San Diego State’s Phi Kappa Theta fraternity broke the university’s record for the most community service hours completed by an organization in a single semester. Once the University verifies all hours, the fraternity will have earned a total of 3,025 hours last semester. Phi Kappa Theta was involved in a variety of community service events, such as feeding the homeless on Wednesdays and Thursdays, completing a breast cancer awareness walk, volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club, hosting a dodge ball tournament to raise money for charity, and participating in beach cleanups.

Alex Shapiro, a political science sophomore and community service chair of Phi Kappa Theta, led the fraternity to break the university’s record. He said one of his favorite memories came from volunteering at the homeless shelter one night when a group of his fraternity brothers decided to walk around the block and bring extra food to those who could not make it to the homeless shelter. There they met a man named Tony who began to tear up as he told the young men about his life. “He had a really interesting life story and it moved us all,” Shapiro said. “I remember one fraternity brother in the circle actually started crying. We asked if there was any way we could help him and all he wanted was a sleeping bag, so we brought him one the next time that we saw him.”

He said he looked forward to events such as feeding the homeless and working with the Boys and Girls Club because he was able to interact directly with the people he was helping. He said those experiences were humbling because it made him realize that his problems were not as serious as those other people are experiencing.

Shapiro said his passion for giving back to the community sparked at a young age when his father would bring him along to various events such as the Special Olympics when he was three years old. In high school, Shapiro volunteered at a Relay for Life event in which he met a boy, Kevin, who was battling cancer at the time. A few years later Kevin lost his battle to cancer. Shapiro said the experience become a huge motivation for him to get involved in the community and give back to the less fortunate. This semester Shapiro plans to encourage the Phi Kappa Theta members to continue their heavy involvement in community service. He says a big part of keeping up the momentum is making the events enjoyable and getting as many people involved as possible.

Executive Vice President of the national Phi Kappa Theta fraternity Robert Riggs said he is delighted to hear that Phi Kappa Theta members at SDSU completed a record number of community service hours. “We are extremely proud of their accomplishment,” Riggs said. “To be a leader in the community in such a positive way is a great achievement. At the same time, it is humbling to know how committed these men are to serving others.” (excerpted from the Daily Aztec for educational purposes; byline: Colleen Larson)

This week, the University of Virginia announced that it is reinstating the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. The chapter was suspended when Rolling Stone published allegations that an undergraduate named Jackie was brutally gang-raped at one of its parties.

Rolling Stone's feature has since been discredited by commentators and news organizations including The Washington Post, which rigorously debunked its reporting. The debunking is consistent with the findings of police in Charlottesville, who've concluded that while Jackie may or may not have been raped or assaulted on the night in question, she was not attacked at Phi Kappa Psi.

Fortunately, no individual members of Phi Kappa Psi were named in the false allegations. It is nevertheless worth reflecting on the collective ordeal that they suffered when it was widely believed that many of them engaged in premeditated evil.

"Due process must work for both parties—accused and complainant."Prior to these allegations, the collegians were living in their frat house. After the publication of theRolling Stone story, the young men began to receive hate emails, voicemails, and threats of violence. Angry protestors massed outside their house and shouted as if at gang-rapists. That alone must've seemed surreal and difficult to face, especially for a group of 18-to-22-year-olds. Then in the wee hours of one morning, vandals broke several frat house windows with chunks of cinder block and bottles and tagged the outside of the house. "This situation is just beginning," the perpetrators soon threatened in an anonymous letter. "We will escalate and we will provoke until justice is achieved for the countless victims of rampant sexual violence at this University and around the nation." Needless to say, the vandals achieved no justice for rape victims by victimizing these young men.

The college students living in the frat house ultimately fled to different living quarters, even as they were trying to wind up their academic work for the semester. "Our brothers are obviously concerned with their personal safety and the safety of the house,” fraternity president Stephen Scipione told the student newspaper. Meanwhile, people were shouting "rapist" at fraternity members on campus. Men in Phi Kappa Psi were presumably questioned by police in the course of their investigation. Alumni from the frat asked themselves if the institution to which they once belonged had morphed into a venue for gang rape and felt stigma for their bygone association. Parents of members were stressed and upset too, whether because they felt their sons were being unfairly maligned or worried that they'd joined a fraternity that conducts gang rapes as a matter of course.

The fact that Phi Kappa Psi's membership was falsely accused of this crime does not mean that most rape accusations are false–the opposite is true–or that there isn't a need to reduce the number of rapes and sexual assaults that happen on college campuses, even granting that some activists overstate the number of victims.

