BERKELEY—University of California-Berkeley student leaders have suspended all social events for fraternities and sororities in response to sexual assault reports provided by UCPD, in an email and Facebook post released on Tuesday, October 18.
Inter-Fraternity Council President (IFC) Daniel Saedi and Panhellenic Council (PHC) President Divya Thomas sent an email to notify students and staff members of the suspension of all Greek life socials until proper evaluations could be made of the recent events, pertaining to the unrelated sexual assault allegations from two female students within two days. The claims will be reviewed on Saturday at the Joint Social and Risk Management Roundtable on October 22.
“While we realize that there is a Gameday on Friday, we have reached a point of inflection where the safety of our members and our community is now at risk more than ever…for the first time under our terms, we both do not feel comfortable allowing any of our members attend or host events given the current circumstances,” the email stated.
Specific Fraternities or details involved in the incidents have not been disclosed to the public. Though the assaults were reported to have occurred on off-campus fraternity premises, officials do not know if the victims were assaulted by UC Berkeley students or not based on the email sent from Thomas and Saedi.
The two assaults occurred within one day of each other. The first was reported on Friday, October 14 and the second on Saturday, October 15. According to UC Berkeley’s 2015 annual security report, there were 58 reports of rape or fondling found on campus, off campus, or in student housing. The full report can be found here.
Student leaders are hoping to eliminate sexual misconduct from campus and have encouraged communication between fraternity and sorority leaders to improve the environment, according to The Daily Californian. “At the same time, we recognize the immense courage it took for the survivors to report these crimes and will do everything in our power to respect their privacy and their wishes,” wrote Saedi in a Facebook post.
The UCPD has instructed all individuals with information on the incident(s) to contact the city of Berkeley Police Department at (510) 981-5900.
