The Columbia Journalism School report criticizing Rolling Stone’s reporting on an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia provoked little response from UVA students. But the fraternity where the alleged attack took place said it’s suing Rolling Stone.
While the Rolling Stone story prompted huge buzz at the university last November, Columbia’s analysis did not appear to be fodder for conversation at the campus food court. Of 30 students questioned, only three had discussed or even seen the report - among them Colleen Kohout from Falls Church and NeviyouGvyehu from Alexandria.
“We’ve got so much attention for it. It made us look really bad and then turned out to be untrue, so I think a lot of people are fed up with it.”
“I think most people already knew the result. They already saw the inconsistency in the story throughout the four months the story has been out.”
Still, Columbia’s report came as vindication for three friends that Rolling Stone says counseled Jackie after the alleged assault. The story portrayed them as more concerned with the university’s reputation than with Jackie’s well-being, but classmate Ryan Duffin says they urged Jackie to report the assault to police and slept on her dorm room floor that night, because she didn’t want to be alone.
“She told me that something bad had happened. She later confided that it was a sexual assault. It wasn’t really consistent with the details as published in the Rolling Stone article.”
Despite claims she had interviewed Jackie’s friends, Junior Alex Stock says reporter Sabrina Erdely never called.
“We would have talked about how Jackie’s credibility has been a question for us for a long time and that there’s this idea that you always support the survivor. That’s absolutely correct. There’s no reason to question somebody as a friend, but if you’re going to drag people’s name through the mud - the university, the fraternity - you need to corroborate that story.”
At the local Sexual Assault Resource Agency or SARA, Director Rebecca Weybright says the story has prompted more discussion about rape on campus, but fewer people are willing to report assaults.
“Hopefully the fact that there is more discussion and there is more awareness that will make things better in the future, but I think in terms of survivors feeling like they’ll believed, there’s been some significant damage.”
And the fraternity identified as the site where Jackie was allegedly raped also claims damage. Phi Kappa Psi announced it would sue Rolling Stone. Local attorney Lloyd Snook, who has followed affairs at UVA for more than 30 years, says he would have advised the fraternity against taking this matter to court.
“They would, by doing so, make relevant every single complaint anybody has had about Phi Psi and sexual misconduct at Phi Psi.”
At the Sexual Assault Resource Agency Rebecca Weybright defends the university and wishes Rolling Stone had done a different story.
“The whole way this happened - the number of people that were hurt and pained by this article - I wish it could have happened differently. I mean UVA was aware that sexual assault was a problem for them long before this article came out, and they were taking steps to improve it.”
Student council president Abraham Axler says there’s a lesson in this.
“The biggest takeaway from this is that we need to be reserving of judgment until all of the facts are in, but the reforms we made in light of the crisis are still positive reforms.”
