Hello! We will be giving updates on our meetings with President Smith (!!!), the Provost, CAPS, and the athletics office.
We will be envisioning what our actions will look like for the rest of the year, thinking specifically about CAPS, the Title IX office, and resource allocation in general.
Come with big ideas and big dreams, there’s still a lot that can get done in these last few weeks! Looking forward to seeing everyone there 🙂
April 25th, 2019
Originally, the Coalition to End Fraternity Violence’s plan was to escalate our actions from Monday and Wednesday by taking our demands to Dean of Students, Jim Terhune.
Today, we found out Dean Terhune would not be able to meet with us, and was instead at a private meeting with other stakeholders at the Inn at Swarthmore. We went directly to our leaders, and entered the gathering of President Smith, Board Chairman Salem Shuchman, and Ed Rowe (the President’s Chief of Staff). Later in the meeting, Dean Terhune and Provost Willie-LeBreton joined.
We went to them to demand two things: first, immediate action to reduce harm in short term measures, and second, a commitment from each administrator to advocate for the termination of the leases and the banning of Delta Upsilon and Phi Psi from Swarthmore College. When asked if they would promise that much, they refused to directly answer either question.
The videos can be found here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
We shared our statement and read aloud the testimonies from the Tumblr and shared our own accounts of violence and College mishandling for over an hour. As the video shows, *they responded extremely defensively, with startling condescension and disregard, and refused to engage with any of our urgent concerns.* The College wants us to wait on processes we don’t trust for results we don’t have faith are coming. We told them we cannot wait as we and our peers face violence, harm, and exclusion.
When we demanded an answer to our original requests, Provost Willie-LeBreton requested to speak with members of the administration alone, so we waited at the Inn while they deliberated. Though we were cooperating and Director of Public Safety Mike Hill was present, a representative of the Inn threatened to call the police until we moved to the sidewalk outside.
After 90 minutes, the President, the Provost, and Dean Terhune came out to report back to us. The only thing they told us was that there would be no fraternity parties this weekend. This is not news to us, as Swat Team members have decided to stop working fraternity parties out of their own sense of moral obligation.
They refused to make any decisions regarding interim measures for protection (i.e. preventing fraternity parties for the rest of the year and relocating members currently living in the houses) and they refused to make a commitment to end the leases and ban the fraternities.
*Though this does not come as a surprise to the Coalition, we are yet again deeply disheartened to see our leaders respond to us with only blank faces and small concessions. We must continue to pressure the college to make the right decisions and to make them now.*
The Coalition to End Fraternity Violence is peacefully SITTING IN at Phi Psi Fraternity to protest the college’s inaction on the documented violence and exclusion of this space.
Within ten minutes of beginning our sit-in, Public Safety called the police. “WE HAVE NO PLANS TO LEAVE.”
Join us if you are able.
***20+ Swarthmore Students Risking Arrest***
Yesterday at 4 PM, we began a take-over of Phi Psi fraternity. Since then, 100+ students so far have sat in with us, and slept over. We are here to demand the college take both short-term and long-term measures to end decades of fraternity violence from, and at, both Swarthmore Delta Upsilon Fraternity and Swarthmore Phi Psi Fraternity. We have been demanding the termination of the fraternity leases, the removal of the student from the so-called “rape attic” in Phi Psi, and the banning of fraternity parties immediately. Yesterday, administrators came here and told us President Smith has decided to agree to ban fraternity activity for the rest of the semester. This enormous win will ensure a temporary end to the harm that so regularly occurs at fraternity parties. It is a testament to the power of massive student protest, all week, up to and including this sit-in. But it’s not enough.
Phi Psi members repeatedly called the police yesterday, on their fellow students who were peacefully protesting violence. They called the first time directly after President Smith sent an email notifying campus of her decision to suspend fraternity activity.
Right now, the police are expecting us to leave this space this morning. We have decided we cannot leave. 20+ students are risking arrest. The events yesterday have showed us how retaliatory, and continuously dangerous, the fraternities are. We cannot leave as a student still lives in the room members themselves call a “rape attic”. We cannot wait by as the College waits on bureaucracy to keep us safe from fraternity retaliation. We will be here indefinitely.
