We are the Sexual Assault Response Coalition (SARC), a student organization at Northeastern that advocates for and supports sexual violence survivors on campus through various initiatives and collaborations to ensure that NEU is a safe space for everyone, especially survivors. 

Recently, a survivor in Delta Phi Epsilon sorority reached out to us to share her story about a harmful experience involving sexual misconduct with a greek life organization. This survivor went directly to the fraternity, confident that they would hold their perpetrator accountable, and what resulted was a mishandling of an internal sexual misconduct investigation and case. 

While this survivor was brave enough to share her story with us, the sad truth is that she is not alone. This led to a discussion between SARC, the survivor, and other organizations about the harm that has been done through acts of sexual violence, perpetrated by individuals within the greek life community. We are therefore putting together an initiative to shift policy at Panhel, IFC, MGC, and NPHC (and/or at the organizational level) to encourage a culture shift and ensure that this specific harm never occurs again.

This petition is to express support for these two policy changes and two policy recommendations.

2 mandatory policy changes:

1. Ban all greek life organizations from holding internal sexual misconduct investigation, trial and cases 

• If an allegation of sexual misconduct gets brought to the attention of the organization, they must NOT investigate the situation internally: That includes taking statements from survivors and perpetrators, as well as organizing an internal hearing 
• Each time an allegation of sexual misconduct is presented to an organization, they must conduct a review of organizational practices to prevent further sexual misconduct
  • Organizations should do an internal look or bring in a third-party, trauma-informed expert to look at the policies and structures in place in order to reduce future harm and increase safety for members and non-members from sexual misconduct.
• Survivors should be encouraged by greek life organizations to take the issue to OUEC (Title IX) if they wish to seek consequences at Northeastern against their perpetrators
• Our expectation is that Panhel, IFC, MGC, and NPHC will put organizations that still perform these investigations on social probation, remove them from your council, and/or implement other punitive measures (such as fines)

2. In order to change the culture and pervasiveness of sexual violence in greek life, organizations must have mandatory sexual violence prevention and education trainings once a semester 

• Trainings could be from OUEC, SVRC at OPEN, or student orgs (such as SARC)
• Our expectation is that Panhel, IFC, MGC, and NPHC will put organizations that do not have sexual violence prevention and support trainings every semester on social probation, remove them from your council, and/or implement other punitive measures (such as fines)

2 policy recommendations: 

1. Create the position of Sexual Violence Prevention and Education Chair in order to institute these changes 

2. Place any individual with sexual misconduct allegations on probation pending any and all 3rd party investigative outcomes 

If you have any questions about this please reach out to us via email at sarcatnortheastern@gmail.com