Yale Bans Fraternity for Rape Chants

"A prestigious Yale fraternity is being banned from recruiting and holding activities on campus for five years after pledges were ordered to chant obscenities against women.

Yale says it has also disciplined several Delta Kappa Epsilon members and asked the fraternity's national office to suspend the chapter for five years.

The fraternity, which was founded at Yale in 1855, came under fire in October after pledges marched through campus and chanted phrases about sex acts including necrophilia. Chapter leaders later apologized, and the fraternity's national office in Ann Arbor, Mich., ordered them to stop all pledge activities.

Yale says the discipline was necessary to ensure "an educational environment free from harassment and intimidation."

Doug Lanpher, executive director of international DKE office, said he was surprised and disappointed Yale made the announcement because he thought the negotiations were confidential. He said the fraternity had dealt with the matter internally by placing the chapter on probation, ceasing its pledging activities immediately and developing a new pledging process.

"We know it was in poor taste," Lanpher said of the incident. "We don't advocate what they said. We believe that the chapter's behavior has changed."

DKE's Yale chapter — which includes both President George W. Bush and his father, President George H.W. Bush, among its alumni — isn't the first fraternity at the Ivy League school to come under fire in recent years.

In 2008, the Zeta Psi chapter apologized after pictures surfaced on Facebook showing 12 pledges posing in front of the women's center with a sign that read, "We Love Yale Sluts."

The move against DKE comes as federal civil rights officials investigate complaints by Yale students that the Ivy League university has a sexually hostile environment and failed to adequately respond to sexual harassment concerns. The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights confirmed last month that it has begun an investigation at Yale." read more - via Associated Press