Draft+Overview+Kylie+Harrington

This study aims to explore and advance understanding of the culture of fraternities and sororities, and whether or not those cultures perpetuate rape culture. It will be studied to see whether or not this rape culture is associated with certain policies and procedures that fraternities and sororities have in place and whether or not there is any correlation between the two. This will be accomplished primarily through interviews and surveys with members of fraternities and sororities, compared and contrasted with the policies of those fraternities. These surveys will also be used in conjunction with observation of educational sessions and those observations will be compared with the survey data as well. The surveys will be primarily administered through online means, while in-person interviews will be conducted to supplement this data. This approach will provide the largest breadth of data in order to get an overall view of the culture of fraternities and sororities, and then individual cultures will be viewed and analyzed to create a view of the overall culture of Greek life at RPI. The data will be analyzed and compared to existing literature about rape culture and evaluated based on standards collected from a varieties of literatures. This will be the first half of a full-year thesis that will conclude three years of study as a dual science, technology and society studies and management major.