A Fraternity Shows Some Sensitivity : Lamdba Chi Alpha offers an example of how to be a good campus citizen

Well, yet another incredibly insulting and insensitive fraternity faux pas has turned up on the campus of a California university. The campus? Cal State Northridge. The fraternity? This time it is Lamdba Chi Alpha. The offense? Another reprehensible flyer announcing an event. The offended group? Just about all women.

The flyer announced a war games party by depicting a woman in skintight pants and boots with the words: “Wouldn’t it be great to rape, pillage and burn with your brothers . . . again?”

The last time this sort of thing occurred was on the CSUN campus late last year. It took the form of a fraternity flyer that announced a party in honor of “Lupe.” Because a third fraternity, at UCLA, had previously circulated an offensive songbook that included a reference to “Lupe, the Mexican whore,” it didn’t take much effort for the folks at CSUN to realize the flyer was referring to the same fictitious person.

In the earlier CSUN incident, the fraternity in question was slow to realize the seriousness of its offense, apparently wanted to go ahead with its party anyway and finally offered a fairly tepid apology among its other fairly lame efforts to make amends. That response was part of the reason that the campus was rocked by weeks of damaged feelings, anger and protest marches.

There is a responsible way to respond to these types of egregious lapses in judgment, and Lamdba Chi Alpha may have offered an example with its conduct this week.

The war games flyers were mailed to the campus by an alumnus. When they arrived, they apparently prompted immediate complaints from fraternity members at the school. A copy was faxed to Lambda Chi Alpha’s national headquarters in Indianapolis. Officials there reported the flyers to CSUN administrators, with immediate disavowals and promises to apologize to everyone who had received one.

“Anything that promotes this kind of attitude goes against everything we stand for,” said a Lambda Chi Alpha official in Indianapolis.

The quick, honest and apologetic response made the best of a bad situation. Now, the fraternity ought to cancel that war games thing, too.