Alpha Delta, Dartmouth College Fraternity, Hit With Branding Charges
Alpha Delta's fraternity house at Dartmouth College was a partial inspiration for the 1978 movie "Animal House."
Mar 25, 2015
Dartmouth College is cracking down further on one of its most notorious fraternity houses in response to accusations of the branding of new members.
Alpha Delta, the house that was a partial inspiration for the 1978 movie "Animal House," was already on suspension for prior hazing, underage drinking and unregistered parties, when the new allegations were made last fall, the college said in a statement released Wednesday.
That suspension will now be extended, and if the new allegations are proven, heavier sanctions may be imposed. That could include its removal from campus, the school said.
Details of the branding allegations weren't immediately clear.
Archaeologists in northern Israel have uncovered what they believe to be a 2,000-year-old bronze mask representing Pan, the ancient Greek god [ http://www.theoi.com/Cult/PanCult.html ] of flocks and shepherds known for his love of music and sexuality.
A team of researchers from the University of Haifa’s Zinman Institute of Archaeology discovered the mask during a one-day dig at the Hippos-Sussita excavation site [ http://hippos.haifa.ac.il/ ], just over a mile east of northern Israel’s Sea of Galilee and near what was once the ancient city of Paneas.
The mask is unusually large as compared to other such bronze Pan masks from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, according to a press release [id.]. It is, Eisenberg told HuffPost, "the only one of its kind" and measures a foot in height and width and weighs more than 10 pounds. The figure has long, pointed ears, horns, strands of a beard and other characteristics associated with the half-man, half-goat god.
The mask may have been used as part of an altar for Pan or as the head of a fountain and dates back to between the first and second centuries, Eisenberg said. It was found in one of the rooms of a large basalt tower, which may have served as part of the city's outer defense.
Although Pan hails from Greco-Roman pagan traditions, ancient worship of the god -- called Faunus in Roman tradition -- has been documented in Israel. Paneas [ http://old.parks.org.il/BuildaGate5/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~25~~837878172~Card12~&ru=&SiteName=parks ], also called Banias, is now a nature reserve and archaeological site near the ancient city of Caesarea Philippi in the Golan Heights. The city was located within the region known as the "Panion,” named after the deity, and housed shrines and temples in his honor.
“A Pan altar on the main road to the city, beyond its limits, is quite likely,” Eisenberg said in his statement. “After all, Pan was worshipped not only in the city temples but also in caves and in nature.”
Paneas was home to a well-established cave temple to Pan, the researcher said, which may explain why the mask was uncovered just outside of city limits.
“Because they included drinking, sacrificing and ecstatic worship that sometimes included nudity and sex, rituals for rustic gods were often held outside of the city,” Eisenberg continued.
Excavations of the Hippos site will continue this summer with the goal of clarifying how and why this unusual mask came to be, Eisenberg told HuffPost.
Fraternities Consider Lobbying Congress To Thwart College Rape Investigations
By Tyler Kingkade and Alexandra Svokos Posted: 03/25/2015 7:35 am EDT Updated: 03/25/2015 9:59 am EDT
National fraternity organizations, reeling from repeated controversies over members' misbehavior, are considering pressing Congress to forbid colleges from punishing campus sex offenders until after a police investigation and criminal trial.
Members of the Fraternal Government Relations Coalition, a lobbying group that includes the National Panhellenic Conference and other national fraternity umbrella organizations, talked about escalating lobbying on Capitol Hill during a Feb. 2 conference call, according to a recording obtained by The Huffington Post. The group's members considered pushing to delay college investigations and to stop schools from punishing fraternities based on a single incident of sexual assault, hazing or other risky or offensive behavior.
