The Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) fraternity at Wesleyan University has answered the school's mandate they go co-ed with a lawsuit.
According to the Hartford Courant, the fraternity filed the 21-page sex discrimination suit at a Middletown, Conn. Superior Court. Michael Roth, Wesleyan's president, announced in Sept. that all the school's residential fraternities had three years to start accepting students of all genders.
Wesleyan fielded two lawsuits over rape allegations at their fraternities, though neither case involved DKE. In their lawsuit against the school, current DKE members and alum accused Wesleyan of using discriminatory and deceptive practices. The fraternity also said they were planning on going coed anyway.
"I think discrimination is wrong no matter what form it takes," Terence Durkin, a junior at Wesleyan and the school's DKE chapter president, told the Courant. "They are willing to allow other diverse groups to live with the same sex. They are singling us out as a fraternity on campus."
He said the fraternity was in the early stages of discussing a merge with a Wesleyan sorority in Jan., when the school demanded more concrete plans by Feb. 6.
"You are left with the impression that no matter what [the fraternity] did, the plan was not going to be good enough," Kathleen Eldergill, an attorney representing DKE, told the Courant.
Wesleyan requires its undergraduates to live on campus, the Associated Press reported, so the school's residential fraternities have that added importance. A Wesleyan spokesperson told the AP Thursday the school is preparing a formal response to the lawsuit.
"We were just shocked and surprised," Durkin said. "We were not too pleased with the original mandate, but we knew we had three years to work with it.
"We were working with the university to make these steps. Unfortunately, they completely changed their minds, seemingly to get us off campus."
