Dartmouth fraternity members charged with hazing violations
Twenty-seven members of the Dartmouth fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon have been charged with hazing violations and could face suspension or expulsion if found guilty, the Dartmouth reported Wednesday. The fraternity, which has also been charged with violations as an organization, has faced controversy in recent months over allegations of brutal hazing.
According to SAE president Brendan Mahoney, a Dartmouth senior, the charges are for violations during the fall semester pledge terms in 2009 and 2011. The Committee on Standards, part of Dartmouth's Undergraduate Judicial Affairs Office, will set dates for individual hearings over spring break, the Dartmouth reported.
The charges come after escalated campus dialogue about hazing this semester. Andrew Lohse, a Dartmouth senior and former SAE member, made headlines in January when he wrote an op-ed published in the Dartmouth Jan. 25 with details of his pledging experience, which he wrote included eating omelets made of vomit and swimming in a kiddie pool full of feces, urine and semen. Some of his accusations were later deemed exaggerated by other sources, but the underlying questions — especially about whether the administration of Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim '82 has done enough to confront hazing issues — have continued to resurface.
Dartmouth Student Body President Max Yoeli told the Dartmouth that administrative ambiguity about hazing this semester "bespeaks a failure of leadership at the highest level."
Proposed public-access legislation collapses in Congress
After backlash from academic scholars and universities, the Research Works Act was withdrawn from consideration in Congress last week. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-C.A., and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., co-sponsors of the bill, released a statement announcing their decision to stop petitioning for its support, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The proposed bill would have given publishers the discretion to determine whether research funded by the federal government would be open to the general public.
The University was among the institutions that publicly condemned the bill, The Herald reported Feb. 7.
The announcement was made after Elsevier, a prominent science publishing company, stated it would no longer support the bill after receiving boycott threats, the Chronicle reported. More than 7,400 academics signed the Cost of Knowledge petition, which outlined concerns about the prohibitive price of journal subscriptions.
A new bill will be presented to Congress that would require public access to all government-funded scientific research six months after publication, regardless of the publishing journal, the Chronicle reported. The University is already looking into a policy that would allow all Brown-conducted research to be available to the public, according to an October article in The Herald.
