Mustang News Staff Report
[follow id=”CPMustangNews”]
Cal Poly has suspended the university’s chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha (PIKE) for a minimum of six years, according to a university press release.
The suspension is in response to “a reported sexual assault, unsafe alcohol consumption and other conduct policy violations at a party in October,” according to the release. The party registration policy was developed last year by administration and greek life leaders.
“We work in good faith with our greek life students; in return, we expect that they will abide by the campus policies they helped develop,” Dean of Students Jean DeCosta said in the release. “Cal Poly maintains a zero-tolerance policy for violations of those policies.”
The Dean of Students Office informed the chapter earlier this week.
PIKE may appeal the suspension within 20 days to Vice President for Student Affairs, according to the release. If the decision is appealed, Humphrey will review the Dean of Students’ decision and issue a final ruling.
UPDATE: While PIKE does not have a lettered chapter house, the fraternity has a number of satellite houses near campus. Cal Poly does not have the authority to remove students from private housing, but Vice President of Student Affairs Kieth Humphrey said other suspended fraternities’ national offices had kicked members out in the past.
“When we disaffiliate with someone who has a house off campus, whether it’s a satellite house or a chapter house, we don’t evict them from their property,” Humphrey said. “Oftentimes, the national organization or the local alumni will say, ‘We need to move everybody out of the house at the end of the quarter.’”
Former members of PIKE will also not be banned from wearing their letters around campus, at least by the university. However, if former PIKE members conduct themselves inappropriately while unaffiliated with Cal Poly, it could negatively impact the fraternity’s chances of being reinstated when the suspension is over, Humphrey said.
UPDATE: PIKE President and mechanical engineering senior Ellis Good said members of the fraternity felt they weren’t given fair consideration during the university’s investigation.
Good said he thought the reported sexual assault was what caused the fraternity to be suspended, rather than alcohol and party violations.
“They (the fraternity brothers) felt they were singled out,” Good said.
Because the university was making a judgment call rather than building a rigorous legal case against them, Good said, the fraternity wasn’t given a fair chance to defend itself.
“We felt we had nothing to hide,” Good said.
Good said PIKE plans to appeal the university’s decision, and that he will be working with alumni and the fraternity’s national chapter to determine the best way to proceed.
What were the findings of the sexual assault investigation?
Thank god and good riddance. Not sure why six years will change anything, but hey at least it will be one less female who is assaulted along with minors being forced to consume alcohol to join the shitheads.
All this is doing is distracting everyone from the ridiculous social suspension of all Greek life. I’m upset that the administration is attempting to destroy Greek Life completely. Pike can and most likely will appeal this ban. Yes, sexual assault is bad, but 3 cases in a school of 19000 people means that 99.8% of students are acting the right way. Why should thousands of people be punished for the actions of three individuals? We know that the deans have it out for Greek Life, and in their quest to destroy us, they forgot one important thing: oppression leads to revolution. We will fight back because its important to all of us. One of the main reasons people join Greek Life is to be part of something greater than themselves. I truly hope that we come to a solution by Feb. 15, otherwise this is only going to get a lot messier.
Greeks are all about “standing together” and “setting the standard” until something difficult comes along, at which point they separate and blame the “guilty” fraternity or sorority. One of your own is guilty of something as tragic as sexual assault, and yet you sit and say “well it’s not my problem” and are upset that Greeks as a whole are paying the price.
And as for only 3 cases occurring: that’s only the 3 cases that have been reported to the authorities. There are undoubtedly more that have not been and will never be reported.
This is all of our problem and see the first article of this quarter to come out about the changes the leaders of the men of this group want to make (Dire Consequences). Some of our men choose to always be better, be gentlemen, be loyal caring friends, and be good lovers.
If you go to the safer office and ask about their statistics and their projections they will agree that many of these incidences go unreported. These three girls have the support to feel safe about reporting, and campus can make moves. Majority of cases are individuals acting against individuals, sometimes people they may know. For Administration it becomes difficult to get everything as it happens. Unfortunately I hate to say it but people could be cruel enough to abuse this system and drastically change the lives of people they want to effect. I don’t ever believe the cases we hear about have that quality, but that is why bastard lawyers can make a living battling against victims on this issue. Sexual Assaults are tragic, changes the lives of all they touch, and has a mucky complex laws and rules that for some reason or another gets put above common sense.
We are a strong group standing together to make a change among our own members. Its our problem whether you are Greek, you are man, you are woman, you “rage and party”, or you decide to put yourself out in the world and partake in the behaviors of our generation. We are the problem and we are the solution.
There is nothing any Greek organization could have done for Pike. After those allegations came out, they were done. The greater issue is that the Cal Poly administration is creating a campus climate in which people will be less likely to come forward about sexual assault because if they do, it means that it shuts down Greek life and all the stuff that goes along with it for everyone. We try to set the standard, but you have to remember that only about 10% or less of this school is involved in Greek life. The whole Cal Poly student community has to come together on this, not just Greek life. Its unacceptable for the administration to have these hard line stances, because it doesn’t help the issue. All it does is create animosity between students. This is part of the administration’s master plan to get everyone all riled up. Wake up.
Cal Poly is actually about 20% Greek.
I agree.
IFC already has a complete plan that will bring a culture change towards healthy and safe social environments. The plan was to be unveiled to Fraternity presidents this upcoming monday.
But Humphrey already knew that.
What is the motivation behind Humphrey and the administration suspending all of Greek life? He wants to stop people from reporting sexual assaults. Why else would he socially suspend sororities for coming out about a sexual assualt? Why would a girl report a sexual assault if it punishes her friends and community?
