[sugar and spice]

To be totally honest, the combination of Greek life + the binge drinking culture at Wisconsin has been courting disaster for decades. I'm only surprised that it took this long for something to happen--or rather, to be reported. It's been happening--both inside and outside of the Greek system--the entire time. The excessive drinking makes it easier for the rapes to occur, and harder to report, since a lot of the women blame themselves for drinking so much, or are blamed by those who they report it to.

I was in a sorority there about five years ago, and a substantial number of my sorority sisters had been raped. I'm not trying to blame fraternity men here; the rapists were both Greek and non-Greek men. But while almost all of my sisters were hesitant to report the rapes, those who were raped by frat boys were especially so, because the repercussions were so much worse. You didn't have just one guy and perhaps a handful of his friends mad at you; you had an entire fraternity, plus the entire Greek system taking sides and plenty of them calling you a liar (see the comments on those articles). And the anger wasn't just directed at you, but at your entire sorority. The fallout was just way higher than when it was a non-Greek man.

As is pointed out, the Sigma Chi house is rented out to both Greeks and non-Greeks, which complicates the issue. I'm fairly sure that the majority of men who live there are still Sigma Chis, though. Does anyone who currently goes to the UW have more information on that?

I'm glad this girl had the courage to report this. And I hope that it will encourage other women who have experienced it to do the same. I also hope that it turns out that this is an isolated incident and that the rapist(s) are punished accordingly. But if they find it's not an isolated incident, get them off campus immediately. The message that this is totally unacceptable hasn't yet been sent, and it needs to be.


ETA: I didn't see the affiliation listed in the comments. Did they delete it, or is it still there and I'm just missing it? Nevertheless, the impression I get from talking to my friends who are still in school is that a lot of people in the Greek system already know who this girl is, and that rumors of this incident have been circulating since the fall. So it wouldn't be surprising that affiliation was posted.