Tulane criticized for not investigating earlier PIKE complaints
EDITORIAL: Harder look at Pi Kappa Alpha
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Tulane University moved quickly to revoke the charter of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity after a hazing incident in April that left two pledges seriously injured and led to the arrest of 10 students this week. …
Colleges and universities cannot tolerate organizations that engage in such harmful activities. But unfortunately, Tulane didn’t respond with the same alacrity to an earlier complaint about Pike, as the fraternity is commonly called.
In 2006, Tulane’s student government group wrote a letter to the administration asking that it investigate the fraternity. The letter was prompted by complaints from several young women who said that they had been drugged and possibly raped at an annual Pike party called “Saturate.”
The fraternity did get into some trouble that year. Tulane officials said that Pike was found to be in violation of the Code of Student Conduct in 2006 and was subjected to sanctions, including temporary suspension.
But the university has acknowledged that it received the letter from the student government association after those events and did not answer it. “Apparently, there was no response from Tulane to this letter, which we regret,” the university said in a statement.
Tulane officials need to find out what went wrong in 2006 and make sure that no subsequent complaints were given similarly short shrift.
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