Katharine Quilty
Last weekend, an Illinois State University student told me in a frenzied rage that an ISU fraternity had been responsible for using rohypnol (roofies) on women at festival. This fraternity already has a reputation on the ISU campus for drugging unsuspecting women and is known to brag about using roofies on other students. According to greekrank.com, “they were raided by the DEA last year and are on probation,” but ISU isn’t reporting anything about this and the misogynistic frat is still home to a brotherhood of date rape enthusiasts.
If most students on the ISU campus have heard that the frat both has roofies and is not shy about distributing them, then surely so has the faculty. But, aside from possibly putting the house on probation, they have taken no action; the ISU administration appears to be following the tradition of giving boys a slap on the wrist for their blatant disregard for women’s autonomy. Boys will be boys, after all.
There need to be harsher punishments and stricter regulations that keep these boys from feeling like they can drug other students, and then brag about it. This isn’t a bunch of frat boys using drugs for themselves – this is an assault on women’s bodies. It’s also a crime that the administration is not working hard enough to stop these offenses. If the ISU faculty wants its students to be and feel safe while at school, then they need to find proof that the fraternity members have rohypnol and are using it on unknowing women, and they need to expel those students.
The fact that these students seem to feel so comfortable bragging about their disgusting behavior speaks to the effectiveness of ISU’s regulations on student misconduct. It also reflects the fact that our culture permits the assault of women and sometimes even applauds it as a display of masculinity. These boys would not be boasting about their crimes if other students acknowledged the severity of the act; they want the ego boost, but if our culture held women with more respect, this wouldn’t be giving it to them.
Of course, these are only explanations—drugging other peoples’ drinks is inexcusable regardless of faculty intervention or peer approval. Boys are not animals; spiking a person’s drink is always a choice you can decide not to make. The boys of this fraternity have made the choice to take away the safety of what could be a care-free environment. They are the reason that we cannot trust strangers and ISU is allowing their terrorization to continue.
Putting the fraternity on probation is not enough—shutting the fraternity down is not enough. Taking away their fraternity will not stop them from attacking other students. If they truly are drugging other people’s drinks, these boys are a danger to the rest of the campus and they do not deserve to be at a university.