Groups representing college fraternities and sororities plan to lobby Congress to make it more difficult for colleges to punish those accused of sexual assault on campus, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
An agenda reviewed by Bloomberg showed the groups plan to send students out on Capitol Hill on April 29 to convince lawmakers to require that campus sexual assault cases be resolved in the criminal justice system before a university can discipline the accused.
“Campus judicial proceedings” should be deferred “until completion of criminal adjudication (investigation and trial),” an e-mail sent to the students selected to lobby read, as quoted by Bloomberg.
The Fraternity & Sorority Political Action Committee, the North-American Interfraternity Conference and the National Panhellenic Conference are participating in the push, according to the report.
The Huffington Post also published audio from a Feb. 2 conference call in which leaders of those groups discussed the lobbying push. Fraternity representatives on the call suggested that colleges be allowed to adjudicate campus sexual assault cases by a standard of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, which is stricter than the “preponderance of evidence” standard many schools use.
But according to that report, representatives from the fraternity organizations hadn’t finalized specific plans for the lobbying push.
News of the their efforts came as fraternities across the country face discipline for members’ alleged misconduct. Pennsylvania State University’s Kappa Delta Rho fraternity was suspended last week after police discovered a private Facebook group to which frat members were allegedly posting photos of nude, unconscious women. North Carolina State University also placed its chapter of Pi Kappa Phi on interim suspension after students found a so-called “pledge book” containing disturbing statements about rape and lynching.
