ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath. At the University of Virginia, it's a new era for the school's fraternities. After Rolling Stone Magazine reported, then hedged on, a story of a gang-rape at a frat house, UVA administrators announced new rules for parties. From member station WVTF, Sandy Hausman reports.
SANDY HAUSMAN, BYLINE: Fraternities have endured their share of bad press - stories of hazing incidents that ended with injuries or death. And popular media have rarely been kind to the Greek scene. Here's the 1978 hit film "Animal House."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANIMAL HOUSE")
JOHN VERNON: (As Vernon Wormer) One more slip-up, one more mistake, and this fraternity of yours has had it.
HAUSMAN: That, of course, was comedy, but what's been going on at the University of Virginia is serious. Last semester, Rolling Stone Magazine put UVA at the epicenter of national concerns about sexual assault on campus. It offered a graphic description of how a young woman was plied with alcoholic punch and raped by seven men at Phi Kappa Psi. The magazine later admitted discrepancies in its story. And police cleared Phi Psi of wrongdoing. But UVA pressed ahead with reforming fraternity rules.
JALEN ROSS: None of this was ever about one case. It was about every case.
HAUSMAN: Speaking before registration for rush week, student council president Jalen Ross said sexual assault on campus is still a concern.
ROSS: This is a problem everywhere. But it hadn't really gotten, I think, the sort of attention that it deserved as the big part of our communities that it is.
HAUSMAN: So over the winter break, he and other student leaders came up with a series of recommendations for fraternities. The Inter-Fraternity Council, which represents 30 frats and about 1,700 members, argued against banning alcohol at fraternity functions. IFC president Tommy Reid.
TOMMY REID: If it's not a fraternity house, it's going to be in the parking lot behind the Taco Bell. If it's not there, it's going to be in the woods behind first-year dorms. Acceptance and management is a much more practical strategy and a much safer strategy than denial and shooting to eliminate.
HAUSMAN: Instead, fraternities agreed to serve beer in cans or bottles, to have wine poured in plain sight, to require mixed drinks be served by a licensed bartender and to ban trashcan punch - a mix of hard liquor with sweet, fruit-flavored drinks. Fraternity member Jack Carlin approves.
JACK CARLIN: You never know how much you're drinking with something like that. If it doesn't taste like there's alcohol in it, then I do think that's a good move.
HAUSMAN: The Inter-Fraternity Council also promised to have at least three brothers who are sober and lucid at its member parties, placing one at each spot where alcohol is served and another armed with a master key to every room at the stairs leading up to the sleeping areas. The University accepted those suggestions. And in an editorial, the New York Times praised them. But Julian Jackson, who heads the Pan-Hellenic Council, doesn't think they go far enough. His group represents eight small African-American fraternities and sororities who have written to the university's president asking for tough punishments in the event of a sexual assault or a hazing incident.
JULIAN JACKSON: Unfortunately, you have to make an example of somebody. But that's the route that you need to go when you have a history of, you know, fraternities and sororities operating with, really, impunity.
HAUSMAN: Mark Mann, a senior who dropped out of his fraternity before last year's scandal, doubts that houses where drinking has been a problem can effectively police themselves.
MARK MANN: It was very hard for students within the fraternity to actually kind of speak up against a lot of misogyny and a lot of destructive behavior, mostly revolved around drinking.
HAUSMAN: And two fraternities said they would not agree to the new rules since changes were prompted by a story that wasn't true. Faced with the prospect of missing out on rush, they relented. Meanwhile, rush has begun.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Hey guys, I can take whoever's next.
HAUSMAN: And despite the bad press, nearly 1,000 freshmen signed up - about the same number as last year. They'll spend the next two weeks visiting fraternities, deciding whether Greek life is for them and waiting for an invitation to join. For NPR News, I'm Sandy Hausman in Charlottesville, Virginia.