Dive Brief:
- The University of Virginia suspended its fraternities on Saturday in response to a Rolling Stone article reporting a student’s description of being gang-raped during a frat party and a pattern of sexual assaults involving fraternities.
- The university’s president, Teresa Sullivan, said in a letter that the suspension will last until Jan. 9 — the beginning of the spring semester.
- During the suspension, groups of students, faculty members, alumni, and others will meet to discuss sexual assault and sexual violence prevention, according to the letter.
Dive Insight:
Rolling Stone says its article “went viral,” with many other women who attended UVA coming forward to report that they were also sexually assaulted. Besides the troubling, detailed descriptions of sexual assaults in the article, it also depicts Sullivan as uninformed and the UVA’s public relations staff as more concerned about the image of the school than the sexual violence issue. So a dramatic step was probably the university’s best move. The letter also says that Sullivan has asked the Charlottesville Police Department to investigate the 2012 gang rape alleged in the article.