Yale Frat SAE Banned For Violating Sexual Misconduct Policy

The Yale chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity has been banned from campus until 2016, reportedly for violating the school’s sexual misconduct policies, then impeding a university investigation into the frat’s actions. Nobody is saying just what the violation was, only that it involved a presentation that took place during an initiation ceremony in February 2014.

The Yale Daily News, the campus paper, reports that the ban was announced Friday: SAE won’t be able to hold any on-campus activities, communicate using the school email system or bulletin boards, or use the SAE name in “connection with the university.”

The Daily News says the ban was announced in a letter from Dean Jonathan Holloway to the students and faculty, and accompanied by a note from the fraternity chapter themselves:

According to the letter from the fraternity brothers, the complaint had involved a presentation made at a February 2014 initiation ceremony, which was found to have violated University sexual misconduct policy. In addition, the letter said, members of the fraternity were found to have impeded the resulting investigation. The letter listed the sanctions that were put in place, as well as steps the fraternity had taken following the investigation, such as meeting with the Dean of Student Affairs and Communication and Consent Educators, adjusting its new member initiation process and sending three of the fraternity’s officers to national leadership training this past fall.

The letter added, according to the Daily News, that “the presentation in question had not been supported by the fraternity, nor were members of the fraternity aware of its content before its delivery.”

SAE has previously been dubbed, a little breathlessly, “America’s deadliest frat” after nine people died between 2006 and 2014 in pledging-related activities. That probably has something to do with the sternness that the school is using in cracking down here. But it’s still unclear just what was so objectionable about the presentation that it resulted in SAE getting booted off campus. On their website, Yale notes that:

Much sexual misconduct includes nonconsensual sexual contact, but this is not a necessary component. For example, threatening speech that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to constitute sexual harassment will constitute sexual misconduct. Making photographs, video, or other visual or auditory recordings of a sexual nature of another person without consent constitutes sexual misconduct, even if the activity documented was consensual. Similarly, sharing such recordings or other sexually harassing electronic communications without consent is a form of sexual misconduct.