COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) - A proposed ban of alcohol other than beer and restricted visits from women are among possible rule changes for University of Missouri fraternities meant to lower the frequency of sexual assaults - steps many have criticized as overreaching.
The proposals were part of an overall effort to bolster student safety on campus, and "no one is being singled out," university spokesman Christian Basi said.
Students will get a chance to weigh in on the proposals - including one that would prohibit women at fraternity houses between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays - during a June 20 invitation-only summit that will include administrators and members of Greek organizations.
Ted Hellman, spokesman for the Mizzou Fraternity Alumni Consortium advocacy group that has worked with the university on coming up with the rules, said Chancellor Bowen Loftin should be applauded for being proactive, that nothing's been finalized.
"People are getting all riled up over old and incomplete information," Hellman said, calling student safety "a significant issue."
Since 2010, the newspaper said, 22 sexual assaults and rapes have been reported to University of Missouri police; just one of those alleged attacks took place at a fraternity.
The university's Panhellenic Association, which governs sororities, said restricting women from certain locations under the guise of safety lends itself to the notion women cannot make choices for themselves. And Laura Palumbo, a prevention campaign specialist at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, said restricting women from fraternities at certain times "misses the mark" of creating a fraternity system based on respect.
"The goal is to address the safety of women students in fraternity houses, but the proposal was written by men who are not entrenched in daily campus, fraternity and sorority life," the association said in a letter to the chancellor.
Parker Briden, a spokesman for the Intrafraternity Council, said fraternities already were taking greater steps to police themselves, including establishing a peer education system to help fraternity members better understand sexual assault.
Sexual assault has been a focal point at the university since early 2014, when ESPN aired an "Outside the Lines" segment about former University of Missouri swimmer Sasha Menu Courey's claims she was raped by several football players more than a year before her suicide drew sharp criticism about the university's handling of the matter. In March, university police said they failed to identify a suspect and closed their investigation, citing "several obstacles" that included the lack of DNA and video evidence, uncooperative witnesses and the elusiveness of firsthand accounts.