Florida International University’s chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha had to learn the hard way that “private” Facebook pages don’t actually live up to that title.
According to the Miami Herald, FIU suspended the chapter, nationally known as “Pike,” after various university administrators and media outlets received an anonymous email containing screenshots of about 70 posts on the page.
The Miami Herald reported that content ranged from drug sale offers to pictures of topless women, including one who was underage, according to information accompanying the photo. Posts also contained anti-gay remarks to describe other fraternities, refusals to sell fraternity t-shirts to women who weren’t thin, references to hazing, and a request to use the Boston Marathon bombings as good publicity for the fraternity.
“Guys please put up the PIKE Prays for Boston Banner that’s upstairs outside so that when people start arriving tomorrow morning they see it,” one brother wrote. “This is excellent publicity!”
Pike’s national headquarters in Tennessee said in a statement it was made aware of the page on Aug. 20, the Miami Herald reported. FIU said in a separate statement on Aug. 21 that it was determining whether the page’s content violated the university’s code of conduct.
“The university is taking this information very seriously … As a result, the fraternity has been instructed to cease all meetings and events,” FIU wrote.
Still, Cosmopolitan reports that FIU’s president said sanctions would only be given to “a few individuals who need to understand what matters and that have damaged the reputations of others.”
FIU’s Pike Chapter isn’t a first time offender. According to the Miami Herald, the organization was already on probation for serving alcohol to a pledge in June and has since been found to have committed other infractions, such as underage drinking and throwing eggs at another fraternity house.
This latest online Greek life scandal follows the April release of a viral scathing email that a member of Delta Gamma at the University of Maryland sent to her chapter. In the email, posted on Gawker, the woman very colorfully berated her sisters for being “awkward” and “boring” during Greek Week events. She later resigned from her position, Gawker reported.