Higher education round-up: Oct. 18

Dartmouth College

Beta Alpha Omega suspended for hazing

In response to an ongoing hazing investigation, Dartmouth suspended its chapter of Beta Alpha Omega this week.

The fraternity’s suspension comes after the website Gawker published a series of emails from Beta Alpha Omega brothers that discussed alcohol use by minors. The college, according to a Dartmouth spokesperson, believes that some of the fraternity’s pledging activities could have threatened physical harm to students.

Dartmouth has dealt with several high-profile hazing scandals over the past several years, most notably at its Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter. The college has taken an unusually hard-line stance on hazing allegations in recent months.

Georgetown University

Women’s basketball coach resigns

Keith Brown resigned from his position as head coach of the Georgetown women’s basketball team last week amidst allegations that he had used inappropriate language and had behaved unprofessionally toward his players.

Brown had been on administrative leave for about a week before his resignation, after several of his players complained about him to Georgetown officials.

The case bears some resemblance to the firing of Mike Rice as head men’s basketball coach at Rutgers University earlier this year. Rutgers fired Rice a day after ESPN aired video of him verbally and physically abusing his players.

George Washington University

Grad student charged with murder

Rahul Gupta, a GW graduate student studying engineering, allegedly stabbed and killed a Georgetown University law student over the weekend.

The victim, Mark Waugh, was a high-school classmate of Gupta’s. Gupta claims that he had caught Waugh with his girlfriend after a party early Sunday morning.

“I walked in on my girlfriend cheating on me,” Gupta told police, according to the charging papers in the case. “My girl and my buddy were cheating. My girl was cheating with my buddy. I walked in on them cheating and I killed my buddy.”

Swarthmore College

Fraternity flier criticized

A Phi Psi fraternity flier that featured photos of naked women has come under fire at Swarthmore, with some students demanding an apology.

Several Swarthmore students are asking the college’s Student Budget Committee, which provides funding for student activities, not to give money for fraternity parties until at least 10 percent of the college’s two fraternities are made up of women.

Swarthmore’s student body passed a referendum last semester calling for the fraternities to be open to students of any gender.

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the fraternity’s use of totally inappropriate imagery, and it will stop now,” the college’s dean of students said in a statement.

Yale University

‘Poopetrator’ still at large

Several Yale students’ laundry has been soiled by an alleged “poopetrator” in recent weeks, and a suspect remains at large.

Yale students and officials are still trying to put a stop to the person or group that has been dirtying students’ laundry by putting human feces into campus dryers.

The poopetrator — whom some at Yale have also called the “brown bandit” — has been blamed for at least four incidents this semester at the school’s Saybrook College. Yale police are still investigating the incidents, which have drawn national media attention, and some students have begun to stand watch outside the laundry room.

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