Harvard Law School is similarly being investigated this year by the Office for Civil Rights after New England School of Law Adjunct Professor Wendy J. Murphy filed a complaint against the school, arguing that its policies for dealing with sexual assault cases were inefficient and unclear, and furthermore relied on too high a standard of evidence to begin proceedings. The Law School deferred comment to OCR in April.

ENFORCING 21

Alcohol on college campuses poses a number of legal hurdles for university officials.

At universities nation-wide, underage drinking is a fact of life that administrators must confront as part of their attempts to keep university policies within legal bounds.

Lake explained that the drinking age—which was raised to 21 across the nation in 1986—has often been used as more of a “speed limit” than a standard of perfect compliance. On university campuses the attitude has been one of general denial, Lake said.

And—like the investigations at Yale and the Law School, which have the potential to reshape sexual assault policy—changing events in the past decade have provided an incentive for Harvard to look more closely at its own policies on underage drinking on campus.

In a 1997 case at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Scott S. Krueger, a freshman pledge at Phi Gamma Delta, shared a bottle of spiced rum with his big brother in the fraternity, drinking to the chorus of “Drink her down, drink her down, drink her down, down, down.”

By the end of the night, Krueger was in a coma with a blood alcohol content of 0.401, more than five times the legal limit to drive in Massachusetts. After 40 hours, he was pronounced dead.

In this case, the fraternity—rather than its members or MIT—was indicted on criminal charges of manslaughter.

The District Attorney in charge of the case, Ralph C. Martin II, said to reporters at the time that in determining the extent of Krueger’s personal responsibility, he took into consideration that the victim was both underage and a freshman in college.

Ultimately, prosecutors were unable to pursue the case after the fraternity disbanded.

In addition, MIT paid a $4.75 million settlement to Krueger’s family and created a $1.25 million scholarship in his name. The family’s lawyer said that they would have sued MIT if an agreement had not been reached.

After Krueger’s death, MIT altered its alcohol policies and its relationship with the Greek system in order to create a safer drinking environment.

“Our approach to alcohol education and policy ... were inadequate,” wrote MIT President Charles Vest in a letter to Krueger’s parents.

Over the past decade, the state of Massachusetts has become increasingly punitive in cases where individuals under 21 are found with alcohol, according to Jeffrey M. Sankey, a lawyer at the Boston-based law firm Dolan Connly, PC.