swatfraternities-blog - Tumblr blog

[swatfraternities-blog]

As a Bryn Mawr student, I went to a party with some friends. I was separated from my group and a male student, a fraternity member, "took care" of me and continued to fill my drinking cup. The next morning, I woke up in a building I didn't recognize and next to that very the same student, whose name I couldn't remember. My clothes were on the floor and I was bleeding. It's taken me years of therapy to use the word assault to describe my experience, but that's what it was. The worst part was having to wait for hours to take the van back to Bryn Mawr while pretending that this never happened.  

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After O4S released their demands last spring, a fraternity member asked me "if a girl goes to a frat party and a guy is giving her a bunch of alcohol, what does she expect?" implying heavily throughout the rest of the conversation that she can expect he will want to have sex with her regardless of whether she wants to or not.

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I was a Swat Team worker my freshman year. I was told by my bosses that the fraternity brothers were not allowed to serve hard alcohol at parties, only beer and wine. During a shift at a party I witnessed brothers serving hard alcohol behind the bar, trying to hide it from me and other Swat Team personnel. I told them they had to stop or I would report it. They did not stop, but some started staring at me and asking me weird questions. I reported them to a supervisor for breaking rules, and when my supervisor came downstairs and asked me to clarify what had happened, brothers (standing behind him) gestured at me to indicate that I should not say anything. Later that night I witnessed students arguing and when I asked what happened, a Black student told me a white frat brother had used the n-word. Toward the end of the night, I asked a brother if anyone was in the closed-off back room, which was not allowed. He said no one was there. I was concerned, and when I went to check there was another brother lying on the couch, looking unwell. I asked him if he was okay and he said "no" and then threw up. I got my supervisor, who contacted pubsafe. He was not sent to the hospital. Pubsafe later asked me to come to Ben West and report on what I had seen.

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One experience that really stood out to me was the way in which the "swiping in" policy for non-Swat students can be really harmful if SWAT team isn't looking out for you. There was a time my freshman year when I left a party with my friend (a femme-identifying Swat student of color). I turned around, and she wasn't behind me. I naturally freaked out and started frantically searching for her and realized that I would need to go back into the frat house to look for her. When I ran up to the person working SWAT team he asked for my ID and my Swat host. I explained what was happening and that I was scared because I thought my friend was all alone in the party (we had been drinking that night)...and he basically said, that's too bad and didn't let me into the party. Mind you, I was taking a class with this man and so he knew who I was and didn't even offer to help me find her. After literally screaming at him to the point of tears, he finally talked to the other people working the party and they let me know. However, none of them offered to help me find my friend and I had to search the entire house alone. Thankfully, she reached out to me and told me she was safe and I went to meet up with her...but that situation could easily have gone south and I was in fight-or-flight mode all night. Especially as a survivor and a queer femme of color, my alarms are always ringing when I enter frat spaces so to even fathom the possibility that something could be happening to my friend was terrifying. I wish they had handled it differently.

[swatfraternities-blog]

I hope people realize the harm documented on this page is a tiny fraction of what goes on in fraternities. For every story I read here, I am reminded of three others that my friends have told me about or that I have witnessed.

[swatfraternities-blog]

When I was a sophomore, I was in [fraternity] talking to a sophomore member of [fraternity].  He then consensually kissed me, as this started happening, one of the senior [fraternity] members took the tap of the beer keg and sprayed it directly at me. My entire shirt was soaked through with beer and became see through. I was humiliated. I looked directly at him and he laughed; the guy that I was kissing did nothing and walked away.

