Greek community forms anti-sexual assault task force

Independent of the university-wide Sexual Misconduct Prevention Task Force, Tufts Inter-Greek Council (IGC) held its first Greek Life Anti-Sexual Assault Initiative Task Force meeting on Oct. 31, with a second meeting planned for Friday. 

Members from seven of the 17 Greek organizations at Tufts attended the meeting in which students began to draft a mission statement and letter of intent, which will outline new requirements for chapters to participate in trainings about how to identify and handle cases of sexual assault, according to IGC President Matt Roy.

While Tufts' fraternities and sororities are not required to participate in the group itself, each chapter will have to sign on to the letter of intent to complete certain educational workshops -- all of which members of the task force are still in the process of planning, Roy, a senior, added. Among them will likely be a training tailored to chapter presidents and other Greek organization leaders.

"If a member comes up to me and says, ‘This occurred,’ or, ‘I think this occurred’ or, ‘This occurred to me’ -- anything involving sexual assault -- I want to be as prepared and ready to engage with it right away, and be supportive and as much of a resource for my chapter as possible," Roy said.

In addition to including students affiliated with Greek organizations, Kasia Gawlas, IGC vice president of public relations and administration, said she plans to reach out to the Women’s Center, members of Action for Sexual Assault Prevention (ASAP) and the Consent Culture Network (CCN) -- two of the primary student organizations working on this issue -- as well as the newly hired Sexual Misconduct Prevention Specialist Alexandra Donovan and Sexual Misconduct Resource Specialist Nandi Bynoe (LA '09) to incorporate into Greek life the educational and training tools that they have used.

Sophomore Olivia Carle, a member of both ASAP and CCN, noted that IGC had not yet reached out to the leaders of either organization in any official capactiy at press time. 

Similar to the university-wide task force, the IGC task force plans to create working groups so that if individuals are interested in combating campus sexual assault in a particular way -- such as by training and education -- they will be able to focus on that goal, Roy said.

Gawlas, a senior and the Chi Omega recruitment chair, said she developed the idea for the task force while at a “Greek retreat” earlier this semester, where she said she was surprised by the support for the initiative. She added that she did not want to make the group a requirement for all Greek organizations at Tufts.

Nationwide, discussions of how to prevent campus sexual assault have centered around Greek organizations. According to a January 2007 study from theNational Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), members of fraternities are three times more likely to rape than other men on campus, and according to a 2013 NASPA report, sorority women are 74 percent more likely to be raped than other female students.

"Greek life and Greek cultures nationwide that make the news are very different from the Tufts campus, but when all the Tufts campus sees is us partying and us being social, how are they going to make that difference in their head?,” Roy asked. “We admit we need to be doing more precautionary things, and that’s why we’re starting it -- because we don’t want to be the nationwide problem.”

Roy and Gawlas both said they hope the task force will serve as a tool to increase awareness about campus sexual assault for students affiliated with Greek organizations.

“I think the baseline right now for what people know is so low,” Gawlas said. “At the very least, I want to -- in Greek life -- raise the bar of people who know what consent is, understand what a sexual assault situation looks like, and when someone comes and talks to you about it, I want people to know what is the best way to go about that.”