![]() Hundreds of protestors at UMass Amherst are gathered in front of the Theta Chi frat house, where a member was accused of sexually assaulting a woman last weekend. (Alternate angle) Day 2: Hundreds of students protest in front of Fraternity “Fiji” on the University of #Nebraska -Lincoln’s campus in protest of #Fiji member allegedly raping a girl in house #UNL /tEgBvUmHoG Other anti-rape protests-against both frats and university administrators accused of failing to protect students-have taken place at Auburn University, Northwestern University Loyola University Chicago Virginia Tech and flagship state schools in Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, and Utah in the last few weeks. And today, organizers on at least nine more campuses are planning an “Against Our Will” protest, coordinated by Strip Your Letters, which advocates for reforming the Greek system to make it safer and more racially inclusive. At the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, student protesters flipped a car outside Theta Chi after rumors of an assault there spread on social media. At the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, hundreds of people showed up for four consecutive nights in late August outside Phi Gamma Delta (“Fiji”) after a 17-year-old student reported to police that a brother there raped her more than 482,000 people so far have since signed a “Ban Fiji Forever” petition on. The protests that shook KU last month are part of a nationwide uproar against sexual assault in fraternities, as many students return to campus for the first time in over a year. “It helps me heal as a survivor myself, and is really a way for me to get justice, too. “I’ve never been part of something this big before, this much of a change before,” Ellis tells me. The protests have a startling urgency-experts believe this school semester could be marked by extraordinarily high rates of sexual assault. The three-hour demonstration, and a follow-up the next day, made the local news and spurred KU administrators to reach out to Ellis and other students, offering a meeting to discuss sexual assault at the university. Many carried signs like “Unconscious is not consent,” and “If they can’t say ‘no’ / they can’t say ‘yes.’” Soon the crowd filled the fraternity’s yard and pushed up its front steps, prompting the private security guards to pepper spray the protesters. It only took a few hours for Ellis to get the word out-first on the anonymous forum Yik Yak, then on Snapchat and Instagram, where Ellis started the account The next evening, walking to the fraternity, Ellis was surprised to see throngs of other students headed in the same direction. When the mutual friend asked if Ellis would be willing to protest the fraternity, Ellis-a sexual assault survivor themself-quickly agreed. But the previous day, they’d heard that a friend of a friend had allegedly been drugged and assaulted at a Phi Kappa Psi party the night before. “We believe her,” the crowd roared.Įllis had never attended a protest before, much less organized one. ![]() “We believe her,” Ellis chanted at the brick building on the edge of campus, with its white colonnade and private security guards posted outside. Three weeks ago, a University of Kansas junior I’ll call Ellis stood with hundreds of other students on the lawn of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house, protesting a sexual assault that had allegedly taken place at a recent party. It portrayed university officials as insensitive and unresponsive to the plight of the student, who was identified only as Jackie, and suggested that the attack was emblematic of a culture of sexual violence at the elite public university.Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. The article described in chilling detail a student’s account of being raped by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house in September 2012. Rolling Stone spokeswoman Kathryn Brenner said the magazine has no comment on the lawsuit. It is the third filed in response to the November 2014 article entitled “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA.” Three individual fraternity members and recent graduates of the University of Virginia are suing for at least $225,000 each, and a university associate dean who claims she was portrayed as the “chief villain” is suing the magazine for more than $7.5 million. The complaint, filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court, also names Sabrina Rubin Erdely as a defendant. The fraternity that was the focus of a debunked Rolling Stone article about a gang rape filed a $25 million lawsuit against the magazine Monday, saying the piece made the frat and its members “the object of an avalanche of condemnation worldwide.”
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