[swatfraternities-blog]

My freshman year I drank so much I blacked out for several hours and did not remember leaving my dorm to go out. I do not remember a single moment of being in the fraternity or what happened afterwards. I walked over to [fraternity name] on a quiet night when several brothers and very few girls were just hanging out upstairs. It was pretty common my freshman year that my friends and I would hang out at the fraternities when there weren’t official parties. I stayed until I was the last girl and some of the brothers decided I was too drunk to be there. One of the brothers volunteered to walk me home to my dorm because I was so drunk they were worried I wouldn’t get home. The brother, who I did not know well, walked me back to my dorm and had sex with me. I don’t know how I was when he left me but when my friend came to check on me (I had texted several of my friends misspelled texts along the lines of “help me” and “come to my room”), I was half naked on my floor and covered in vomit. I had thrown up several times uncontrollably. My jeans were pulled down to my ankles. When my friend tried asking me what happened, I was very confused and kept asking my friend where I was when I was in my own dorm room. I had no idea there had been anyone else in my room. I only found all of this out the next day when the brother messaged me asking for something he had left in my room. When I realized we had sex, I asked him to admit he probably shouldn’t have had sex with me in the state I was in, he told me that I was “lucky a nice guy like him had walked me home and taken care of me” and that he had been drinking, too, so “I had come onto him and taken advantage of him.” This scared me and I was embarrassed I had been so drunk. So, I kept my mouth shut and asked him not to tell anyone we had sex. He told me if I told people about the incident he would tell all his friends we had sex that I initiated. He is still a current member of the [fraternity name].

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At the first party of my freshman year, I was dancing with someone who was a pledge. We began kissing consensually, when I felt someone slap my butt. When I looked up, I saw an upperclassman fraternity brother, who then high-fived the person I had been kissing. I was so disgusted that I just walked right out and never spoke to either of them again, despite having classes with one of them. I was sexually assaulted my senior year of high school and every time I set foot in the fraternity houses it reminds me of all the trauma I experienced. It was the first time I worked up the courage and confidence to kiss someone after my assault, and it was terrifying realizing that coming to a new environment didn't change anything. I'm glad I learned my lesson in a situation that didn't involve something worse, but it's a shame that any of it had to happen in the first place. But "boys will be boys," right? // I've been to the frats a total of four times in my college career. Every time I re-learn that the fraternities actively detract from the campus community. I haven't been to the fraternities once this year, and my social life is the best/happiest it's ever been.

[swatfraternities-blog]

As a black queer femme working in the frat through Swat Team I felt threatened and uncomfortable attempting to do my job. I have been shoved and shouted at by white men and women in fraternity houses trying to check people into parties, intervene in potentially harmful situations (which included a physical fight one night). I have way too many stories to count so I will only focus on a few. As a freshman, one member of [fraternity name] continuously bothered me at the back entrance that I was supposed to be guarding. He would repeatedly overstep my personal space and cornered me into the door while he spoke to me. He was significantly taller than me and would make sure his face was in mine. I cannot remember the full extent to what he was saying to me but I remember feeling unsafe and uncomfortable since he asked me personal questions and that he kept coming back to harass me. He kept telling me he was drunk and that he hoped I would accept his Facebook friend request. In the following months, he showed up at one of my games and would try to get my attention in public settings despite my discomfort. On a different night, a [fraternity member] member also repeatedly bothered me while I was working at the back entrance. One of his comments were "Do not let [fraternity name] in the back door. They are the other frat and they can't get access. They are those tall lacrosse boys. You probably think we all look the same" which I assumed he said because I am Black. I also remember asking many brothers in one of the houses to leave the bedroom of the top floor when it was several of them and only one woman. They all argued with me and yelled at me that it was fine because one of them was the woman's boyfriend. After a lot of arguing they made sure to let me know they were displeased with me but even as a freshman I knew about the violence that occurs in the upstairs bedroom. I definitely saw how non Black Swat Team members were treated much better from white party goers. I have heard members shout the f slur along to songs and the n word. The playlists at the frats are often popular Black male hip hop artists and a largely white and non Black party attendance gives way for drunk performative Black face. The way people dress, appropriate AAVE, attempt to dance and make fun of how they think Black people dance all adds to the mockery of a culture that African Americans created. They make it clear by shoving me, yelling at me, staring at me, or ignoring, or flat out harassing me throughout the night that I do not belong there and that I am not not deserving of human decency. The fraternities are a space of white entitlement and exclusion. I am not equating these experiences to the graphic sexual violence that happens inside the fraternities. As a survivor of CSA and someone who has experienced harm on campus outside of the frats that would not make sense to me. I am trying to explain how the frats inherently create a culture of exclusion, anti Blackness, and entitlement.

