Connecticut fraternity says wanted to resist order to admit women
By Richard Weizel MIDDLETOWN, Conn. (Reuters) - The president of an all-male fraternity locked in a legal fight with a Connecticut university over its no-women membership policy acknowledged in court on Wednesday that his group had been reluctant to admit women but had not ruled it out. Wesleyan University advised its Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity in September that as part of a new university policy requiring all campus groups to go co-ed, it must allow at least six women to live in its on-campus houses within three years. It later told DKE members that they had to move out by the end of the current academic year because they had not made enough progress to admit women. The fraternity filed a lawsuit against the school in February in Middletown Superior Court, contending Wesleyan discriminated against its 32 members and seeking to stop the eviction. Wesleyan requires undergraduate students to live on campus, which the fraternity contends means that its eviction could have jeopardized its members' studies. Terence Durkin, the fraternity's president, testified in court on Wednesday that after the university changed its policy, he met with female leaders of a campus sorority in an attempt to integrate women. "We wanted to maintain DKE national rules as an all-male fraternity," Durkin said. "But we were willing to go co-ed if that's what we had to do." Durkin, who is a junior, testified that living in an all-male fraternity house had been a major factor in his decision to attend the university. Wesleyan attorney James Rotondo said the fraternity had been dragging its feet on recruiting women. "It's very clear DKE did not like the co-education mandate, and made that very clear," Rotondo said. Scott Karsten, an alumnus of the university and the fraternity, said the group had wanted time to renovate its house to ensure the safety of female members. "The sexual assault of women in other fraternities is what in large part prompted these new mandates, and we wanted to make sure women were safe," Karsten testified. "Some alumni felt we were being set up by the university to fail." Universities across the United States are trying to fight what the White House has described as an "epidemic" of sexual assault. The Department of Education has launched investigations into more than 50 schools, not including Wesleyan, contending that their policies on stopping sexual assault and harassment fall short of federal requirements. (Editing by Scott Malone and Mohammad Zargham)
