A Rolling Stone Gathers No Evidence

The retraction of an era, almost on the same level of CBS’s Dan Rather, came from Rolling Stone Magazine in the past week. The original article, titled “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA,” published in a November issue and alleged that a female student identified only by the pseudonym “Jackie” had been raped at a fraternity party as part of the pledge initiation ritual at the University of Virginia. In an email to the article’s writer, Jackie wanted to “share her story.” So the author of the article, Sabrina Erdely, penned the account of the alleged gang rape in graphic detail, a horrifically specific picture of seven men attacking Jackie, including students she recognized. The University of Virginia was painted as uncaring and callous towards Jackie and it’s Greek Life painted as seedy and elitist. 

    The media, public, and University, reacted in the way anyone would expect. Protests were formed, the social practices of all Greek organizations on UVA’s campus were suspended, and the media condemned the entire practice of Greek life  as archaic and dark.

     Then, the story began to unravel at the seams. 

    After it began to draw such heavy media attention, questions began to surface about the fact checking process the story underwent. It was then discovered that there was no smoking gun. Erdely did not attempt to contact the men accused of the crime. With a level of accusation like this, every journalist worth their salt will tell you that there should be no end to your attempt to get a hold of the accused; at least at the very end you can say that they refused to comment, but you must give them the chance to do so. There was also no culprit. He never existed. The man identified by the pseudonym “Drew”, the one who was the supposed ringleader, was electronically introduced to Jackie’s friends as Havan Monahan. No one by that name ever attended the University of Virginia and the photo Jackie showed her friends was one of a high school classmate. The numbers stopped adding up as more and more discrepancies began to pile onto Jackie’s story. So, Rolling Stone asked the dean from the Colombia School of Journalism to do an investigation into the article. Rolling Stone officially retracted the article on Monday.

    Here’s why that retraction really doesn’t matter that much. The phrase ’too little, too late’ comes to mind. A really quick way to ruin a man’s life is to cry rape; this was done by a national publication to an entire national fraternity with over 100 chapters. Some legitimate rapes go ignored because they lack the bright, burning appeal of someone to attack. Greek letters and the Greek lifestyle provided that scapegoat. 

    A supposedly elitist society with bigots and an old southern system clad in vineyard vines and Sperry’s, Greek society has taken a shift in recent years far away from the old ‘Toga, Toga’ of the Animal House days; yet, people are still afraid of it because people involved in Greek life stumble and fall. In the recent weeks, there have been some big, stupid things done by Greek Students like the SAE chapter with their racist chant. However, that situation was handled appropriately and they’ve been severed by their nationals, several of their members have been terminated, and their house was taken from them. Despite these discrepancies, overall the whole system does pretty well considering the expansive reach of Greek  Life in the United States. All but three U.S. Presidents were at one point frat boys and there are nine million greek students nation-wide today  (all this according to USA Today). 

    Greek students are typically held to a higher standard than their independent classmates,  even if people don’t see it. On top of different activities that they are already involved in, as well as the classes they take and maintaining a high grade point average, Greek life adds philanthropy requirements, academic requirements, as well as outreach activities. Greek life just gets cast in a negative light because it is a large, easy target made up of college kids who screw up every day. And while rape is not an innocent screw up, it’s a seemingly becoming a more and more serious problem on college campuses. 

    Incidents like this illegitimate rape charge not only hurt those involved and actual victims of rape as a whole who will now be even more afraid to come forward, but also thousands of Greeks who come under suspicion as a result of the UVA allegations. 

    Retracting the rape allegations comes too little, too late, but thanks for the attempt, Rolling Stone. When another epic case of journalistic malpractice hits the limelight, I’m sure you’ll be off the hook for a while but every time a Greek organization gets penned into the media through an article heavy with allegations, this will be dragged through the mud as a “remember when” moment. 

    The Greek system as a whole was tainted by this article, not just the reputation of potentially hundreds of men wearing the Phi Kappa Psi letters. Instead of a real court, which this case would never have seen anyway, people were tried in the court of public opinion; no judge and no defense attorney, this is where people are thrown to the social media wolves. Between protesters with picket signs and others armed with rocks, people think they are doing the right thing, punishing people that the real system either hasn’t yet or won’t, acting as their own arm of the law they believe has failed them. And with incidents like this, it was the system of real accountability that was damaged and it’s going to take more than just a retraction to fix that. 

Images Courtesy of rollingstone.com