The Kansas University Sexual Assault Task Force has recommended changes that would turn upside-down firmly-rooted fraternity and sorority practices at KU.

Student greek leaders — who announced a sexual assault prevention program of their own — oppose the suggestions and say they’re miffed the task force didn’t ask for their input.

A task force leader, however, cites changing greek practices as a priority in diminishing sexual assault at KU.

“It’s very realistic,” said task force co-chairwoman Alesha Doan, associate professor of political science and chairwoman of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

“The practices and cultural norms of greek life vary tremendously from university to university, and being familiar with the practices we do at KU, sometimes we can forget that there are other practices as well.”

Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little created the task force in September. The group presented her with a final report, including 27 recommendations, earlier this month.

Among them:

• KU should require all freshmen to live in residence halls on campus — including fraternity pledges, who normally live in their respective chapter houses. KU can more consistently deliver sexual assault prevention programming in student housing, the report says.

• Fraternities — which begin informally recruiting men still in high school — and sororities — which hold formal recruitment the week before fall classes begin — should defer recruitment until spring.

Both practices “have been identified as counterproductive to prevention efforts and fostering positive social norms,” the report says.

The task force further recommended that KU’s Student Involvement and Leadership Center Greek Life staff should conduct assessments “of all aspects of recruitment, housing and social norms promotion in relation to the known victimization and perpetration (of) sexual assault risk factors, including alcohol consumption.”

‘A crucial part’

Fraternity leaders say not only do many houses count on live-in freshmen for income, first-year membership and residency are some of the biggest assets of fraternity life at KU.

“It’s such a crucial part of our existence,” said Joe Simmons, KU Interfraternity Council public relations director and a member of Beta Theta Pi.

From mandated study hours to immediately bonding with fraternity brothers — including older mentors — under the same roof, living in helps freshmen adjust to college life and scholarship, Simmons said.

Johanna Hecht, KU Panhellenic Association director of member development and Kappa Alpha Theta member, said that while she feels safe at KU fraternities, she understands reasons the task force would suggest having freshmen fraternity men live in dorms, as sorority women do.

As for recruitment, Hecht opposes delaying it until spring.

She came to KU from out of state and didn’t know anyone, she said. By joining a sorority before classes started she found a support system she said is even stronger than friends from her dorm.

That buddy system helps her feel safer when going out, she said.

Simmons said the task force’s recommendations, made without input from IFC or PHC officers, felt like a “slap in the face for us.”

“Everyone targets greek life, saying that we screw up all the time, for lack of a better term,” Hecht said. “Greek life is held to standards and values.”

Hecht said sexual assault is not limited to the greek system but that she hopes greeks can be leaders in combatting the issue of sexual violence.

“Sexual assault can happen in a dorm, and it can happen in regular houses,” she said. “You don’t really hear about the stories where a woman or man was sexually assaulted … in a random house here on Tennessee, Kentucky or Ohio (streets).”

Next steps

The task force was not subject to the Kansas Open Meetings Act, according to KU, so it did not make its correspondence throughout the year open to the public or the media.

The four meetings leading up to the final report’s unveiling were conducted in private, as were portions of earlier meetings.

Doan said the task force believed keeping communication confidential was important “to foster an openness” for conversations hoped to help identify the problem of sexual assault at KU.

Doan said the task force met with or received correspondence from former and current members of the KU greek system, and consulted “campus partners that deal directly with greek life.”

The task force’s recommendations include supporting the greek community’s efforts to curb sexual assault, “so we do recognize the important role that they play as stakeholders,” Doan said.

None of the task force recommendations is going into effect immediately, and there’s no guarantee that any will be adopted, though most are less controversial than the greek-system changes.

The chancellor’s office is reviewing the report and determining next-steps.

Doan said some recommendations could be quickly and easily implemented while the greek-related ones are among long-term goals.

Logistical hurdles — such as helping fraternities retool funding models to adjust for loss of income from live-in freshmen — would need to be worked through, Doan said, but “there are models for how that can be done.”

Greek plans

Meanwhile, after creating a Greek Sexual Assault Task Force that also met all year, IFC and PHA leaders are rolling out their own changes beginning this fall.

“We’re really excited about implementing the new sexual assault programming on our own, and we’re looking forward to making strides with that,” Simmons said.

One new move is banning hard alcohol from all fraternity chapter houses.

Simmons said that was done in several contexts including the consideration of sexual assault — which IFC leaders are careful to say is not caused by excessive alcohol use but has been correlated with it.

The other is an education and prevention effort.

The women’s program is called CARE (Campus, Assistance, Resources, Education and Engagement) Advocates.

The plan is for each sorority chapter to choose two women — not executive officers — to become CARE Advocates. They would undergo extensive training in the fall, then be in the advocate role January through December, Hecht said.

The hope is that members who have been sexually assaulted and don’t know where to turn or don’t feel comfortable reaching outside the house to professional, community or law enforcement resources right away will talk to the CARE Advocates.

“It would be someone they could just talk to … or if they want to figure out what their next step would be, that CARE Advocate would direct them to the appropriate resource,” Hecht said.

The men plan a peer-education effort.

IFC leaders are working with several KU offices to develop their program, said Stephonn Alcorn, KU IFC director of leadership and development and a Sigma Nu member. He said trained fraternity members would educate chapters using interactive scenarios that emphasize bystander intervention and understanding consent.

Alcorn said many fraternity members that participated in conversations said other education efforts seem to use scenarios that aren’t realistic. Real-life situations can be ambiguous, Alcorn said, so the training should reflect the complexities of those.

IFC and PHA plan to iron out details of the programs over the summer.

Nobody wants to sit in a big lecture or listen to someone read something written by, say, a 35-year-old, Hecht and Alcorn said. That’s not going to work.

“There’s no better people to understand you, how to reach you, how to get things to stick than your peers,” Alcorn said.