Washington University buys nine Delmar Loop properties in largest land grab yet

NINA GIRALDO SENIOR NEWS EDITOR

Several St. Louis news sources announced today that Washington University purchased nine properties on the Delmar Loop from Joe Edwards, a longtime St. Louis property owner, at the end of 2022. The University, now one of the district’s largest property owners, acquired two parking lots and seven buildings, including the well-known Pin-Up Bowl, a bowling alley near campus.

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“If what [ChatGPT] ends up doing is refocusing how assessment works and how we measure student learning, I think that could be a positive thing,” he said.

The St. Louis Dispatch describes Edwards as the “longtime steward of the Loop whose revitalization efforts turned it into one of the St. Louis region’s most popular shopping, dining and entertainment districts.” Edwards, who founded Blueberry Hill in 1972, established and owns a variety of Loop attractions, including the St. Louis Walk of Fame, the Pageant, the Peacock Diner, and the Rooftop Terrace Bar.

sexual assault module in their member toolkit, this resource does not provide information for how a chapter should move forward if a member is accused of assault.

Some national organizations have information that directly contradicts the federal laws set by Title IX.

St. Louis Public Radio reported that neither Edwards nor the University disclosed the price of the transaction.

“I’ve always had a good relationship with Washington University because I respect them so much, what they mean to St. Louis, not just the Delmar Loop,” Edwards said to St. Louis Public Radio. “Little by little, over a period of time it evolved, and we decided and agreed on which properties to sell at this point in time and which ones not to.”

The St. Louis Dispatch said that, despite being exempt from certain property taxes, the University will continue paying taxes on commercial properties leased to businesses in the area.

In a comment to StudLife, Vice Chancellor for Marketing and Communications Julie Flory wrote that businesses acquired by the University will continue to operate as usual. While there are no plans for due to allegations, that decision would be against Title IX policy and could possibly be countermanded. the vacant properties at this time, it is possible that some may be used as space for administrative offices. informally handle accusations without going to Title IX, sometimes at the request of the survivor.

“With the Loop’s proximity to the Danforth Campus, we have a particular interest in preserving the vibrant nature of the area, as well as ensuring that small businesses — especially those that are small familyor minority-owned — are able to continue to operate and serve the community, including our students, faculty and staff who enjoy the many benefits of the Loop,” Flory wrote.

With the transaction finalized late last year, Edwards plans to use the sale to help him invest in more projects, including Magic Mini Golf, which is set to open later this year.

“I love creating places where people can put their troubles behind them for a couple hours and just enjoy life before they go back to whatever they had been going through,” he said.

According to a junior on the executive board of one fraternity, who wished to remain anonymous and will be referred to as ‘Member A,’ his organization has dealt with two of these situations during his time as a member.

“Having Title IX involved is a significant step,” Member A said. “Truthfully, a lot of victims don’t want to go to Title IX, [they] don’t want to go through that process because it’s incredibly re-traumatizing.”

Sexual assault is a statistically underreported crime; only 12% of sexual assaults on college campuses are reported. In a 2019 survey, responses from 3,810 undergraduate students at WashU indicated that 17.3% of students experienced a sexual encounter that was non-consensual, coerced, or did not include ongoing active consent.

However, the University Sexual Harassment Investigation Board reported just 61 Title IX investigations between 2013 and 2022, 34 of which ended with the accused individual being found responsible.

“We had a situation where someone came to us and said, ‘One of your members did this, I don’t want it to go to Title IX, please do something,’” Member A said. “We have an obligation to do something about this, and it was instantaneously clear that what she was saying was completely true.”

He explained that in order to respect her wishes, the fraternity severed all relationships with him until he eventually dropped the organization of his own accord weeks later.

Title IX Coordinator Jessica Kennedy explained that this method of resolving the conflict is not a direct violation of Title IX policy.

“As long as they don't force that person to leave, they're allowed to ask, they are allowed to appeal to their desire to protect the fraternity or the a cappella group or whatever it may be,” Kennedy said. “They can certainly appeal to that, but they're not allowed to remove that student.”

Member A recounted a time when both the fraternity’s efforts to go to Title IX and to convince the member to leave were unsuccessful. This process was made more difficult by the lack of guidance provided by his fraternity’s national organization.

“We had a situation where there was a @metoowashu post about a member of our frat and it was clearly identifiable to us who this person was, so we went to Title IX and said, ‘Look, this happened,’” Member A said. “It was a very vague post, and Title IX said they couldn’t do anything about it.”

Since its inception in 2020, the Instagram account @metoowashu has posted nearly two hundred survivor stories in which individuals post their experiences with sexual assault, harassment, abusive relationships, and other interpersonal violence.

According to Member A, the survivor story on Instagram was about the then-acting president of his fraternity, which led members of the organization to reach out to the national organization for guidance about how to handle the situation and remove the president from his position.

“Nationals said we could impeach him, but if the impeachment essentially resembles in any shape or form impeaching him for the post on Instagram that accused him of assault, you could be sued,” Member A said.

He also added that Title IX told their organizations that if the fraternity did an internal review to kick someone out, they could be liable to a lawsuit if that individual was aware of their legal rights as someone facing an assault allegation.

