In an interview with The Daily Caller on Friday, Phi Kappa Psi national president Scott Noble, the fraternity president, said that an article from The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart, with the dismissive title “‘Gentlemanly’ nonsense from frat at center of U-Va. sexual assault controversy,” lacked key context about a program the fraternity began implementing earlier this year.
In the piece, Capehart adopted an accusatory tone towards the University of Virginia’s Phi Kappa Psi chapter, members of which were accused in a now-debunked Rolling Stone article of gang-raping a student named Jackie in 2012.
Capehart’s thinking is difficult to follow, but he appears to be upset at the timing of a robo-call, which Noble’s wife recorded and placed to Phi Kappa Psi members and alumni on Dec. 9. Capehart seems to be under the impression that the call was Phi Kappa Psi’s response to the Rolling Stone piece.
But Noble says that is not at all the case.
“We had a five year plan that was in place months prior to the Rolling Stone article,” he told The Daily Caller in a phone interview. Noble has declined to discuss Jackie’s accusations or the Rolling Stone article because the investigation into the claims is still ongoing.
That fraternity’s plan included a series of monthly calls which Noble says he began formulating in August. The plan was officially set into motion on Sept. 9, according to an email Noble shared with TheDC.
The monthly calls are available to any of the 80,000-plus alumni and 6,600 hundred members who are willing to listen, Noble said.
And they carry a simple message.
“We have to respect each other as brothers and as women because if we don’t start with an underlying basis it’s hard to go to the next level on education,” Noble told TheDC, adding that the fraternity “will continue to educate our men proactively.”
He noted that Phi Kappa Psi proactively joined “It’s On Us,” a campus sexual assault awareness campaign started by the Obama administration in September.
Capehart quoted a portion of the robo-call, which he says was provided by a man who resigned from the fraternity in the 1990s.
“As the holiday season approaches, we have decided it’s the perfect time to focus our efforts on being gentlemen who are courteous and cultured and showing respect to others. We will have Lorrie Bossart joining us on our call and we are certain you will enjoy her brief talk on gentlemanly conduct, good manners and etiquette,” Noble’s wife said on the call.
Capehart allowed his source to characterize what he thought was wrong with that presentation.
“What jumped out at him in that tone-deaf message was ‘gentlemanly conduct,'” Capehart wrote.
Seemingly based on the assumption that the call was Phi Kappa Psi’s weak effort to address the issues raised in the Rolling Stone article, Capehart slammed the Greek-letter organization.
“Fraternities need to lead by example,” Capehart wrote. “It is not enough for them to have online modules on ‘personal integrity’ as Phi Kappa Psi has. They need to live out those good manners and hold those accountable whose behavior violate a code of conduct or break laws.”
Capehart provided only slight awareness that the Rolling Stone article — and Jackie’s claims — have been thoroughly discredited.
“Yes, the controversy over the lax reporting undergirding Rolling Stone’s U-Va. feature casts doubt on ‘Jackie’s’ story,” Capehart wrote, indicating through the use of quotation marks around the accuser’s name that he is not aware that her real name is indeed Jackie and not a pseudonym.
“But it shouldn’t be used as an excuse to ignore, mistrust or automatically doubt every person who comes forward with an allegation,” Capehart continued.
Noble says that he believes there is nothing wrong with teaching fraternity members to behave respectfully and act like “gentlemen.” He also says that such guidance is much-needed and appreciated given the diverse backgrounds of the young men who are admitted into universities and join fraternities.
“We see incredible value in fraternities right now because of breakdown in the family structure,” Noble told TheDC, citing a statistic that 51 percent of young men today are raised without a father present. “We see incredible value in educating these kids in how to respect men and women and use proper manners.”