Opinion: Sororities have a mandate to support survivors

Men perpetrate the vast majority of sexual assaults. As such, the best way to prevent sexual assault at UNC is for individual men to refuse to commit the crime and to hold their male peers accountable for actions and behaviors that promote rape culture.

Male institutions, chief among them the fraternity system, should be at the forefront of teaching men that rape is unacceptable.

But all institutions carry this responsibility. We believe that the sorority system at UNC should also take the lead in protecting its members and all other University students from sexual assault.

To be clear, it should not be incumbent upon women as individuals to prevent themselves from being assaulted. It is vital, however, that sororities do all they can to support their individual members. Sororities are the largest organized voice for women at UNC and are therefore uniquely positioned to advocate for survivors.

In the last year, the Panhellenic Council has made progress on this front by creating a formal resource within chapters to help members navigate the aftermath of assault. Two sisters per chapter are trained to create a safe space for survivors where they know they will be believed and supported.

Despite this progress, we encourage the council to continue to do more to combat rape culture and support survivors.

Individuals within UNC’s sorority system have recounted to The Daily Tar Heel being pressured not to report sexual assaults because their sisters feared that problems would arise between the reporting sorority and the fraternity of the perpetrator. This is not the dominant response of UNC’s sororities to sexual assault, but these occurrences cannot be disregarded.

Others find that their sisters speak more strongly with their silence, not discouraging them from reporting, but failing to encourage them to do so. There are many valid reasons why a survivor might choose not to report, but pressure to stay silent should not be one of them.

Why might sororities and individuals within them fail to fully support their members? Surely the patriarchy deserves much of the responsibility. All too often, women are socialized to derive their value from their relationships with men, an imperative that encourages a conciliatory, conflict-averse approach between survivors and the men suspected or accused of assaulting them.

National sororities also bear culpability. Their rules, designed to lower insurance premiums, forbid sororities from hosting parties at their houses or providing alcohol, at times leaving sorority sisters dependent on male-dominated spaces for social functions. Of course, women retain the agency to act in their own best interests despite these circumstances, but this should not be used to justify structures that limit their range of choices.

This power imbalance between sororities and fraternities, an imbalance amplified in society as a whole, also encourages a suboptimal response to sexual assault.

Neither of these factors excuses decisions made by individuals that forestall justice for survivors of sexual assault. Members of sororities have encouraged other women not to report assaults, acting not out of compassion for the individual but out of a desire to protect the reputation of their shared institution. This is a violation of trust, and it is one that the institutional designs and cultures of the Interfraternity and Panhellenic Councils enables, if not encourages.

UNC and its students should primarily focus rape prevention efforts on men as individuals — be they rapists, rape apologists or university administrators — that have historically made UNC an unsafe space.

Still, we should recognize that individual women and the institutions they belong to can also be complicit in upholding those spaces. But this means they also have the power to change them for the better. UNC’s sorority system must continue making progress toward becoming better, more vocal advocates for survivors.