What leverage do universities have over sexual violence in fraternities? IMPORTANT: The allegation of gang-rape in the Rolling Stone article that formed the basis for this question has been retracted; later evidence on the matter shows that the allegation that gang-rape occurred at the fraternity was false.  Other similar events have since been alleged at other universities: Baylor, Yale and Wisconsin


Rolling Stone recently reported a horrific preplanned gang rape at a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia, with the victim's "friends" telling her afterward not to report the crime, on the theory that "She's gonna be the girl who cried 'rape,' and we'll never be allowed into any frat party again."

Under pressure, the university has belatedly decided to suspend fraternity events until January. This seems pathetically inadequate to me, but what can a university actually do in this situation that will have a significant and lasting effect on a firmly entrenched rape culture? Are there cases where other schools have done something more effectual? Supposing for the sake of argument that they were willing to completely disassociate themselves from one frat, or from the frat system as a whole, would it do any good? I assume that the frats own their houses, and the schools can't actually shut them down.
As it turns out, membership in fraternities is not, in general, strongly correlated with rape.  Rather, it appears that a large percentage of sexual assault is committed by a very small fraction of men who are deliberate predators, who tend to seek out environments where their behavior is enabled by people either turn a blind eye to their behavior or who are not willing to intervene in a problematic situation.  Some fraternities provide such environments, but many non-fraternity social environments do so as well.

Rape is committed mostly against women who know their attacker and who may even be intimate with them willingly under other circumstances (men are raped as well, but at much lower percentages than women).  One of the major recommended interventions for a college is thus to educate students, especially other men, on how to intervene in situations that are likely to be a prelude to rape.  This is one example of a broad spectrum of recommended prevention and mitigation policies, which appear to be both effective in reducing the incidence of rape and reducing the damage that compounds to rape victims in an unsupportive campus culture.

None of these interventions are particularly difficult or expensive.  The main challenges in implementing them are resistance from people who have some stake in keeping aspects of their campus culture from changing, or who are worried about potential image problems.