Fraternities Are Protested Across Country Amid Wave of Sexual Assault Allegations

Another wave of protests against fraternities are sweeping college campuses across the country.

At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, hundreds of fed-up students stormed a fraternity after an allegation that a sexual assault took place inside the house.

Violence erupted as vehicles were flipped and bottles thrown at two frat brothers.

Sophomores Anna Morel-Paletta and Ava Hawkes organized the outcry, but condemned the violence.

“We want suspension of all parties that are currently under investigation,” Hawkes said.

At Syracuse, tempers flared as students swarmed outside frat houses, denouncing what they called fraternity "rape culture.”

Demonstrators at the University of Kansas chanted and waved signs outside Phi Kappa Psi, following an allegation that a student was drugged and sexually assaulted inside the frat house.

And last month, at the University of Nebraska, multiple rallies took place outside a fraternity after a young woman reported she had been raped.

Now there are calls to abolish Greek life altogether, but Nicholas Syrett, author of “The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities,” says it's not so simple.

“I think that there are some fraternities that are very much trying to do what's right, and so I wouldn't want to punish them for the actions of other people. But this has been an ongoing concern going on for at least 100 years, so it’s clearly something in the culture of fraternities themselves,” Syrett said. 

The governing bodies of fraternities and sororities say there are roughly 750,000 members of college chapters — about 3% of the total college population.

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