"Frat parties are a big part of the problem," Soltis, who lives near Leesburg, Virginia, said in a phone interview. "Young, innocent freshman girls, they're kind of in this all-guy territory. It's like a hotbed for the degradation of women."
Eight fraternities said in September that they had formed a group to confront sexual misconduct, alcohol abuse and hazing. Lambda Chi Alpha, Phi Delta Theta, Pi Kappa Alpha, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Alpha Mu, Sigma Chi, Tau Kappa Epsilon and Triangle fraternities said they would begin using a new curriculum to inform undergraduate members about the risks of these behaviors.
Fraternities "are moving with a fervor and a sense of hurry that I've never seen", said Gentry McCreary, associate dean of students at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, who works with colleges and national fraternity groups as a consultant with the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management in Malvern, Pennsylvania.
UVA students held a news conference Monday and called for change in a culture that they said excuses rape at the Charlottesville campus and on a national level. The board met on Tuesday to discuss the university's policies and procedures on sexual assault.
University of Virginia student council president Jalen Ross told a news conference on Monday that the fraternity house gang rape allegations were a "wake-up call". Photo / AP
Over the weekend, university president Teresa Sullivan suspended the university's more than 30 fraternities until January 9. The move shows that UVA is serious about addressing sexual assault, says junior Emily Keenan, 21.
"It's a good symbolic action from the administration if nothing else," Keenan said. "They're just trying to make it known that they are willing to take severe steps in some people's eyes in order to make this change."
The Rolling Stone story focuses on the experience of a female student called Jackie, how her friends were more concerned with their future social status than in reporting what happened, and the university's alleged poor handling of the incident.
Four weeks into her freshman year, Jackie was invited to a fraternity party by a frat member she met when they both worked as lifeguards. At the party, her date led her to a bedroom where she was raped by seven men, who cheered one another on, according to the article.
At the end of her freshman year, the female student reported the incident to Dean Nicole Eramo on the advice of a psychiatrist, according to the article. The dean explained various options such as filing a criminal report, filing a formal complaint with the school's Sexual Misconduct Board that would lead to a campus hearing, or using an "informal resolution" process to speak to the alleged attackers.
Two of the dozens of postings on the door of Peabody Hall relating to the Phi Kappa Psi gang rape allegations. Photo / AP
In a statement last week, Sullivan said many of the details of the incident hadn't been disclosed to the university.
UVA's Phi Kappa Psi chapter said in a statement on November 20, published in the school newspaper, the Cavalier Daily, that it has suspended activities.
"The acts depicted in the article are beyond unacceptable," according to the statement. "We will cooperate quickly, openly and honestly in any forthcoming investigation."
The national fraternity, based in Indianapolis, had about 5900 active members in 105 chapters in the 2013-2014 school year, according to its website. It said in a statement that it takes the allegations at UVA "very seriously".
"It is important to note that to our knowledge there have been no criminal investigations or charges of sexual assault brought against any member of the chapter," according to the statement.
Deaths prompt hazing ban, fraternity disbandment
Clemson suspended fraternity activities in September at its campus in South Carolina after a student, Tyler Hipps, died in a fall from a bridge during an early morning run with fraternity members. Hipps was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon, which has banned hazing.
California State University at Northridge suspended a chapter of Pi Kappa Phi chapter in September after a student died on a hike. The chapter later agreed to disband. The same month, Penn State Altoona barred a fraternity for six years amid probes into a student suicide that was under investigation for links to hazing.
At Hanover, New Hampshire-based Dartmouth, about 20 per cent of the faculty's 600 members were present at the meeting on November 3 and they voted 116 in favor and 13 against to abolish fraternities, said Ryan Calsbeek, an associate professor of biology who is chairman of the school's committee on student life. Dartmouth President Philip Hanlon, who as a student at the college was a member of the Alpha Delta fraternity, was present at the vote and didn't comment, Calsbeek said.
The Ivy League school's faculty has been doing research on the impact of Greek societies on student life and the occurrence of harmful behaviors, Calsbeek said in an interview.
"It would be oversimplifying to say that the Greek system is the cause of all this, but it's correlated," he said. "There has been enough evidence linking negative behavior to the Greek system that it's time to do something."
Protesters carry signs and chant slogans in front of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia. Photo / AP
Wesleyan in Middletown, Connecticut, told its two active all-male Greek houses in September to admit women and end freshman "rushing".
Universities are stymied by a lack of understanding of how to prevent sexual assault, said Peter Lake, director of the Center for Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Florida.
"It's not a lack of attention or seriousness, it's that they don't know what to do," Lake said. "This is a crucible of leadership for US higher education."
Universities are often reluctant to discipline fraternities because members can be among their biggest donors. After the president and trustees of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, proposed making fraternities co-educational, Greek alumni last year withheld donations to the school.
After a Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) chapter was disciplined at Salisbury University in Maryland for hazing in 2012, a founder of its chapter and prominent graduate withdrew a US$2 million ($2.6 million) donation, Bloomberg News reported last December. In March, SAE, one of the largest and best-known fraternities, banned pledging, the months-long induction period where recruits have been subject to forced drinking, paddling and other abuse.
Phi Kappa Psi, the same fraternity at the center of the UVA news, is also under fire at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Last month, two students said they suspected they were served an alcoholic punch mixed with a "date rape" drug at a fraternity party. One of the women said she had been sexually assaulted. The fraternity chapter, which the university didn't name, has been suspended, according to a statement.
The Brown chapter said in a letter to the Brown Daily Herald student newspaper that it had been suspended "for hosting an unregistered event with alcohol present" and that "we were all shocked by the circumstances of the allegations."
"We are confident that in no way did any member of Phi Kappa Psi engage in or perpetrate such atrocious and criminal behavior," according to the letter.
Even after the Rolling Stone article, Nicholas Syrett, an associate professor at the University of Northern Colorado, said he wasn't optimistic there would be a change in fraternity culture.
"There have been wide-scale conversations about fraternities before, but they have not gone away," said Syrett, who wrote a book about the history of fraternities. "I hear the defence every time - that this is an isolated incident and that you can't discipline all fraternities for what one has done."
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