The administration and Humphrey are making the problem drastically worse, they are so near-sighted as their only focus is to reduce reporting of these sexual assaults.
Very troubling. Can we trust this administration?
Fight back…so you’ll sexually assault them too?
No ill use my words
“Oppression leads to revolution” – Dilly Bluntz
All of IFC should smoke blunts in support #morebluntz
These guys were/are tools. We got a slight glimpse of their TFM worshiping mindset with that post on their Facebook page. Weeks later they are accused of rape. Whether those charges came to fruition or not, they completely deserve to be removed from campus.
A suspension won’t patch this group-think behavior. Why aren’t we reading about the administration employing the SAFER program or Women’s Studies departments to host workshops or required class courses?
There are valuable resources and professors (like Dr. Jane Lehr) within the university that can help shift the Greek culture to make it what it’s supposed to be – a philanthropic and social organization that’s made to enhance the lives and education of young students. And sure, have some fun parties along the way.
But taking a cold-turkey approach isn’t going to change these trends. Until the administration takes a hard look at how the can rehabilitate this behavior, it’s not going to stop.
I totally agree that the culture needs to change, and that taking a ham-fisted approach towards all IFC groups isn’t going to be what makes that change.
I know of at least two fraternities on campus that have either appointed a SAFER representative within the fraternity or have begun taking steps towards doing so.
I agree with Alumni that Greek groups are needing to up their efforts of use or the resources that this campus has for our students. I know that some groups of men use these resources where their leaders and members take the talks, presentations, and follow-up discussions. Some group of men either don’t take this topic as seriously as they need to! I hope that this event leads to more inventive moves by these groups like what Swaggy D mentioned below. I bet we start to see the groups that care move their current practices in to policies and positions that we see on the books.
Greeks are a group of the whole culture that act on this behavior. Because the Greek system needs the affiliation with the University to officially operate, campus administration can use that to keep control on the correction of this behavior within this group of students. If they decide to not work with Greek student leaders to help make the change, and they decide to cut out this system, then how are they going to supervise the behavior of their students? Spending resources on ALL campus rehabilitation? Administration can choose to effect a group that wants to make changes, or they can make this much more complex for themselves by letting this outside of its current isolation.
Hey MN can you post, or post where to find the university press release?
They didn’t make one
We may be suspended but we are still the most physically fit brothers on campus
It seems odd and even somewhat suspect that when Pi Kappa Alpha had allegations made against them it was published in several news venues; multiple times, multiple places. Now that two other allegations have been made, against two other fraternities, there is very little information being given to the public. The allegations that were reported against AGR in December were just made public last night and the third allegation of sexual assault that was reported this past weekend still has not had a fraternity tied to it – even though it has been confirmed that it is tied to a fraternity. It has also been reported that Dr. Humphry, Vice President of Student of Affairs, was an active member of an AGR Chapter. As another poster questioned – what were the findings in regards to the sexual assault investigation against Pi Kappa Alpha? It seems that those boys have taken a considerable amount of bashing and backlash. Is the lack of reporting and information being given to the public in the best interest of the students and community?
rrr
Well well well… I think it is time that somebody stands up for PIKE. Everybody on campus knows of PIKE through a skewed and biased viewpoint. However, there is a lot about this fraternity that nobody knows except those with close ties to them. Let me enlighten you.
It was only last year that PIKE won three distinguished awards from the campus officials who are now singling them out. The first award was FRATERNITY OF THE YEAR. Yes, you heard me right. Among every social fraternity on campus, PIKE was voted the number one fraternity. What goes into this decision? Well, there are a couple different factors. For instance, PIKE also won the Community Service Award. PIKES completed the most hours of community service of any fraternity last year. Looks like they do benefit the San Luis community after all. Second, they were awarded the Philanthropy of the Year award. So, what does this entail? Their philanthropy event (headed by one of the member’s involved with the “post”) raised over $15,000 dollars for the Susan G. Komen fund, which helps raise awareness for breast cancer. This philanthropy event raised more money than any other fraternity philanthropy in Cal Poly history. I bet that 99% of readers on this “news” source were completely unaware of this fact.
So before you decide to label these group of men who “were/are tools,” I hope you do some research and actually get to know them.
Write an article about that.
Hi there AngryGreek,
It appears as if you have some strong opinions about the legitimacy of our news operation and the types of stories we tell. If you’d like to pitch me a story idea outside of the comments section, send an email to editor@mustangnews.net. We’re always looking for story ideas, so I’m happy to talk.
Best,
Jacob
Editor-in-chief
Mustang News
Please, please do us all a favor Jacob and quit your job.
lol why?
Again Jacob, stop trying to appease to the reader and admit that the MN in an overall sense is ANTI GREEK. He isn’t questioning the legitimacy of the organization, but rather your outright biases.
We know of 2 sexual assaults that the school is covering up. Where’s the story on that, Mustang News? As a news organization, you have rights to that information and a duty to your campus to report what’s going on. Let’s cut it out with the fluff, and report the real facts. Take some risks, guys. This campus needs to be called out on what it’s doing wrong. Our campus journalism really disappoints me; there are so many things happening all of the time that would shock and anger the students of Cal Poly, and you guys always take the safe route. I have a feeling you guys would get a lot more readers if you dug a little deeper…. You’re no better than our school’s corrupt administration if you continue to cover up their lies.
Hi Bee,
Thanks for the feedback. If you have any more tips or suggestions on the types of stories we should cover, I’m happy to talk outside of the anonymous comments section. Send me an email at editor@mustangnews.net. I’d love to chat.
Best,
Jacob
Editor-in-chief
Mustang News
typical PR response to a hot question.