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STATE COLLEGE, Pennsylvania (AP) — A now-suspended Pennsylvania State University fraternity's Facebook posting of photos of nude and partly nude women, some of them asleep or passed out, is sad and offensive and could lead to some students being expelled, the university's president said Wednesday.
The national leaders of Kappa Delta Rho on Tuesday suspended the Penn State chapter for a year over the photo scandal and said it would be reorganized.
"I can't imagine anybody that's not appalled by the alleged behavior," Eric Barron said in an interview.
Many U.S. universities have been clamping down on fraternities — social organizations for male students — amid a spate of incidents of bad behavior, some of it racially tinged. Sororities, which are for women, have had similar problems.
Fraternities often have an outsize influence on their campuses, claiming major college donors, state lawmakers, governors, members of Congress and U.S. presidents as members. Fraternities have about 372,000 members among 7.7 million male undergraduate college students, according to the North-American Interfraternity Conference.
Police are investigating allegations the fraternity operated a private Facebook page on which members shared frat house pictures of the women nude or partly nude. According to a warrant, the invitation-only Facebook page had 144 active members, including students and alumni.
Police said some of the photos they had seen showed women in "sexual or embarrassing positions." While some of the women photographed appeared to be aware their pictures were being taken, others did not, police said in court documents.
Police have said they have identified at least two photographs that could lead to criminal charges but the investigation is continuing.
Barron said the university is working with police to determine the number of offenders and victims and is promising to hold those responsible accountable for what they did.
"I don't see anything being off the table," Barron said. "This is the kind of behavior that can get someone expelled."
Penn State's flagship campus has about 40,000 undergraduate students and is home to about 50 fraternities, which report about 4,000 members, the university said.
Police were tipped off about the Facebook account on Jan. 18 by a former fraternity member who shared printouts of some of the pictures. The printouts were included in some of the court documents provided Tuesday to news outlets; police later said that was a mistake.
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