Earlier this week, Sigma Phi Epsilon at the University of Vermont was suspended after new members responded to a fifteen question document. A questionnaire sounds harmless enough, right? Wrong. One of the questions was, “If you could rape someone, who would it be?”. Students at UVM held a rally on Thursday about the incident, and the suspension comes after over 3,200 students signed a petition requesting action against the fraternity. Sigma Phi Epsilon’s headquarters say that this is an isolated incident and it does not reflect the views of the fraternity, they did take action and are conducting an investigation.

This situation is reminiscent of the Yale Delta Kappa Epsilon scandal of October 2010 where members were led around campus chanting “No means yes, yes means anal.” Yale announced in May that they were suspending the chapter, but the scandal also resulted in the creation of the Marshall Committee and the subsequent banning of Yale Sex Week. While the UVM scandal has sparked conversations at UVM that “speak out against rape culture (evidently actively fostered by this UVM fraternity)” it’s also sparked a lot of conversations in support of the fraternity. Even though it appears the incident was isolated between a few individuals, it doesn’t change the fact that it encouraged rape. Read More »

As summer bleeds into autumn, and the school- work comes piling in, we are rapidly approaching Halloween – the first excuse to throw a huge party since Welcome Week.

Sure, Halloween might be, as Cady Heron puts it, “the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it,” but it’s also the basis for urban legends on college campuses across the country.

You might have outgrown ghost stories in high school, but many college students seriously believe the legends and lore that shroud their school, and swear that they have experienced a haunting somewhere on campus.

Hollow Hill, one of the internet’s oldest and most respected paranormal info centers, claims that college campuses are actually prime locations for hauntings and poltergeists. According to the site, “Poltergeist events most often occur when there is someone between ages eight and 25 nearby.” With tens of thousands of students falling into the 18-22 age bracket, this certainly fits the mold. Read More »