At Brown, Alpha Epsilon Pi becomes Beta Rho Pi over dissatisfaction with treatment of non-Jews, sexual assault

On Nov. 3, 2015, near the end of a year in which rape on college campuses became a national conversation, the members of Brown University’s Alpha Epsilon Pi chapter voted to disaffiliate, in part due to the national fraternity’s handling of sexual assault education.

After the disaffiliation vote and expulsion from the international fraternity — there are no actual mechanisms for disaffiliation from AEPi, and members must be expelled individually — the chapter, which at the time of the vote had 53 active members and now has 51, reformed as Beta Rho Pi.

The decision was made public in a Jan. 27 op-ed in the Brown Daily Herald written by the chapter president, Ben Owens.

According to Owens, as well as Jonathan Pierce, a spokesperson for AEPi International, the members voted to disaffiliate without first contacting representatives of the national organization or the Brown chapter’s alumni. After the vote, national representatives, including Pierce, met with the chapter’s executive board to discuss their issues, some of which Pierce described as “more salient than others.” The chapter remained firm on their decision to disaffiliate.

Owens, Brown ’17, said the dissatisfaction had been going on for years. Members took issue not only with the fraternity’s handling of sexual assault, but also the financial burden placed on them by paying dues, as well as the way national representatives of the Jewish fraternity treated non-Jewish members.

“They never set a quota or anything like that, don’t get me wrong,” Owens told New Voices.
“They were very insistent that we have high percentage, like a very high percentage of Jewish brothers in the house. But basically there was a sense that you should really only be trying to rush Jews, and … ‘we really want higher Jewish numbers with you guys,’ and they were very aggressive about it.”

One of the ways in which he said they’d been “aggressive” was by sending emails with “stereotypical Jewish last names” to look for during rush. (Owens declined to share the email.)

“That was their main focus when they were reaching out to us, and a lot of brothers were uncomfortable with that because we signed a non-discrimination clause with Brown,” he said. “We are a Jewish house and we have Jewish values and we’re going to continue to do so, but we will not discriminate based on race and the religion of a potential new member.”

Pierce said he couldn’t comment on the alleged list of stereotypical surnames, but added, “We make no secrets about what AEPi is … If you look at our coat of arms, there’s a Jewish star and a menorah there. I think people know what we are.”

AEPi is non-discriminatory, he said, and has always been open to non-Jews, “but we have a mission.”

“Non-Jewish students are welcome to do that … as long as they understand this is what we do, this is who we are, that’s great,” he said.

The members of Beta Rho Phi also diverged from AEPi on the issue of sexual assault.

Sexual assault has been an issue not only at Brown, where two female students reported they’d been given drinks spiked with date-rape drugs at a Phi Kappa Psi party in October 2014, but also for AEPi — a female student at Vanderbilt reported in 2014 that she had been sexually assaulted at the AEPi house in February of that year.

“There was a general attitude of risk management — basically, you know, ‘this is something that’s going to — maybe it’s going to happen so you just gotta deal with the fallout,’ and there didn’t seem to be enough on the education and prevention,” Owens said.

Representatives also seemed not to take the issue itself seriously, he added.

“I wasn’t actually at this convention, so I’m not trying to give a direct quote, but when someone makes a comment like ‘something you perceive as a handshake can get you charged with sexual assault’ — that underpins the general lack of seriousness, it seemed, about the issue of sexual assault,” he said.

“And then that on top of the fact that a portion of our dues that we pay them then go to their larger parent organization … which had a lot of money invested in several special interests in Congress. One included the Safe Campus Act.”

AEPi’s parent organization is the North-American Interfraternity Conference (NIC), which came under fire last year for its support of the Safe Campus Act. The bill, which has not yet been voted on, would bar colleges and universities from being able to investigate reports of sexual assaults unless the victim also reported it to law enforcement. If the victim chose not to report, the institution would not be able to carry out its own investigation or disciplinary proceedings.

NIC, as well as the National Panhellenic Conference, supported and lobbied in favor of the bill, but withdrew their support in November 2015.

Pierce, who graduated from Vanderbilt in 1986 and is a past international president of the fraternity, said Beta Rho Pi’s concerns about sexual assault education “are just completely false.”

“We work with our members every day to educate them about this, to discuss what is proper behavior, making sure that they hold the values that are most important because those are the kinds of things that, if we’re able to reach that level, then we shouldn’t have problems,” he said.

“We’re also discussing procedural issues, things like that, with undergraduates so that they understand they shouldn’t be doing this … here’s what constitutes proper behavior in today’s world, here’s what you have to do to make sure that you’re being a responsible gentleman, and then here’s what the consequences are.”

He said AEPi is open to these discussions, and cited the program “Consent is So Frat,” started by the AEPi chapter at Wesleyan University and adopted by other chapters.

“In terms of our national or international policy, it’s very clear what proper behavior is, and every one of our members should be aware of it. So to me … it’s a non-issue.”

Pierce said in 2013, members of the Brown chapter had come to the organization’s staff over problems with a discussion on sexual harassment; the representatives emailed the undergraduates to ask for ideas on improvement. Owens confirmed the incident and the “lackluster” followup, but added that the brothers had been busy with school: “They simply couldn’t shoulder the burden of reforming an entire national fraternity.”

Regarding the Safe Campus Act, Pierce said although AEPi is a dues-paying member of NIC, they haven’t taken a position on the bill.

“Sometimes, you know, you’re a member of an organization that you may or may not support all the planks in there … I explained that to the undergraduates at Brown,” he said.

“I said, you can be a member of the Democratic Party and not agree with every plank in their platform, you can be a member of the Republican Party and not agree with every plank in the platform. Your choices then are to try to change those planks or you can quit. They chose to quit.”

AEPi could still have a future at Brown. Pierce said they were trying to “close the door” on the former members and work on starting a new chapter.

“We have been contacted by some of the guys on the side who have said I didn’t agree with this decision, I went along with it because, you know, there’s a certain amount of peer pressure — and I’m told there was a lot of peer pressure put on them — and when and if AEPi comes back I’d be interested in rejoining,” he said.

Owens said he didn’t “explicitly” know of anyone trying to start a new chapter, adding that they’d been “very unanimous” on disaffiliation.

“We made this decision as a group, and have moved past our affiliation as a united brotherhood,” he wrote in a followup email.

 

Chloe Sobel graduated from Queen’s University and is editor in chief of New Voices.