How long have you been working on this case, and what was the process of becoming a plaintiff with [discrimination attorneys] Sanford Heisler? Why Sanford Heisler specifically?

AM: We had known that we wanted to file some kind of complaint or eventually work towards a lawsuit for well over a year now. We were initially thinking of filing the complaint ourselves, but we had been looking for representation for around a year at this point. And we came to Sanford Heisler over the summer, and honestly working with them has been very good so far. We feel like they really understand our case. They’ve gone to pretty great lengths to help us get here, so I’ve been pretty happy with the outcome. […] I think that when we were looking for representation before we found Sanford Heisler, [it] was difficult because a lot of firms maybe had speciality in Title IX, or they had speciality in public accountability law […] Some of our first advisors were Yale Law School professors, and people who had affiliations with Yale were obviously reticent to officially file the complaint or take us as a client, so that was difficult. It was [also] difficult to find a firm that understood all of the complexities of the case… so that took awhile, to find that match.

YH: Could you speak more to Yale’s history of inaction, and how that played into your filing of the lawsuit?

RW: I think in terms of headlines about fraternities, or discussions that we had read about in the last few years, one of the earlier instances was the DKE pledge event with the “NO means YES, YES means Anal,” the “We love Yale sluts” in front of the Women’s Center incident, in addition to the 2015 SAE party in which they didn’t admit any black women, or rather had a “white girls only” policy. So I think there’s this much longer history where, after two of those instances, there were college students who reformed that Greek life. And Yale has revoked some [privileges] from some of these organizations, and has, at times, given them some sort of punishment with limited oversight. As far as there being real effects, or real change, there has been little policy and little oversight yielded by the administration over these organizations. That’s one thing that we came into a lot of trouble with when we started going to countless meetings in the Yale Dean’s Office […] The administration came to the conclusion that they were not willing […] to oversee and monitor these organizations that are putting students at risk — their students at risk — so often. So there’s this longer history, particularly with fraternities, that has made clear the great gap in Yale’s own ability and power [and] its responsibilities on this campus.

YH: What does it mean to file a lawsuit against Yale, and why did you guys choose to file against the University [as well as] the fraternities themselves?

AM: I think it kind of goes back to what Ry was saying. We wanted to make it clear that we oppose the fraternities as institutions, both the national and local chapters, but also we were trying to imply that Yale has an obligation to its students to keep them safe, and to keep them free from discrimination. Yale is violating that agreement, given that it is aware of the conditions of fraternities and fraternity culture, and has been aware for a decade or more. […] We were really trying to send a message that Yale’s policy — which is [currently that] these are independent, private off-campus organizations and therefore they cannot do anything about it — actually violates some of the undergrad regulations in Yale’s own policy. Furthermore, and as we argue within our complaint, it is well within their oversight to curb the behavior of these fraternities. And so that’s why we didn’t want to file against just the national and local chapters.

[…]

YH: What outcomes do you guys desire? Legal outcomes? Infrastructural support? More student support? And if it were the latter, what would that look like to you guys?

ES: Basically we’re looking for the University to end its hands off approach, and start taking comprehensive action. Making the fraternities not only integrate but [also] become safer party spaces. So that’s a list of things, [which] are in the complaint, but that includes having mix-gendered sober monitors, [and] bouncers to supervise [potentially] discriminatory admissions. And other items that would help end the toxic fraternity culture here.

AM: I think there are a number of steps that Yale has taken recently to distance itself from off-campus life. For example, they closed off-campus party registration. There may be talk about changes that further distance the University from being accountable for what happens off campus. A lot of our [provisions] in the complaint include things like some degree of University oversight, so that fraternities have to create some kind of regulation about how alcohol is served, availability of food and water, how dark the space is or how crowded the space is, in addition to gender integration. Because we agree that Yale’s current hands off system fails students on this front. Not just on the gender discrimination.

YH: What happens if Yale is found guilty? Or if they aren’t?

AM: Obviously David [Tracey, lawyer at Sanford Heisler] knows a lot more about this stuff than we do, because [the outcome] is very far down the line. Years. What we’re looking for is not for Yale to shut down, or anything like that. What we hope to happen is that Yale will have to work with us on some of those proposed reforms that we have in our complaint. […]

DT: I’d just like to qualify that slightly. We’re obviously open to talking, engaging in the process that Anna just described, but we seek a really comprehensive review of the complaint that includes gender-integrated fraternities — a real paradigm shift in the way that Yale regulates and engages with the social environment at the University, particularly off-campus social spaces. So I think that we will go to trial and prevail, and Yale will have to make those changes. And the fraternities will be required to gender-integrate.

YH: We just kind of got into this, but I was wondering what the general timeline of this, but how long you guys anticipate this taking…years?

AM: I think David, correct me if I’m wrong, but the timeline that we’re looking at is that once Ry and I graduate, and maybe Ellie, too, this won’t be finished at all. We’re thinking like years, like two years — ?

DT: Yeah, I think one to two years is fair. And we’re going to prosecute the case as aggressively and as quickly as possible, but I think one to two years.

YH: How do you guys see this ramifying on a national level?

AM: Well this is kind of a historic, well I won’t say historic, but the lawsuit is the first of its kind in that students challenge fraternities on the basis of gender discrimination. We would really like to pave the way for students at other universities, who face the same problems that we do here, to take action similarly. […] We are also trying to bring home the point that gender discrimination is really ines? If that messaging could really resonate with the national media, we’d be quite happy with that.

YH: How do you see this affecting your social lives at Yale? How are you feeling?

AM: I mean, it’s kind of hard to say because we’re not… Well, we were taking a lot of calls today, so it’s kind of difficult to see how students are approaching the lawsuit and taking the news of our filing. I would be interested to see how people react to it. There hasn’t been [much] beyond some individual messages, mostly in support, and a lot of them haven’t been from students on Yale’s campus, so I’m actually not quite sure [what] to expect in terms of how people will react.

RW: One difference between national media response and campus media response is that a lot of students on campus know about Engender. And most, if not all, fraternity members on campus know about Engender, and [know] that we filed a claim over the summer, and are aware of our efforts. And this is isn’t necessarily news… the lawsuit is certainly news, but it’s not as much of a paradigm shift in terms of [our] ideology. Although I’m sure it will have an impact — I’m sure I’ll be having conversations with our peers over the next few days about this lawsuit. It’s not necessarily like the arguments that we are making about gender discrimination and [fraternities’] hostile environment haven’t already been part of the Yale discourse.

YH: How can we support you guys other than signing the petition?

AM: This is a good question. I mean, this is interesting because sorority and fraternity recruitment are finishing up right now. Marvin Chun makes the suggestion in his report that students stop attending fraternity parties, and we agree with him to a certain extent, but beyond that, it would be great if students stopped joining fraternities and giving them so much money to continue exist here. [If] we could eliminate the demands for frats that would require a big shift towards raising funds et cetera that would go towards alternative spaces, that would be really great.

YH: Do you guys have anything else to add?

AM: I’d like to point out that when we say [that] we experienced sexual conduct in fraternities and [that] we’re trying to join those spaces, that’s not like — I think maybe this is clear to a Yale audience — we’d want to join those spaces with the intention of changing them for the better, not that we think that [it’s] women’s job is to police men in their actions. [It’s that] we think a co-ed membership would be more able to safely serve a co-ed public. I just want to make that messaging kind of clear.

Suiting Up was originally published in The Yale Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.