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UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux
Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,424 Views)
MikeZPU

Mason
Jul 20 2015, 05:48 AM
WHITE HOUSE....

I said before and the White House had zero interest in Serial Rapist/Serial Murderer preying on UVA students and others in the VA. area.

Another marker where they have keen interest in broadcasting and amplifying some - while totally ignoring other cases.
YES! Exactly! :toast:

Here you had a REAL and dangerous rapist preying on female college students
and brutally murdering them as well!

But I don't remember hearing a peep out of our President while that was going on.

Instead, they keep making high-profile cases out of false-rape accusations.

Our current administration is so screwed up!
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cks
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Well, and not much of a peep after the fact either.
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kbp

The administration seems to select the losing hand simply for the sake of stirring more conversation, knowing all the time nobody will challenge the Brilliant One.
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http://nypost.com/2015/07/21/rolling-stone-defends-rape-reporter-in-response-to-lawsuit/

Rolling Stone defends ‘rape’ reporter in response to lawsuit

By Keith J. Kelly

July 21, 2015 | 11:50pm

Rolling Stone defends ‘rape’ reporter in response to lawsuit

Rolling Stone has filed a lengthy response to the $7.5 million suit filed against the publication by University of Virginia Associate Dean of Students Nicolle Eramo.

Eramo claims the rolling Stone story, “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA,” portrays her as “the chief villain.”

The story about the rape couldn’t be confirmed and the magazine pulled it.

In its response, Rolling Stone said it did take efforts to investigate the student’s claims — and was, in fact, steered to the woman, called “Jackie” in the story, by the school.

The magazine defends Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the journalist who wrote the story.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/22/obama-administration-knew-of-rolling-stone-rape-st/?page=1

Obama administration knew of Rolling Stone rape story before publication

Pressure mounts for congressional probe
By Jeffrey Scott Shapiro - The Washington Times - Wednesday, July 22, 2015

The Obama administration disclosed Tuesday it first learned about Rolling Stone's ill-fated story on campus rape in Sept. 2014, about two months before it was published, when reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely called seeking information on the government's investigation of the University of Virginia's handling of sexual assaults.

The revelation from the Department of Education came the same day that a media watchdog group asked congressional oversight committees to start an investigation into what the administration may have known about the story before and after it was published and what it did to address the concerns raised in the article.

"The larger question we raise regards the role of public officials: Was this contrived, indeed fabricated story, part of an orchestrated power grab over U.S. universities by administration officials intent on using a major publication as a political weapon?" the Institute on Government and Media Integrity wrote in a letter to Rep. John Kline, Minnesota Republican and House Education and the Workforce Committee chairman, and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate education committee.

The request could open the door for Congress to obtain access to documents that have also been sought by news reporters but so far have not been released.

White House officials who talked to The Washington Times on Tuesday said the administration had virtually no involvement in the story except to arrange a short interview between an Education Department official and Rolling Stone, which was supposed to be limited to a broad discussion about Title IX investigations and the Office of Civil Rights ongoing inquiry into UVa.

"In response to the [Rolling Stone] reporter's inquiry, the press office arranged an interview with Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon for Sept. 24, 2014. The interview focused on what it means to be under Title IX compliance review by the OCR. That was our only participation in the reporting of the Rolling Stone story, other than some fact checking about Title IX investigations once the story was written and ready for print. We did not suggest any other people for the reporter to talk to, and she did not tell us who she had interviewed for her story," the department said in a statement to The Times.

Administration officials also clarified Tuesday the relationship between the White House and a UVa. rape victims' advocate who has emerged as an important figure in the telling of a now-discredited story about a purported gang rape at a fraternity house on the Charlottesville campus.

Emily Renda, a UVa. graduate and adviser to the university on sexual assault issues, first disclosed the story of a student named "Jackie" during congressional testimony in the summer of 2014. She then introduced the woman (and four others) to Ms. Erdely, who made the victim's account the primary focus of her article in Nov. 2014, according to court filings by the magazine.

Police have since concluded there is no evidence such an attack occurred, and the magazine has retracted that story in what has become an embarrassing journalism debacle for Rolling Stone.

Ms. Renda has been publicly identified in media stories as an adviser to the White House Task Force on campus sexual assaults and testified to Congress that she was consulting with the task force.

A White House spokeswomen clarified that point to The Times on Tuesday, explaining that they did not consider Ms. Renda an "adviser" or "consultant," but rather a "stakeholder" who was invited to several of the task force's events to "share [her] views."

