But just as clearly, great good could have come from sending it; student safety was at risk
They were not. Yes, there undoubtedly would have been a cost to resending the e-mail: more angry Beta parents, fraternity discontent, pressure from Beta alumni and the national organization. University trepidation and fraternity intransigence were about to produce a tort case. Its plaintiff: a young woman known to us as Jane Doe-18 years old, freshly arrived at Wesleyan from her home in Maryland, as eager as any other new student to experience the excitement of college life.
During Halloween weekend, Jane Doe got dressed up and went out with some of her friends to sample the student parties on and around campus. “I didn’t have any alcohol to drink all night,” she later told a police investigator in a sworn statement. “I usually don’t drink, and I hang out with people who don’t drink either.” At the Beta house, she was “immediately spotted by this guy” who did not introduce himself but started dancing with her. “I was happy that someone was dancing with me,” she told the policeman, “because I got all dressed up.” The man she was dancing with would turn out not to be a Beta member or even a Wesleyan student at all. His name was John O’Neill, and he was the ne’er-do-well high-school-lacrosse teammate of one of the Beta brothers. O’Neill lived in his mother’s basement and, according to a Yorktown, New York, police detective, had been arrested for selling pot out of an ice-cream truck earlier that year. (περισσότερα…)