It should be possible to push for reforms that would reduce the too-high number of rape victims while advocating against rushes to judgment in individual cases. All credible rape accusations should be investigated. Before the results are in the accuser should have the private support of friends and various resources. But nothing is gained when angry mobs with no particular knowledge of a case gather en masse to shout epithets at people who weren't even accused as individuals.

In Charlottesville, young men were attacked by folks so certain about their guilt that they hurled objects through their windows and threatened their safety. Yet even now that they've been exonerated, there is little acknowledgment that the boys were wronged or sense that the people who wronged them should apologize. Why? Even if their antagonists had good intentions, the young men look to be innocent of the gang-rape accusation in the  Rolling Stone story—and that's what matters.

UVA's student newspaper is an exception. Its editorial on Phi Kappa Psi's reinstatement noted that many sexual assaults at UVA go uninvestigated or unpunished, and that there is reason to believe more protections are needed on campus. "What we can be certain of is this," the student editorial continued. "There is no justice in a case which accuses a party that did not commit the crime in question. Phi Kappa Psi was undeservingly condemned and threatened by a community which did not wait until the facts of the case were investigated to issue judgment. But due process must work for both parties--accused and complainant. The community is only made safer if the correct offender is apprehended." (Excerpted from an article by Conor Friedersdorf, in The Atlantic, for educational purposes)

CHARLOTTESVILLE — A police investigation has cleared a University of Virginia fraternity of any involvement in an alleged gang rape that was detailed in a Rolling Stone magazine story last year, with authorities saying there was “no basis to believe that an incident occurred” at the Phi Kappa Psi house.

U-Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan approved the full reinstatement of the fraternity chapter Monday after police detectives did not find “any substantive basis to confirm that the allegations raised in the article occurred at Phi Kappa Psi,” university officials said. The announcement came as classes here resumed for the spring semester and three days after Sullivan lifted a months-long freeze on campus Greek life.

The reinstatement also allows Phi Psi to join the ranks of fraternities and sororities now beginning recruitment activities, known as Rush, this week. “We welcome Phi Kappa Psi, and we look forward to working with all fraternities and sororities in enhancing and promoting a safe environment for all,” Sullivan said in a statement.

Phi Psi was at the center of campus uproar in November after Rolling Stone published a 9,000-word article, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, that included a harrowing account of an alleged gang rape at the fraternity on Sept. 28, 2012. A U-Va. junior named Jackie told Rolling Stone, and later The Washington Post, that she was ambushed at a “date function” at Phi Psi a few weeks into her freshman year, with seven fraternity members holding her down and raping her in an upstairs bedroom while two others — including her date — watched and encouraged the attack.

After the Rolling Stone article’s publication, the Phi Psi house was vandalized, students protested outside the historic property, and the fraternity voluntarily suspended its charter at the university as police investigated the allegations. “We are pleased that the University and the Charlottesville Police Department have cleared our fraternity of any involvement in this case,” Phi Psi President Stephen Scipione, a junior, said Monday. “In today’s 24-hour news cycle, we all have a tendency to rush to judgment without having all of the facts in front of us. As a result, our fraternity was vandalized, our members ostracized based on false information.”

A Post investigation found that the fraternity did not host a date function on the September weekend named in the article and that no Phi Psi brothers resembled the man Jackie described to Rolling Stone as her main attacker. A number of Jackie’s friends and advocates for campus sexual assault awareness also have disputed facts presented in the magazine. In addition, information that Jackie provided to friends about her alleged attacker led to a student who said he had never met her and also to a high school classmate who attends college in a different state, The Post found. In interviews, Jackie told The Post that she stood by the account published in Rolling Stone.

In December, the fraternity issued a statement denying the claims described in Rolling Stone and noted that its own inquiry into the allegations revealed factual errors. Rolling Stone has since apologized for inaccuracies in the article and has asked for an independent review from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Charlottesville police Capt. Gary Pleasants said that although Phi Psi has been cleared, the investigation into the allegations is ongoing. “We’re still investigating,” Pleasants said. “We found no basis to believe that an incident occurred at that fraternity, so there’s no reason to keep them suspended.”

Last week, Sullivan announced a new contract between the university and fraternities that includes enhanced safety measures for social activities designed to discourage binge drinking. The university said that Phi Psi was the first fraternity to sign the updated agreement, and fraternity officials said that Phi Psi members have participated in a sexual assault awareness program. “We believe that in the midst of this ordeal, there is an opportunity for good,” Scipione said. “This has prompted us to take a closer look at ourselves and what role organizations like ours may play in ensuring student safety.” (excerpted from the Washington Post for educational purposes; byline: T. Rees Shapiro, Education Reporter)