Members of Greek life: We will listen to you

On Friday, the Temple community was made aware of serious accusations against members of Temple’s chapter of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity.

Temple Police sent an email statement to the university community stating it had received “multiple credible reports” of sexual assault and other violations on behalf of fraternity members. That was just hours before Philadelphia Police announced it was also investigating the fraternity for the alleged sexual assaults of two 19-year-old women, both of whom are Temple students.

Three weeks earlier, The Temple News reported that the university had launched an investigation into the fraternity.

We are alarmed by the accusations of these egregious acts, and we hope that survivors find the support they need — be that through on-campus resources or their own personal coping mechanisms. We also support Temple and Philadelphia police in their investigations and hope that all perpetrators pay the consequences for these despicable crimes.

This situation is concerning for all members of the Temple community, but it must be especially harrowing as a member of Greek life, especially since only 5 percent of students on Main Campus belong to a fraternity or sorority.

To the members of Greek life: we hope to be a viable and safe outlet for you to discuss any information you may have about these alleged sexual assaults or similar incidents. As Temple’s editorially independent, student-run newspaper, it is our responsibility to hear your voice and tell your story.

We have already been in contact with several members of Greek life, some of whom have been reluctant to speak with us. They have expressed fear that speaking out will ostracize them from their sororities and fraternities.

We understand that learning of these accusations must have been difficult for you — after all, the alleged survivors and the accused could be someone you consider a sister or a brother. And we understand that it must be harder still to speak about these accusations.

But if you’re comfortable sharing your stories, we hope you’ll come forward. The Temple News will continue to apply great care and attention to this story if you choose to approach us with any details. When we listen, it will be with great respect and empathy.

At The Temple News, our responsibility is to serve the Temple community by telling your stories. If you provide us with any information about these alleged instances of sexual assault, we can use it to better inform the Temple community.

And we will serve you, too, with our attention to detail and our understanding that this situation must be extremely difficult for you.

In recent months, the stories of sexual assault survivors have dominated the media. The power of truth has been used to leverage justice time and time again.

At The Temple News, we want to continue to tip that scale — but we need your voices to do so.