Dispiriting news from my alma mater: University of Oregon receives five sexual assault reports within first week of classes.
Students began the fall term at the University of Oregon in Eugene on Monday. But by midday on Wednesday, university officials sent out a community safety warning about five reported sexual assault attacks on or near campus in the past week.
According to the safety alert, officials said four of the incidents involved university students, and the fifth occurred near the Alton Baker Dog Park, adjacent to campus. They said police arrested someone in the fifth case and that all students affected have been offered university support resources.
The UO must still be on the quarter system if classes start this late (we’ve been open for about 6 weeks already). This sounds familiar and universal, though. The school year starts, a lot of new students arrive, free of familiar constraints, and the asshole fraction of students (often frat boys) take advantage in horrible ways. I hope my former university follows through and culls the student body of these jerks, rather than giving them another chance to abuse. They should know that this behavior is not permissible or forgivable.
In case you didn’t know, the movie Animal House was set at the University of Oregon, in an actual frat house I lived several blocks away, on E 13th, and remember seeing the rather dilapidated old house, before it was finally torn down about the time I graduated. Tearing it down was probably a wise decision — it represented a poor example.
I spent my first semester at the university working too hard and earning straight As. Too many students think university is time to party. Tell your friends and family it’s not.
This is the mark of a sportsball school. Can’t have any of those football players declared academically ineligible before the bowl season is over.
While I was there, in the early ’80s, I actually lived in the Animal House house for a year. At the time, it was a share run by a couple of grad students and hadn’t been a frat house for years. I next moved into one of the great student co-ops down on 13th, which are still there today (AFAIK, erm, as of 3 years ago). Very much the opposite of a frat house, and a great experience. Frats have been a rape problem for a long time, they were then too.
@R. Selkirk
U of O does sportsball, like all big state universities, but it’s fame and focus is (was?) really on track/running. World-famous for that. Also has/had a great biology department, tho I went to computer science grad school there.
Back in the mid-’70s, at a Catholic university, we saw some of this rape culture.
Our dorm had a toga party, with trashcan punch.
My boyfriend (husband for 50 years now) and I watched as a pretty young lady was encouraged to get very drunk.
Guys would talk to her and move her “toga” down. They were offering to walk her to her room.
That’s when the geeky couple swooped in. I got her to talking, then we both walked her up to her room.
We encouraged her to lock her door and go to bed, then went to our room and did the same.
It has been happening a lot at U of Oregon.
Xpost from the previous Cornell thread. Looks like U. of Oregon still has a serious problem with their fraternities.
There are recent reports of 6 women being given drinks with date rape drugs at fraternity parties.
Looks like they are trying to compete with Cornell in crimes against women.
This happened two years ago.
Yesterday a report came out about another fraternity atrocity.
This frat in Arizona managed to kill a pledge by an overdose of alcohol.
That happened every few years at my old university, always involving a fraternity.
Finally, the administration had enough and set up a entering program featuring alcohol intoxication overdosing, what it is and how to avoid it. I haven’t heard of it happening since.
I did see a few cases of acute alcohol overdoses as an undergraduate that weren’t fatal but probably came way too close. At the time, it wasn’t really known by us kids that this could happen.
To be fair, it’s not a frat-specific nor a USA-specific thing, not just ‘It’s not just Cornell’.
Apparently, when institutional privilege, elite subcultures, and toxic peer dynamics mix, it becomes highly volatile.
cf. https://cheekmedia.substack.com/p/the-cornell-rape-case-is-not-an-outlier
(The Cornell rape case is not an outlier; it is a product of the same broken culture that pervades Australian colleges today
By Josephine Gazard, Oct 01, 2026)
or
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/25/sydney-scots-college-boys-charged-sexual-assault-appear-in-court-ntwnfb
(Scots College trio who allegedly sexually assaulted teen girl have faced ‘repercussions’, judge says
Three boys, two aged 14 and one aged 13, on bail and yet to enter a plea after alleged assault in Sydney’s east)
Society-wide still, big deal in India right now:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/30/rapes-triggers-mass-protests-indian-universities
CLEARLY, there are many Frat houses that are lacking a “Sexual Offender” warning sign outside.
OTOH, they’d probably be proud of it…
raven@#6:
I did see a few cases of acute alcohol overdoses as an undergraduate that weren’t fatal but probably came way too close. At the time, it wasn’t really known by us kids that this could happen.
By the time John Bonham and Bon Scott drank themselves to death, we all knew that was a thing.
Yeah, I started college in the mid-70s. We knew it was a thing. Most of us knew people who came awfully close to death, if not dead.
daulnay @3: The University of Oregon is well known for its football program, the Ducks have been a dominant team for decades. I’m not sure what the situation is now since I don’t follow sports to begin with or football in particular, but while the U of O’s track and field team is famous as well, I don’t think it’s actually as famous as the football team.
I had to look it up.
A bit after my time as an undergraduate.
I certainly know who Led Zeppelin and AC/DC are but didn’t remember these deaths.
The ones I remember well dying young were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison of the Doors, both apparently alcohol overdoses. And Janice Joplin from a heroin overdose. Those deaths hit us hard at the time.