[ot-caption title=”Students participating in rush pass by the Phi Kappa Psi house at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2015. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)” url=”https://pcpawprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Fraternity-Rolling-Stone-1.jpg”]

On November 19, 2014, Rolling Stone magazine published a story titled “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA.” This article shines the spotlight on a rising junior from the University of Virginia under the pseudonym “Jackie.” “Jackie” claimed that she was raped by seven boys while at a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity party in September of 2012. A boy who worked as a lifeguard at the university’s aquatic center was the one who supposedly invited her to this party and then later on “coached the seven boys through raping her.”

Upon release of this article, there were multiple protests as well as vandalism of the Phi Kappa Psi house itself. The vandals sent an anonymous letter to various news organizations saying this:

“We applaud the bravery of those who have shared their stories, and we promise that their bravery will not be in vain,” the letter read. “This situation is just beginning. We will escalate and we will provoke until justice is achieved for the countless victims of rampant sexual violence at this University and around the nation.”

The letter included four demands:

• “An immediate revision of University policy mandating expulsion as the only sanction for rape and sexual assault.”
• “The immediate suspension of UVA’s Phi Kappa Psi chapter, and a thorough review of the entire fraternity system.”
• “A thorough overhaul of the University’s Sexual Misconduct Board and the resignation of Dean Nicole Eramo.”
• “The immediate implementation of harm reduction policies at fraternity parties, such as policing, University supervision, or permission for parties to be held in safer environments such as sorority houses.”

In a statement that was released on November 20, 2014, the Phi Kappa Psi chapter voluntarily said that they would suspend themselves from all activities .

Soon after publication, the author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, and the rest of the Rolling Stone’s staff realized that they may have not gotten all of their facts correct before publishing the story. Erdely tried to get some more facts out of Jackie, in particular about the lifeguard who brought her to the party in the first place. However, Jackie had never said the name of the lifeguard before, but after telling Jackie that this would not be published, Jackie gave her a name. Strangely enough, Jackie had problems spelling the lifeguard’s last name. “An alarm bell went off in my head,” Erdely said. She realized that maybe Jackie’s allegations may not be in fact completely true.

After four months of investigation, post Rolling Stone retracting the story, the Columbia School of Journalism released an external review to try and understand how Rolling Stone came to release an article this slanderous. Within this article, it talks about how Erdely found her source as well as how the facts failed to be checked completely.

On March 23, 2015, the Charlottesville, Virginia PD held a press conference which countered every allegation made by the victim of the “rape.” They said that Jackie was not cooperative with the police and did not provide them with a statement. Additionally, they said that there is no evidence that there was a gang rape that took place, or that there was even a frat party the night that Jackie claimed the rape happened.

On April 6, 2015, CNN told the world that the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity is going to move forward in a lawsuit against Rolling Stone magazine for their article that was published. The fraternity said in a statement to CNN that “After 130 days of living under a cloud of suspicion as a result of reckless reporting by Rolling Stone magazine, today the Virginia Alpha Charter of Phi Kappa Psi announced plans to pursue all available legal action against the magazine.”

Sources: Huffington Post, New York Times, Mediaite.com, CNN, Rolling Stone, Washington Post, The Cavalier Daily