Cornell Halts Fraternity Parties After Alleged Sex Assault and Druggings

Cornell College introduced the non permanent suspension of all fraternity events and social occasions in an announcement on Monday, following alerts from the varsity’s Police Division over the weekend that one scholar was sexually assaulted and at the least 4 others have been drugged at off-campus residences affiliated with fraternities registered with the varsity.

The transfer got here after the Interfraternity Council, which oversees fraternities at Cornell, held an emergency assembly with workers on Sunday, based on the assertion.

The Cornell police mentioned they have been made conscious on Nov. 4 of at the least 4 college students who mentioned they drank little or no alcohol at off-campus events in current weeks however turned incapacitated. The scholars informed the officers that they had been “uncovered to Rohypnol,” the so-called date-rape drug.

And on Sunday at round 4:45 a.m., one other scholar reported that that they had been sexually assaulted at one other residence within the metropolis, the police mentioned. Cornell didn’t establish the gender of any of the victims.

“Police and Cornell administrative investigations are underway,” mentioned the assertion, signed by the college’s president, Martha E. Pollack, and the vice chairman of scholar and campus life, Ryan Lombardi. “All discovered accountable shall be held accountable.”

The Ithaca Police Division mentioned, it was investigating the sexual assault allegation, in an announcement. Each the Cornell Police Division and the Interfraternity Council didn’t reply to questions concerning the alerts.

Like many universities throughout the nation, Cornell — whose major campus is in Ithaca, N.Y. — has grappled with instances of sexual assault. In line with State Division of Schooling knowledge from 2018, the college reported extra instances of sexual assault throughout the first 5 months of that yr than another establishment of upper studying in New York. In 2020, the varsity had the fourth-highest variety of sexual assault studies within the state.

In a 2021 survey of two,300 college students at all the college’s campuses throughout the state, 44 p.c of the respondents mentioned that they had skilled “a number of particular types of harassing behaviors” — a drop from 50 p.c in a 2019 survey.

A former fraternity president on the college was sentenced to 6 years of probation in 2017 after pleading responsible to a misdemeanor intercourse offense cost. The fraternity president, Wolfgang Ballinger, who led the varsity’s Psi Upsilon chapter, was accused of locking a girl in his bed room in 2016 and making an attempt to have forcible sexual activity together with her.

Cornell’s fraternities even have an extended historical past of hazing. The primary documented fraternity hazing demise in america, in 1873, was reported on the college, and resulted within the passage of the nation’s first state anti-hazing regulation 20 years later.

And the announcement of suspended fraternity occasions this week comes three years after a scholar, Antonio Tsialas, an 18-year-old from Miami, was discovered lifeless on the backside of a ravine after leaving a celebration at Phi Kappa Psi. The college later discovered the fraternity responsible of hazing and punished 39 college students tied to the occasion, suspending one among them.

In 2011, one other scholar, George Desdunes, was discovered lifeless within the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity home the morning after a hazing ritual. The fraternity was restored on campus this spring following a decade-long suspension.