Sexual assault a “predictable outcome” of liquor laden fraternity parties, scholar says

The explosive headlines stemming from a lawsuit and allegations of sexual assault at Cornell University fraternity party are prompting an examination of fraternity culture.

John Hechinger, deputy managing editor of Bloomberg News and author of True Gentlemen: The Broken Pledge of America’s Fraternities, joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to talk about the prevalence of alcohol fueling sexual assault and potential fraternity environment reforms. What follows in a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.

Arun Rath: John, of all the feelings this story seems to draw out for people, one thing we’re hearing a lot, as much as outrage and anger, is exhaustion. Because it feels like this never-ending cycle. Every few years, there’s a horrendous incident involving hazing or sexual assault, there’s supposedly a big reckoning about the frat culture and how this will never happen again. And then, within a few years or less, it happens again. As a person who’s researched social organizations like these and [who has] observed these turbulent moments for them, what first hit your mind when you heard about the latest sexual assault allegations at Cornell?

John Hechinger: What I found in the research is that there’s a background level of really appalling episodes of hazing and deadly drinking and sexual assault. And then every few years, something really captures the national attention and I think what happened at Cornell to really focus so much outrage is that you had tremendous specificity about a particular allegation of a gang rape, first of all. Then, you had this idea that law enforcement didn’t really investigate, and that it happened a couple of years ago, and many people are just hearing about it now. So you have the combination of this sort of fanning this kind of outrage. But I think you’ve identified something really important, is that these kinds of allegations are happening all the time.

In researching my book, I found that fraternity houses are dangerous places for young women. Women who go to fraternity parties run 1.5 times the risk of what researchers called incapacitated sexual assault, which is a sexual assault where you’ve been plied with liquor or drugs, as is alleged in the Cornell case. And sorority women, who are the most exposed to frat parties, run 3 times the risk of rape. So this is something that is well documented. And even Cornell did a survey in 2025, which found that more than half of women in sorority life had reported being sexually assaulted. And that compared to a bit less than a third for everyone else. So it’s clear that there’s a heightened risk there, and that this is something that people are experiencing all the time. And it’s also clear that there’s very rarely a reckoning. Many of these cases go without any kind of examination. In my book, for example, I looked at a large fraternity that had over 5 years, and there were reports of 15 sexual assaults at fraternity houses. And of those 15, there was a reckoning only at one, and that was actually a couple of guests at the house [who] were eventually criminally convicted, but the rest of them really kind of disappeared, and we don’t even really know what happened. And so I think all of this is kind of making people concerned and figuring that universities have to do something to address this problem.

Rath: I want to come back to the accountability side, but when it comes to sexual assault in situations like what was alleged at Cornell, again, you’ve written about this, why is it we are back here again, and what is it about fraternities that this keeps happening.

Hechinger: Well, in my book, I find that the research shows that it all comes down to the environment, the alcohol in fraternity life, and in some cases the drugs, but typically alcohol. On campuses, fraternity men and sorority women are the heaviest drinkers, and fraternity men control the social spaces and have the parties with a lot of hard alcohol and they set the stage for these kinds of parties that are often, you know, they’re unsupervised by adults. Even though underage drinking is illegal, the fraternities are essentially the bartenders for young people who aren’t really supposed to be drinking. They’re often in dark spaces with sexualized themes, which women come in and are not really treated perhaps not so much as people, but as objects. And you see this again and again and what the researchers basically described a situation where sexual assault is what they said was a predictable outcome and that’s why you see these statistics, that if you have an environment where people are being asked to drink until they can barely stand up, it’s an environment where not only is sexual assault likely to happen, but afterwards, it becomes very difficult for the police to come in and prosecute. And once again, we saw that in the Cornell case.

Rath: Let’s talk about the accountability side. You talked about the horrendous track record in young men being held accountable for essentially unprosecuted crimes. Talk about why that is the case and again, we’re keeping in mind that these are allegations and accusations in the Cornell case. Talk about, at least, the university’s response in that context.

