Wesleyan Fraternity DKE Files Lawsuit Over Being Forced to Go Co-Ed

The Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Wesleyan University announced Thursday that they’re filing a lawsuit against the school for forcing them to become co-educational. Wesleyan ruled in September that all campus fraternities must start admitting women; a press release from DKE accuses the school of “stamp[ing] out real diversity on campus in the name of political correctness.”

The press release from DKE says the fraternity, along with an alumni association and a campus literary club, will sue the school for “sexual discrimination, misrepresentation and deceptive practices” over the university’s mandate that the fraternities, as well as their residences, must be co-ed. (The literary club owns the property where the DKE house is located.) The September announcement said that in all campus Greek organizations, “women as well as men must be full members and well-represented in the body and leadership of the organization.”

The university originally announced that the transition would happen over the next three years, but DKE claims in their press release that they’ve been denied the right to re-rent the house they occupy for the 2015-2016 school year.

DKE says they’re being treated differently than other campus organizations:

According to the suit, the University’s “refus[al] to permit male fraternity brothers to reside in single-sex housing” flies in the face of “the University’s willingness to allow many other diverse groups to reside by choice with members of the same sex, ethnicity, national origin, religion, culture, sexual orientation, sexual identification and the like.”

For example, Wesleyan undergrads can opt to live in single sex housing in its residence halls, and upperclassmen are eligible to live within one of 31 Program Housing residences that “gives students the opportunity to live collectively in a house or hall, fraternity or society, based on shared hobbies, experiences, cultural interests and identities.” The diversity of self-selecting housing options includes the “Women of Color House” for “all who are committed to women of color on campus”, the “Open House,” described as a “safe space for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Queer, Questioning, Flexural, Asexual, Genderfuck, Polyamorous, Bondage/Disciple, Dominance/ Submission, Sadism/Masochism (LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM) communities”, the “Turath House” which “provides a space for Arab, Middle Eastern and Muslim students to articulate their views and affirm their culture and religion without fear of harassment and discrimination” and the “Light House” that provides an “open-minded Christian presence on campus.”

None of those houses, with the exception of single-sex dorms, actually make “no girls allowed” their hill to die on in quite the way DKE is doing—they’re all residences based around common ideals. The fraternity is seeking a temporary injunction in order to be allowed to exclude women from their house in the coming school year. You can read the full suit here.