When Randy Sullivan asked the audience to raise their hands if they were in Fraternity and Sorority Life, almost every hand in the room went up. The Senate Task Force to Address Sexual Violence and Survivor Support hosted a forum to discuss its report 20 Students Per Week last night and FSL had objections.
In the report, the task force recommended that the current plans to expand FSL be halted for a year until more research is done. This drew criticism and concern from an audience of FSL brothers and sisters in suits and skirts who gathered last tonight.
“Women first created sororities as a support system to create bonds in environments that were predominantly male-centric in numbers, as well as ideology,” said Rebecca Brennan, VP of Internal Management of the Panhellenic Council. “By limiting expansion on sororities, it denies women the opportunity to have such a support system in a critical period in the development of young adults. Denying the opportunity for an expansion is just continuing the oppression of women’s voices, which goes against our mission and the history of our values-based organizations.”
The recommendations of the task force addressed the high rate of sexual violence in FSL from the Campus Climate Survey and a report on the effects of rape prevention programs. The survey by UO professor Jennifer Freyd showed that sorority women are 3.4 times more likely to experience an attempted or completed rape than women outside of FSL.
Carol Stabile, co-chair of the task force says that it would be prudent to take a year to examine the problems in FSL and move on from there.
“We’re looking into really scary numbers,” Stabile said. “You’re arguing that we should allow for expansion of a program with no assurance that those numbers can go down that first year or with no assurance that our efforts working together can address that problem.”
FSL speakers said that they are committed to addressing the issue of sexual assault within their organizations and expressed a desire to work with the task force last night.
The arguments against halting the expansion of FSL were diverse. Points raised were that the report also singled out athletics, but did not halt its expansion; that Previous education efforts in FSL have been successful and that the expansion of FSL isn’t all up to UO; and that national chapters could still start colonies that would be independent of UO FSL.
Many members also said that FSL has the power to be an agent of change in the fight against sexual violence.
“Our FSL community that has shown up today is aggressively committed to changing the culture at the UO campus.” Chase Salazar, president of the Interfraternity Council, said. Salazar is one of many members of FSL that addressed the task force Monday night.
The task force will present its final recommendations to the University Senate on Wednesday in Lawrence 115.