I write about the Rolling Stone story in my Politico column today. Like Jonah, I strike a skeptical note about the story that frames the piece. I also finding it astonishing that, if the story is true, no one evidently went to the police:
Almost as shocking as the original incident is the fact that Jackie never reported it to the police. If Rolling Stone is to be believed, the UVA administration didn’t really encourage her to do so, and even as she was talking to the magazine for a report that would make national waves, she still hadn’t reported her tormentors to law enforcement.
Even considering her trauma and fragile psychological state, this is an extraordinary lapse. By her account, Phi Kappa Psi isn’t a fraternity so much as a criminal gang committed to sexual violence. At least nine members were directly involved in the alleged assault and surely, fraternity life being what it is, others knew about it and were complicit. If it was an initiation rite, as the story suggests, countless fraternity members have done the same over the years.
If all of this is true, Phi Kappa Psi doesn’t merely deserve to have its operations suspended, it should be razed and its memory erased from the earth. Current and past members should be hunted down and deposed. They should be encouraged to cooperate with authorities and turn on their brothers, until the entire criminal operation is unraveled and punished.
Rape is a crime and this Jed Rubenfeld piece is excellent on how perverse it is that the trend is for college campuses not to treat it as one.
I graduated from UVa, and a couple of other minor things jumped out at me in the Rolling Stone article. Maybe I ran in the wrong circles but I don’t remember “throngs of toned, tanned, and overwhelmingly blond students.” Maybe at Arizona State? Also, I don’t think it’s right to say “social status is paramount.” Yes, there are rich-kid fraternities, and ambitious students angle for a prestigious room on the Lawn, but they get it by doing things like editing the school paper or becoming student council president. Finally, it never occurred to me that the “red brick, white-columned buildings designed by founder Thomas Jefferson radiate old-money privilege.” I thought they always stood for a storied history and for excellence (Jefferson’s finances were always an embarrassment).
(What does ring true is the alcohol-soaked party scene, and for more on that general theme, read Heather Mac Donald’s typically powerful Weekly Standard cover story.)
The Rolling Stone article is feminist agitprop intended to paint UVa as a pure expression of white privilege, and therefore white-male criminality. Even if the central story is eventually debunked to the satisfaction of most observers, Rolling Stone will never admit error and its piece won’t soon be erased from the popular memory. It has done incalculable damage to the school, without the author knowing whether the story she relates as fact is true or not. That, to say the least, is not how journalism is supposed to work.