"The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault is comprised of federal agencies. There are no nongovernmental individuals on the task force, and there were no formal outside advisers to the task force. The White House Office of Public Engagement and the Office of the Vice President, in the normal course of their outreach, have met with hundreds of stakeholders on sexual assault and related issues," a White House spokeswoman told The Times on the condition of anonymity.

She confirmed that Ms. Renda visited the White House on several occasions along with other "stakeholders."

White House entry logs show Ms. Renda visited the White House six times in 2014, the last time for a private group meeting of about 300 people with President Obama on Sept. 17, 2014.

Two days later, Ms. Erdely contacted the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) seeking information about the university's record of handling sexual assaults. The OCR's investigation of UVa. began in June 2011.

The Education Department official added that there was no relationship between Ms. Lhamon and Ms. Renda despite the two traveling in similar circles.

"Catherine [Lhamon] has never had one-on-one contact with Emily Renda, and they have only been in the same room a handful of times, including at a Feb. 2014 UVa. conference on sexual assault and a public congressional hearing on sexual assault. They have never corresponded by phone or email," the official said.

Ms. Renda confirmed that fact by telephone to The Times on Tuesday evening.

The institute that requested the congressional investigation was recently formed by a group of former journalists and lawyers concerned about the growing lack of independence between media outlets and the government and political figures they cover, according to spokesman George Landrith. It was inspired by the aftermath of the Rolling Stone debacle, he said.
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https://reason.com/blog/2015/07/22/blame-rolling-stone-not-the-white-house


Blame Rolling Stone, Not the White House Advisor Who Introduced Jackie
Magazine should take the blame, not Emily Renda.

Robby Soave|Jul. 22, 2015 11:33 am

Some media reports are making a big deal out of the fact that Emily Renda—a member of President Obama’s White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault —was the person who set up the initial, ill-fated meeting between Rolling Stone contributor Sabrina Rubin Erdely and false accuser Jackie.

IJ Review originally* chose the headline, “A Revealing New Fact Just Uncovered in Rolling Stone’s Gang Rape Article on the U. of Virginia,” and wrote:

Rolling Stone magazine has confirmed that a former University of Virginia sexual assault victim with ties to the Obama administration was responsible for connecting author Sabrina Rubin Erdely with the “Jackie,” the student who later became the subject of the magazine’s now-retracted story about gang rape.

That fact may or may not be revealing, but it certainly isn’t “new.” Indeed, it was already widely known. The Columbia Journalism Review’s major investigation of what went wrong with the UVA story notes—in its very first sentence, no less—that Renda introduced Erdely to Jackie. That report was published on April 5. The details of Renda’s involvement were known to many reporters who had closely examined the story even before then.

Those who wish to ascribe significance to Renda’s involvement can point to the fact that she is casually linked with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary of OCR and architect of the Title IX inquisition, attended the same White House meetings as Renda. But while federal intervention into the campus rape crisis has certainly ginned up hysteria and led many in the media to uncritically report distortions, it would be improper to hold up this specific connection between the White House, Renda, and Rolling Stone as evidence of some conspiracy.

The more interesting aspect of Renda’s involvement is that Rolling Stone’s lawyers are now citing her as evidence that UVA had faith in Jackie’s story. Renda was a recent graduate and employee of UVA, and the fact that she recommended Jackie to Erdely amounts to a tacit endorsement, Rolling Stone’s lawyers have claimed in response to Nicole Eramo’s lawsuit.

Eramo is a university employee as well—her suit contends the magazine recklessly, unfairly maligned her. In that sense, I can see why Rolling Stone would want to play up Renda’s role in the ordeal.

And yet, this argument is fundamentally weak. It wasn’t Renda’s job to fact-check Jackie’s story, it was Erdely’s. Even the most cursory verification effort would have exposed the lie; all Rolling Stone had to do was press Jackie harder for the names of her assailants. (Erdely eventually did this—after the story was already published—and indeed produced a name that revealed Jackie as a fabulist.)

Perhaps Renda can be accused of gullibility—for listening to such an incredible story, and believing it—but that’s all. And even that accusation is weak, since Jackie is known to have changed the details in subsequent retellings. The version she told Renda might have been more plausible than the one she eventually told Erdely.

Rolling Stone has every right to lay some of the blame for this debacle on Jackie. The rest belongs to the magazine’s writers and editors—not Renda.

*IJ Review corrected its headline after I pointed this out.
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http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6691

White House aware of Rolling Stone gang rape story prior to publication

Michigan Campus Correspondent
@mvbarillas
on Jul 24, 2015 at 12:17 PM EDT

According to the Times, Renda had previously been identified as a White House Task Force on campus sexual assaults adviser, a designation disputed by an anonymous White House official.