[swatfraternities-blog]

When I was a freshman, I went to one of the first fraternity parties of the year. I was drunk and started getting attention from an older fraternity member. As we were talking, someone who is now an advocate for people who have experienced sexual harm tried to get him away from me because they recognized the interaction as off (predatory?). That person's intervention didn't work, and I ended up having sex with the fraternity member in the basement of the fraternity house, also known as the "rape tunnel." I was bleeding afterwards I guess because of the gross circumstances and lack of reciprocity. I kept seeing him later because this type of interaction seemed "normal," and because he is genuinely one of the more progressive frat boys. To be fair, I personally don't consider this a sexual assault (it was consensual, I wasn't that drunk, he was kinda nice blah blah) but it is clear evidence of a pattern of sexual predation that greek institutions define themselves by. It also exposes a more subtle but equally insidious mentality perpetuated in these spaces; the "othering" and objectification of students that are not financially secure, cis/het White men. If you see someone as "other," it is easy to take what you want sexually and disregard the "other," bleeding body, or to be disgusted by the "other's" queerness or to feel racial hatred, or to throw that "other" body against a wall, or trash that "other" body's room.

[swatfraternities-blog]

While working for Swat Team prior to this year, a fraternity brother put his hand on my low back, then scanned up and down my baggy Swat Team shirt and jeans and asked "Hey there, do you have a boyfriend?". After I told him in no uncertain terms I was not interested, he pushed me away and angrily told me "well fuck you" as he walked out the door. I've never felt so safe being INSIDE one of the fraternities.

[swatfraternities-blog]

At a party at one of the frats, a male athlete (not a brother) was trying to set me up with his friend. I said i wasn't interested and tried to leave. He then followed me out of the frat and wouldn't leave me alone until I agreed to go back. Back at the frat, I danced with his friend, hoping this would be enough to get them to leave me alone. The friend then cornered me against a wall and started kissing and groping me. I tried to turn my face away and push him off of me, but he continued. No one intervened.

[swatfraternities-blog]

As part of Swatteam, I have been harassed and followed by frat brothers at the frat houses and outside frat house property during parties. As a female-identifying member of Swatteam, I often feel like I am not taken as seriously in my job as many of my male coworkers.

[swatfraternities-blog]

I've been reading these testimonies, and I don't want any frat boys to get the wrong idea. JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T ACTUALLY RAPED OR ASSAULTED SOMEONE DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE NOT CAUSING HARM.   Every time a survivor is courageous enough to speak their story, do you realize how many other people are reminded of and re-traumatized by their own experiences with sexual assault? Just the fact that the frats continue to exist on campus serves as a constant reminder of pain, guilt, frustration and despair for so many individuals. Yesterday when I started to read the frat documents, my thoughts instantly went to every frat brother I’ve ever hooked up with. I desperately tried to make sense of it all - praying to some higher power that my picture wasn’t one of the ones in there - that there wasn’t a video link of me grinding on a brother for them to watch at their leisure. These thoughts were all racing through my head as I entered my third panic attack of the day.  I have never been sexually assaulted in a frat.

[swatfraternities-blog]

As part of Swatteam, I have been harassed and followed by frat brothers at the frat houses and outside frat house property during parties. As a female-identifying member of Swatteam, I often feel like I am not taken as seriously in my job as many of my male coworkers.

[swatfraternities-blog]

I was assaulted my freshmen spring by someone I met in a fraternity. He is not a member, but he still frequents the parties. My assault took place later in his room, but the fraternity facilitated a space in which he could prey on young women. I don't remember him asking if he could touch me when we started dancing, and that didn't bother me at the time because that kind of behavior has been normalized in the fraternities. I told him I was a freshmen, and he smiled and replied that he could tell.

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Fraternity member said of O4S member, "She's just been rejected by too many of us. She just wants dick and that's why she's mad."