Hechinger: Well, I think in general, sexual assault is rarely prosecuted and police have trouble and often don’t pursue it aggressively enough. But it’s really not just sexual assault. The other kinds of episodes that I looked at in the book involve the hazing of young recruits in what’s called the pledge process, which is kind of — it’s an institutionalized abuse of young people where people come into the campus, they’re away from home for the first time, and they desperately want to belong and the school says that hazing is not tolerated [and] even the fraternities themselves say that hazing is completely illegal and not tolerated and doesn’t happen. And then, as one young man I wrote about in the book, he finds himself, first he’s asked to do some embarrassing things that seem not that terrible, but then he finds himself in a dark basement with loud music, people throwing glasses at him. And later on, he’s submerged in a tub of ice on a winter day and later asked to drink until he nearly passes out. And that kind of drinking leads to a lot of fraternity deaths where people also aren’t held accountable, at least not criminally.

About five people a year on average have died in hazing episodes since 2020 and the vast majority are in fraternities. And what you’ll find is that there’s very rarely any criminal charges, in part because alcohol is involved. Juries, sometimes they say, well, the person participated in the drinking, even though later on they were barely conscious. And so it’s very hard to prosecute and so the laws aren’t that favorable. But also, the fraternities, often they close ranks and they don’t cooperate and we found this in many cases over the years, including a case at Cornell in 2011, where a young man lost his life after being zip-tied and basically forced to drink until he lost consciousness. And there was a criminal case, but in the end, the other men were acquitted. So it is a long-time problem.

Rath: Well, and this is, I think, what you’re talking about with a broken promise, right? That these are supposed to be institutions that build character and how is it with that culture? Because you understand this better than anybody, is hazing baked into it? And can you uncook that cake?

Hechinger: I think that’s the question that I really wanted to kind of explore in the book is [that] there are a lot of really positive attributes and values in fraternity life, they talk about them. That’s why I called the book True Gentlemen, that almost all fraternities have this image of this building a better man, integrity, honor. Every single fraternity has this. And if you go back into sort of the 19th century beginnings of fraternities, they kind of in many ways created the sort of vision of a college life where people aren’t just academics, they’re also leaders and they have extracurricular activities [and] career networks that kind of catapult them into leadership positions in Congress and heading corporations. And many of the men I talked to, and some of the research shows that it can be very helpful for that. But even from the beginning, there was this sort of dark element of out-of-control drinking. I found 19th century college presidents complaining about the same thing, that essentially riots on campus, people drinking, people menacing, sexually assaulting women, that there’s something about the sort of groupthink of fraternities that they feel that to kind of band them together as a group of men, they need to go through this, this crucible. Which also leads them to want to have a lot of secrecy and feel like if something bad happens, it’s hard to speak up because if they do, if they say that someone has drunk into excess or if a woman is sexually assaulted, they’re worried, rightly, that they’re going to be either criminally prosecuted or thrown off campus. So, it is kind of baked in this sort of positive aspect of fraternities and this dark, dark underbelly is kind of baked into fraternity culture.

Rath: John, with all of that, the evils that seem to be part of fraternity culture going back to over 100 years to their origins, and with these calls now for the abolishing of fraternities, how do you feel about that? Can fraternities exist without violence and these awful incidents?