The Institute of Government and Media Integrity wrote a letter to Republican congressmen in response to revelations of the Obama Administration’s knowledge of the story and requested a congressional investigation.

The Obama Administration admitted Tuesday to knowing about reporter Sabrina Erdley’s now-infamous Rolling Stone University of Virginia (UVA) rape story months before publication and assisting her research.

As reported by the Washington Times, White House officials said their involvement was limited to coordinating an informational interview to provide Rolling Stone with background on UVA sexual assault investigations and that the Department of Education said they knew about the story beginning in September 2014.

“The larger question we raise regards the role of public officials: Was this contrived, indeed fabricated story, part of an orchestrated power grab over U.S. universities by administration officials intent on using a major publication as a political weapon?” Tweet This

“In response to the [Rolling Stone] reporter’s inquiry, the press office arranged an interview with Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon for Sept. 24, 2014...We did not suggest any other people for the reporter to talk to, and she did not tell us who she had interviewed for her story,” a department official told the Times.

‘A Rape on Campus,’ which detailed the horrific assault of “Jackie” at a fraternity house at UVA, was officially retracted by Rolling Stone and deleted from their website. A Columbia University investigation concluded the magazine failed to fully investigate and substantiate the allegations after setting aside “basic practices of reporting.”

The Times reported that Emily Renda, a UVA advisor on sexual assault issues, had previously spoken of the alleged sexual assault of “Jackie” during congressional testimony and subsequently introduced the student to Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Erdley.

According to the Times, Renda had previously been identified as a White House Task Force on campus sexual assaults adviser, a designation disputed by an anonymous White House official.

“There are no nongovernmental individuals on the task force, and there were no formal outside advisers to the task force. The White House Office of Public Engagement and the Office of the Vice President, in the normal course of their outreach, have met with hundreds of stakeholders on sexual assault and related issues,” said the spokesperson.

The White House denied any relationship between Renda and Lhamon, despite having attended some of the same events focused on sexual assault.

The Institute of Government and Media Integrity wrote a letter to Republican congressmen in response to revelations of the Obama Administration’s knowledge of the story and requested a congressional investigation.

“The larger question we raise regards the role of public officials: Was this contrived, indeed fabricated story, part of an orchestrated power grab over U.S. universities by administration officials intent on using a major publication as a political weapon?” reads the letter.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @mvbarillas
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Quasimodo

Quote:
 
“The larger question we raise regards the role of public officials: Was this contrived, indeed fabricated story, part of an orchestrated power grab over U.S. universities by administration officials intent on using a major publication as a political weapon?” reads the letter.


To what extent, if any, did the federal government help protect Durham, Durham city government, NC politicians, and Duke,
from an investigation into the facts behind the faux lacrosse prosecution?



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http://townhall.com/columnists/peterroff/2015/07/28/the-story-that-wouldnt-die-rape-the-white-house-and-rolling-stone-n2031132
The Story that Wouldn’t Die: Rape, the White House and Rolling Stone
Peter Roff
7/28/2015 12:01:00 AM - Peter Roff

Congress needs to take a look at the UVA/Rolling Stone fake gang rape scandal. Not because of anything the magazine did, which is anyway protected by the Constitution’s first amendment, but to determine to what extent the Obama Administration had its fingers in what turned out to be a very messy pie.

Recall that for some time before the story broke officials within the Obama administration were pushing a narrative that America’s colleges and universities were hotbeds of sexual assault, unsafe for young men and women and in need therefore of greater scrutiny by the federal government.

Most people accepted this at face value. After all, it’s about the children and anyway who wouldn’t want their sons and daughters to live in a rape free environment? Then, right in the middle of it all, dropped the Rolling Stone story about as gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity party that went uninvestigated and, to be candid, unavenged.

Other media outlets picked it up. Feminists foamed at the mouth with outrage. Education professionals decried the expose as being just the tip of the iceberg. Nervous mothers emailed the story to their daughters. It dominated the conversation on television and on various social media platforms. Pastors spoke out about it from the pulpit as an example of how degenerate society had become. Everyone was up in arms, demanding something be done.

The one problem with the story, the one small thing everyone missed, is that it wasn’t true. The woman telling the tale to Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely made it up and Erdely – who seemed to have been looking for a story to dramatize what she already believed was happening – took her at face value.

The story’s been retracted and the noise has subsided but questions still remain. The Columbia Journalism Review analysis of the events involved (now cited as the definitive account of what transpired) seems only to scratch the surface. Who said what to whom, and why, is a tale still waiting – and needing – to be told.