Member A explained that even though many members of the fraternity made attempts to socially isolate the former president and convince him to drop, the accused perpetrator believed that leaving his position would be an admission of guilt and remained in his role until his graduation one semester later.

In January of 2021, @ metoowashu posted a list of ten fraternities who had members with some type of active sexual assault allegations against them. Member A’s fraternity had one allegation against it; he stated that he knew it was alluding to the @washumetoo post alleging the president at the time had committed assault.

“There’s nothing I can do about it because of the rules, that was the unfortunate reality of it,” Member A said. “Many people tried to tell him to drop, but he wouldn’t.”

Additionally, many fraternities have national bylaws that provide very few or even contradictory guidelines for handling assault accusations.

For example, Alpha Delta Phi’s website offers current versions of their constitution and bylaws, neither of which mention the words “sexual assault” in any capacity. While the organization has a

For example, the 2021 edition of the Sigma Phi Epsilon National Grand Chapter Bylaws states that if a chapter member is alleged to have been involved in a sworn declaration or official notice of an interpersonal violence incident, the student must be suspended until all University, police, and legal investigations into the matter are completed. A fraternity would be violating Title IX if they followed these Bylaws.

Similarly, the Alpha Epsilon Phi 2021-22 Chapter Operations Guide states, “In most situations, the Brother should be suspended until the case has been resolved. This is for their benefit as well as the chapter’s benefit.”

The Sigma Chi governing laws also include that their Chapter and Membership Accountability Committee has the authority to suspend members for the duration of a University disciplinary investigation.

As part of Campus Life’s efforts to explain Title IX to student organizations and offer guidelines for conduct, the department released a document, in late 2020, called “Student Group Guidance for Member Expectations and Accountability.”

The multi-part document lays out potential methods of creating rules and communicating them, including establishing expectations for members and creating accountability plans.

While it is not required for student organizations to submit outlines of their plans to the school, the document includes information about Title IX policy that groups are required to follow, including regulations on imposing punishments or sanctions to members accused of assault.

However, the mechanisms of enforcement begin to blur when looking at the informal ways in which fraternities actually handle assault allegations.

According to Kennedy, if a fraternity were to explicitly make an internal decision to require a member to leave an organization

“That would be in violation of the recommendations that we have made, so we would negate that sanction, whatever it may be, but it would be up to the respondent student to let us know that was going on,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy explained, though, that when it comes to scenarios that are more difficult to define, such as members of a fraternity socially isolating someone until they themselves make the decision to drop, there are fewer enforcement mechanisms available.

“We don't dictate how members treat each other, and so if a person were to be isolated and treated poorly by the fellow members of their organization, unless any of that rises to a policy violation, that's not something we would take action on,” Kennedy said.

When it comes to Title IX policy issues like these, Kennedy explained that it is difficult to provide a generic answer because much of the decision making is reliant on the context of each individual case.

Kennedy emphasized that Title IX is only able to carry out its procedures in situations where someone brings an incident to their attention, referring to both instances of sexual assault and potential scenarios where a fraternity may violate official sanction policy.

In many situations, the exact circumstances are unknown to those outside of the fraternity or to Title IX based on how the fraternity chooses to communicate that information.

During the fall semester, the fraternity Sigma Nu took to Instagram to post a statement about another social media post alleging an instance of interpersonal violence against one of their members.

On November 9, @ metoowashu posted a survivor story where an individual detailed an experience having sex with her former boyfriend, a Sigma Nu brother, for the first time. She wrote that their boyfriend claimed to be STD negative before having sex but later revealed he was aware he had oral herpes at the time, which the survivor then contracted.

Five days later, Sigma Nu took to Instagram with a statement from the chapter in a post that has since been deleted. Directly referencing the survivor story in question, the statement revealed that the perpetrator was no longer a member of the fraternity, without clarifying if he was told to leave or voluntarily dropped.

The statement read, “The Sigma Nu Gamma Omicron Chapter does not condone any form of sexual misconduct, violence, or harassment. We also will not protect those who commit acts contrary to our values as a fraternity and as students at WashU. This past week Chapter Leadership learned of a member’s inexcusable conduct and can now say that he is no longer affiliated with our organization.”

Member A said that he believed the language of the post indicated that the fraternity asked the member in question to drop, although he had no personal knowledge of the situation.

“The post says that the member is ‘no longer affiliated with our organization.’ What that means is that [Sigma Nu] said to someone, ‘We don’t have the power to kick you out, but you need to leave’,” Member A said. Looking forward, Member Z expressed a desire for a better system, while admitting he is unsure what that system would look like.

“I definitely think [the updates to] Title IX significantly limit how the frats deal with their issues, but I don't think it's the worst idea to have someone overseeing how the frats are doing them because I don't trust frats to do it alone,” Member Z said.

“I just think Title IX doesn’t work well the way it is.”

Kennedy emphasized that the Title IX office serves as a resource for student organizations that are unsure about their guidelines or who are facing issues with sexual harassment or assault within their groups.

“We're happy to work with groups with educational efforts, talking to them about why it's important to address these issues head-on and make sure that they're reporting things, but also how to prevent these things from happening in their houses or social events.”