A national free speech group says Lafayette College violated students\u2019 free speech rights after the Easton institution suspended fraternity and sorority activities due to what\u2019s been described as antisemitic and sexist remarks during a seminar.<\/p>\n
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education said that even though activities were recently restored after students completed anti-bias training, the university still needs to be held accountable.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still problematic that this happened to begin with. These groups were suspended for several months and that means this could happen again if the college believes its response was correct,\u201d said Zach Greenberg, FIRE\u2019s director of faculty legal defense. \u201cWe\u2019re still pursuing this case. We\u2019re trying to hold the college accountable. We\u2019re trying to get them to admit what they did was wrong and uphold student speech rights going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to a letter FIRE sent to the college<\/a>, which referenced reporting by campus newspaper The Lafayette<\/a>, the suspension occurred after anonymous antisemitic and sexist responses were made during a Wellness 101 seminar Nov. 12 attended by about 600 fraternity and sorority members.<\/p>\n Lafayette suspended all Greek life social events amongst its 13 fraternities and sororities until all organizations completed anti-bias training developed by the college, which began to be distributed in February.<\/p>\n A fraternity member, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation from Lafayette, told The Morning Call he did not recall any such Wellness 101 sessions occurring in his prior years in Greek life and felt that attendance for this session was being heavily pushed by the college.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t remember if there was some event that had occurred before that had triggered the mandatory-ness of the talk, but they just kind of made it clear that we had to try to get as many members to the talk as possible,\u201d the fraternity member said.<\/p>\n Neither Lafayette spokesperson Scott Morse nor Associate Director for Fraternity and Sorority Life Jake Bates returned requests for comment.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a lot of embarrassment from the community of what had just transpired at the talk but I think, in turn, there was a lot of confusion,\u201d the fraternity member said. \u201cA lot of people were upset that they had basically just kicked off every single person in the entire school that is a part of these organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n