When Jason Blair was exposed as a fabulist he lost his prestigious position at The New York Times and ultimately took several senior editors down with him. Janet Cooke’s Jimmy’s World story about a young heroin addict won The Washington Post a Pulitzer Prize it had to return and tarnished forever the reputations of some of the biggest, best known names in American journalism. Stephen Glass’s career as an up-and-coming liberal writer on The New Republic was shattered when it was proven that he was a fabricator of events he related in print.

The idea that reporters make things up is, sadly enough, not new. Walter Duranty told lies about the Soviet Union that won The New York Times a Pulitzer in the early part of the last century it has still not returned. Over at NBC multi-million dollar anchorman Brian Williams was relegated to a less important job on a less important network. MSNBC, because of lies he told about himself. The media industry has little tolerance for lies when they are uncovered yet no one involved in the reporting, editing, and publishing of the original Rolling Stone story was fired or resigned. Call it a tell-tale sign something nefarious might be going on. In fact the only real damage to the magazine may come as a result of the multi-million dollar defamation suit filed May 12 by the UVA associate dean of students who was held up to ridicule in the original story. Nicole Eramo asserts the article portrays her indifferent to allegations of sexual assault on campus, callous, and made her out as the “chief villain” in an incendiary and ultimately completely retracted piece.

All this, unfortunately, may tie back into the Obama administration’s pursuit of what it likes to say is a safer environment on the nation’s college and university campuses. The Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross produced a remarkable expose that tied the alleged victim in the original story to the woman who reported it to a UVA staffer, Emily Renda, who says she is a sexual assault survivor and works with on-campus victims to the assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education, Catherine Lhamon who was her agency’s “designee to the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault which Obama created on Jan. 22, 2014,” serving alongside Renda.

These connections, while not proof of anything are still enough to raise questions, questions that are now being raised everywhere from the Washington Times to The Hollywood Reporter. Certainly the Obama administration’s campus safety initiative created a climate in which reporters may have felt led to look into the issue. What if, rather than being led, Erdely was essentially pushed by Renda and Lhamon – as now appears may have been the case -- onto the trail of story that was dramatic, heartbreaking, and proved anecdotally every point the folks in the White House pushing the new policy wanted to make?

Think back to the earliest days of the Obama presidency when then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel talked about the importance of never letting a crisis go to waste. With that in mind, and with the way this particular administration has lurched from crisis to crisis as it formulates policy objectives, one cannot help but wonder if senior officials inside the administration have taken it to be their job to invent crises (or inflame little ones into big ones) so that the people will demand something be done.

There’s certainly enough anecdotal evidence to warrant an inquiry and, since most of the big name newspapers and television networks seem unwilling to take up the mantle, then Congress will have to do it. The Department of Education continues to stonewall, answering FOIA requests on the matter from media outlets in a less than candid way. The only new developments have come as a result of the lawsuit filed against Rolling Stone – and that all stops if a settlement is reached.

The search for the story behind the story is what’s important. The Institute on Government and Media Integrity is asking Capitol Hill lawmakers to open an investigation, something that is entirely appropriate. They’re not crossing any first amendment boundaries. They want congressional investigators to examine records of calls and conversations by Lhamon in order to determine whether federal officials were, as it now appears to have been the case, part of an orchestrated attempt to discredit two University of Virginia college deans and an entire university.

This is not about education policy or the first amendment. There is in fact a case to be made that colleges and universities are in fact ill-equipped to handle most crimes on campus, including sexual assaults. Salting the media with a phony story to make the case, and by people working for the American taxpayer, is not, however, the way to make it.
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Quasimodo

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The one problem with the story, the one small thing everyone missed, is that it wasn’t true.


I can think of another case in which that applies...

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Joan Foster

The "friends" are now suing too:

http://m.nationallawjournal.com/module/alm/app/nlj.do
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Quasimodo

Joan Foster
Jul 29 2015, 05:53 PM
Quote:
 
Three former University of Virginia students filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday against Rolling Stone and reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely over Erdely's article, "A Rape on Campus." The magazine retracted the article in April after questions arose about the reporting. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.


A better district that the Fourth (which is where the UVa is).

They may follow a smarter strategy; and if so, I wonder if that would be in part because they saw what happened to the Duke suits?

(pure speculation)
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MikeZPU

Joan Foster
Jul 29 2015, 05:53 PM
Happy to hear this news!

The friends should sue too.

They were portrayed as totally self-absorbed and totally
heartless to their friend, more worried about their social
status on campus than their friend who had just been gang raped.

The whole story was so transparently BS.

Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Rolling Stone are total wackos
if they truly believed the crap that Jackie was dishing out.

