Penn State University President Eric Barron says the school is pursuing its own investigation into a fraternity’s secret Facebook pages.
The fraternity, Kappa Delta Rho, was suspended on Tuesday. Police say members of the frat made two “secret” (closed to members) Facebook pages, where they posted nude photos of unconscious women, with disturbing comments, as well as photos of drug deals and hazing.
The first page was called “Covert Business Transactions.” Police say a victim saw the site and complained to a fraternity member. The page was removed, but then replaced with another one called “2.0.”
Barron called the pages “offensive” and “unacceptable.” But he says the university can only monitor students to a certain extent.
“This is a very difficult thing to do, there’s a great deal of privacy, we don’t spy on students,” Barron says. “But this is a case where someone came forward.”
A former member alerted police to the page in January, but it had already been in use for eight months.
Police are working to identify the people involved, including victims.
“We would like to encourage those individuals to come [forward], that know that they were a victim, we’d like to encourage them to come into the university system, so that we can do our best to help make sure that they’re survivors,” says Barron.
Barron defended the fraternity system.
“We have a lot of people that become great leaders and that leadership came out of fraternities,” he says. “We also have cases where young men do things that are not appropriate.”