Hechinger: I’m often asked about the idea of a fraternity ban, and it’s kind of a complicated question. First of all, in public universities, which are government agencies, they can’t really be banned. There are protections, constitutional protections, for freedom of association. And in private universities, it is possible, but only a handful of schools like Williams College did this, and they really started in the 1960s when fraternities weren’t as popular and weren’t as powerful. And they also were very thoughtful about coming up with social alternatives, kind of a residential college system so that they weren’t missed and that alumni didn’t — in the end, they complained, but they turned out very well for Williams. Nowadays, I would say that most schools depend so heavily on fraternities for housing at the big public universities where most people get their degrees, that they’re too entrenched to really be abolished. And most schools, they don’t talk about this so much [but] they market fraternity life because for all of these issues, they’re very popular. A quarter of a million men are members. And they feel that people want to go to colleges which have a vibrant social life. They want to have a place where they can drink and socialize. And so what you see is that colleges aren’t going to ban them. Even Cornell, under tremendous pressure, the farthest they are going is to ban parties just for this academic year. So, if all goes as it’s gone in the past, the parties probably will continue next year, and Cornell will continue to have fraternities. So in my mind, the question really isn’t whether they can exist or whether they’ll be banned. It’s really, they’re not going anywhere, so can they be regulated? Can they be made safer?

Rath: If you give them advice, what would you advise Cornell to do as the way forward, or other schools as well, to try to address this culture?

Hechinger: Well, the experts that I talked to kind of look at fraternities as a public health problem, and with a public health problem, you kind of look to change the environment. And what was effective, for instance, in reducing the rate of drunk driving was increasing the penalties and making it more difficult for underage people to drink. And the same thing could be said of fraternities. In the book, I looked at a major national fraternity that more than 20 years ago decided that they’d had some deaths and they were intolerable, and they banned alcohol in chapter houses and they saw that their dangerous episodes declined dramatically. And they feel they actually recruited a better quality of member who wasn’t really in it for the drinking. I mean, if you think about it, 75% of fraternity men are underage. They really shouldn’t be having parties with alcohol because it’s illegal. And if that’s the only reason that fraternities exist, then I think there’s a real question. And what this fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, found is that they could do this. And they’re the first to admit that it’s not perfect and people do tend to drink, but it’s not nearly as prevalent, and it’s a lot harder to hide if you have a blanket prohibition. So that’s one thing that can be done. And it helps when the schools, rather than have the campus police look the other way when there’s a big raucous party where people are obviously drinking underage, if they crack down, then that can be really helpful. I looked at the University of Rhode Island, which had a huge drinking, drug abuse, and party problem, and they had a president back in the '90s that did that. They just cracked down. When the fraternities moved off campus, they enlisted the help of local politicians and the police and enforced noise complaints, and their rate of alcohol-related hospitalizations went down. These are hard things to do and are unpopular with students, they’re unpopular with alumni, but it’s certainly possible, and these kinds of interventions seem to be what could work.

Rath: Finally, in the world as it is right now, if you were giving advice to a young man who, say they were going into their freshman year, and say ‘I’m not really much of a binge drinker, but I feel like I’m pursuing this major, I really need to be in a fraternity for various other reasons.’ What would be your advice?

Hechinger: It’s a difficult question because if you’re going to – say you’re going to a big public university where sometimes 40% of people belong to fraternities – if you don’t go, you’re making a real decision. And I think that there are chapters that are – some chapters are safer than others. There are chapters that don’t haze. I guess I would say, if you go in and you try to join a fraternity and they start asking you to do something that doesn’t seem right, I wouldn’t think that it’s going to get better. I think it’d probably get worse and get more dangerous. So you have to think about that. One change that schools have found to be very helpful is to defer recruitment, to not have recruitment freshman year, because freshman year is the most dangerous time for young men who don’t know their alcohol tolerance, and they could really run into trouble. So schools that, say, have recruitment spring semester or the following, even sophomore year, I think at that point people have developed friendships and realized that they don’t have to be desperate to join, that if they don’t join the fraternity, they can join other organizations that perhaps might treat them better. And if they join a chapter, they’ll know that it’s a chapter that’s respectful and is safe. But it’s, you know, it’s a difficult – I talked to many, many men who had good experiences at fraternities that met their spouses who were members of sororities and got their first jobs. So it is a tough decision, but I think it’s a big one. But I think there are plenty of opportunities outside fraternities. If they walk into a school where Greek culture is dangerous, they should try to do something else.