You could say that they were blinded by their ideology.
But I seriously have to doubt their mental capacity if
they couldn't detect that Jackie was dishing up a load of crap.
Edited by MikeZPU, Jul 29 2015, 08:29 PM.
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Joan Foster

Corrrection...its three members of the accused fraternity.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/29/media/rolling-stone-uva-frat-lawsuit/index.html
Edited by Joan Foster, Jul 29 2015, 08:20 PM.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/07/29/phi-kappa-psi-fraternity-members-sue-rolling-stone-over-retracted-u-va-rape-story/?postshare=4491438220023894

Phi Kappa Psi fraternity members sue Rolling Stone over retracted U-Va. rape story
T Rees Shapiro
7/29/15

Three Phi Kappa Psi fraternity brothers are suing Rolling Stone magazine in New York federal court for defamation, alleging that a now-retracted December 2014 article on rape at the University of Virginia identified them as taking part in a vicious gang rape.

The three U-Va., graduates, George Elias IV, Stephen Hadford and Ross Fowler, filed the lawsuit in New York federal court Wednesday against Rolling Stone and Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the journalist who wrote the 9,000-word account, which alleged a gang rape at the Phi Psi fraternity house during a party. The article was retracted in April after a Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism review concluded that it was deeply flawed.

“As young men who have dedicated their lives to obtaining the merits to attend UVA, maintaining good grades and obtaining undergraduate degrees, while also becoming involved in UVA activities, pledging a fraternity and finding lifelong brothers and friends, Plaintiffs have been embarrassed to admit that they are members of Phi Kappa Psi as a result of the article and its accusations,” according to the filing entered in U.S. District Court in New York.

The three fraternity brothers are requesting a trial by jury and seek more than $75,000 for “mental anguish and severe emotional distress,” caused by the article and its aftermath.

The lawsuit (read the entire document below) centers on Erdely’s reporting of a brutal sexual assault that had allegedly occurred inside the U-Va. Phi Psi house in Sept. 2012. The story led with a detailed description of a fraternity party inside the house that devolved into a ritualized rape for new members of the fraternity. The main character, a U-Va. junior named Jackie, claimed that seven Phi Psi members took turns raping her in a second floor bedroom while two older fraternity brothers watched.

[Editor who oversaw Rolling State U-Va. rape story to step down]

According to the lawsuit, Elias lived in a second floor bedroom of the fraternity at the time of the alleged attack, which led members of the U-Va. community to intuit his involvement in the crime.

Several members of the fraternity told The Washington Post that they were deeply affected by the story but knew it was false almost immediately after it was published.

[U-Va. Phi Kappa Psi members speak about impact of discredited gang rape allegations]

In an interview with the Washington Post in January, Elias. who works for a Washington-area construction firm, said that he treasures his years at Phi Psi but that after the Rolling Stone article published, he found himself doubting the people he knew best. As the fraternity was vilified, Elias said, he hesitated to admit to co-workers that he was a member.

“The day it came out was the most emotionally grueling of my life,” Elias told The Post, adding that the alleged ritual gang rape hit the hardest. “It assumes that everyone that is part of the frat had to do that, and that hurt a lot of us.”

Though none of the alleged attackers were described by their real names in the Rolling Stone story, the three fraternity brothers allege in the lawsuit that they were harassed after the article’s publication and that details in the article led members of the public to begin identifying them as being involved in the assault.

A Charlottesville Police Department investigation concluded in March that there was no evidence that a sexual assault had occurred in the Phi Psi house as described in the Rolling Stone article.

This is the section of the Post story in January that included Elias:

George Elias, a 2013 graduate, said he took pride in the bonds he forged with the 16 other members of his Phi Psi pledge class. He arrived in Charlottesville in 2009, coming from the Philadelphia suburbs as the only senior in his 1,000-student graduating class to enroll at U-Va., and he joined Phi Psi after he was impressed by the brothers.

“I didn’t know anyone in the frat,” said Elias, 24. “They were very accepting of all kinds of people, and they didn’t judge you from your background.”

Elias treasures his years at Phi Psi, but when the Rolling Stone article was published, he found himself doubting the people he knew best. As the fraternity was vilified, Elias said, he hesitated to admit to co-workers that he was a member.

“The day it came out was the most emotionally grueling of my life,” said Elias, who works for a Washington-area construction firm.

He said that members of the fraternity began analyzing the article and quickly challenged troublesome assertions, including that the alleged gang rape was part of a hazing ritual at Phi Psi.

“That ritual part hit hard for everyone,” said Elias, who lived in the Phi Psi house his junior and senior years, including in fall 2012, when the attack was alleged to have occurred. “It assumes that everyone that is part of the frat had to do that, and that hurt a lot of us.”

T. Rees Shapiro is an education reporter.
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