Cornell University is suspending parties and other social events at fraternity houses for the rest of the academic year and will give the New York State Police a role in investigating sex crimes on campus, university officials announced Tuesday, amid mounting outrage over its handling of allegations that a female student was sexually assaulted at a fraternity house in 2024.

The measures announced by Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff include a suspension of all parties and social events at Interfraternity Council houses through the end of the 2026-27 academic year and a new “zero tolerance” policy for violations that would result in the immediate emergency suspension of a chapter.

“These measures will provide time for a thorough review of fraternity life at Cornell to determine whether and how it can safely continue,” Kotlikoff wrote in a letter to the campus community.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 17 points 20 hours ago (4 children)

Friend mentioned that when a similar thing happened at his University, the frats just had "gatherings" instead of "parties" and that was ok with the administration.... (probably decades ago, so a slightly different environment)

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • One of the fraternities at my first college got kicked off campus because the frat brothers beat up a pledge and kicked him down the basement stairs where he broke his neck and died. His corpse wasn't discovered until late the next day after a campus-wide search. No criminal charges resulted because the police couldn't determine who had actually done it. The frat just moved to an off-campus house where their parties became even more popular because of the complete lack of oversight.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 10 points 17 hours ago

    It's not different. You're not going to stop college kids from partying. They'll just go to an unaffiliated house and continue.

    I know Cornell wants to be seen as doing something, but this is actually counterproductive. It pushes the parties underground, where there's less safety and oversight.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 7 points 16 hours ago

    Had a similar thing in the early 2000’s - an on campus frat got in trouble for serving minors and was forced to not have any parties for the next year. Basically just meant that they couldn’t have big weekend parties or anything really big with invitations on campus. They could still have folks over during the week and the quarterly parties were just at off campus venues

  • source
  • parent