This academic year, U.S. colleges and universities have investigated more than 100 complaints involving fraternities of hazing, sexual misconduct and date-rape drugging, according to a Huffington Post analysis of news reports. Bad fraternity house behavior has prompted some schools, like Penn State [ http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20150324_Penn_State_to_launch_review_of_Greek_system.html ], to launch wholesale reviews of their campus Greek social systems.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education is investigating 101 colleges for their handling of sexual assault cases and a bipartisan group of senators led by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is pushing for stricter rules [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/26/campus-sexual-assault-bill_n_6761170.html ] on what colleges must do to address campus rape.
During last month's conference call, leaders of national Greek organizations said lobbying efforts will escalate this year. Buddy Cote, chairman of the North-American Interfraternity Conference, said colleges should defer punishment of a student accused of sexual assault "until the completion of the criminal investigation and any subsequent trial." Victim advocates noted that could take years and may not happen until after the victim and offender graduate, if at all.
Representatives from the fraternity organizations referred questions about the conference call to O'Neill, who wasn't available for comment. Those involved in the lobbying effort said specific plans haven't been finalized.
Fraternal Government Relations Coalition members planned to send more than 100 undergraduate fraternity and sorority members to Capitol Hill in late April to lobby on sexual assault and other issues. The national organizations have instructed the students involved not to speak with media.
O'Neill said on the Feb. 2 call that national leaders spoke with individual Greek organizations and concluded "the best position for the coalition to be in is to say that we should go back to the status quo" and allow colleges to pick the standard of proof they use in campus rape cases. The Education Department recommends schools use a standard called "preponderance of the evidence," which means more likely than not. The fraternity representatives suggested colleges be allowed to adopt a stricter standard, such as criminal courts' "beyond a reasonable doubt," that would require more evidence to determine that a student committed sexual assault.
The fraternity lobbyists said they planned to utilize an index of lawmakers who have relationships with Greek life organizations and members.
The lobbying effort was slammed by anti-assault advocates.
"This proposal is completely backwards," Gillibrand told The Huffington Post. "We should be making universities more accountable for providing a safe campus, not less. Waiting for long legal process to play itself out for those victims who pursue criminal charges while leaving potential serial rapists on campus in the interim would put public safety at risk."
McCaskill suggested fraternities' national leadership is out of step with undergraduate members. She told HuffPost that when she visited Missouri campuses last year to build support for her campus sexual assault bill, "I met with students involved in Greek life who were committed to ensuring that sexual assault had no place on their campuses, and that when these crimes did occur, their university had an important role to play in helping survivors seek justice."
Lisa Maatz, top lobbyist for the American Association of University Women, said the fraternity effort confuses campus civil rights proceedings with criminal investigations. "The campus proceedings are supposed to identify whether a student has violated the school's policies, not the law," she said.
Pete Smithhisler, North-American Interfraternity Conference president, noted that issues of hazing, racism, sexual assault and binge drinking are not exclusive to fraternities. "The vast majority of [fraternity members] are having those very positive fraternal experiences," he said.
"Part of the problem is simply the structure of the fraternities themselves," said Foubert, a former Sigma Alpha Epsilon member. "You house 50 guys together without a real administrative presence, you're going to get to the lowest common denominator. Unless punishment is certain and severe, guys are going to do the things that they have in mind as what you can get away with in college."
[significant interactive map/report, "Reported Sexual Assaults and Hazing at Fraternities, Collected from [linked] news reports Aug. 2014-Mar. 2015", embedded]
Gerald Posner on C2C tonight (from 11p-2a PT/2a-5a ET):
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Money & the Vatican
Date: Sunday - July 12, 2015 Host: Richard Syrett Guests: Gerald Posner, Patrick Moore
Acclaimed journalist Gerald Posner joins Richard Syrett to discuss the money and the cardinals-turned-financiers at the heart of the Vatican-- the world’s biggest, most powerful religious institution, including the political intrigue, inner workings of the Catholic Church, and the church’s accumulation of wealth and its byzantine entanglements with financial markets across the world. First hour [10-11p PT/1a-2a ET] guest, Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, addresses climate change, environmentalism, and why he left Greenpeace after 15 years to establish a more sensible, science-based approach to environmentalism.
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