University of South Carolina Cracks Down on Greek Houses for Virus Violations

[Buckeye_Democrat]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/us/usc-covid-restrictions-parties.amp.html

The University of South Carolina took disciplinary action on Monday against more than a dozen students and several Greek life organizations that administrators said recently hosted parties or large gatherings, as the number of cases of the coronavirus on campus rises.

The university announced that 15 students had been placed under interim suspension and that six Greek houses had been charged with student conduct violations stemming from the parties, which officials said violated emergency orders in Columbia, S.C.

Administrators did not release the names of the students. They also did not say which fraternities or sororities had been reprimanded.

The action came as nearly half of the fraternity and sorority chapter houses in the university’s Greek Village — nine of 20 — were placed under a 14-day quarantine after some students in those houses tested positive for the virus, administrators said...


... Hundreds of students were photographed carousing without masks at a crowded pool party on Saturday near the university, in an event that the Columbia Fire Department broke up, the newspaper The State reported.

“It was almost like Mardi Gras,” Aubrey D. Jenkins, the city’s fire chief, told the newspaper.

A spokesman for the university, Jeffrey G. Stensland, wrote in an email on Monday that the disciplinary action was not related to the pool party and that the city did not issue any citations in response to the party that the university could act upon.