COLLEGE PARK, Md. — As the song goes - you've gotta fight for your right to party. But attorneys for fraternities and sororities at the University of Maryland say they were fighting for much more than that: they were fighting to protect students' rights.
"We were not, and students were not just going to stand by if other institutions did this," Wynn Smiley, CEO of Alpha Tau Omega and spokesperson for the Fraternity Forward Coalition, told WMAR-2 News.
Rewind to last March - the the University issued a cease-and desist order, indefinitely suspending all new member activities and all social events involving alcohol, as well as a "no contact order" between current members and pledges.
This came after serious hazing allegations at multiple unnamed fraternities, an uptick in visits to the campus health and counseling center by Greek life members during the month of February, and two sorority pledges being taken to the hospital for drinking too much around the same time. School officials said the blanket cease-and-desist order was necessary to keep students safe while they investigated.
Smiley and attorneys for some of the fraternities said not only was this an overreaction, it was constitutional overreach.
Four fraternities filed a lawsuit against top university administrators, saying their rights to free speech and free association had been violated.
"We work all the time with host institutions that get reports of hazing and we very quickly, typically, can get to the bottom of whatever is happening without having to suspend an entire system. And we offered that to the University initially and they had no interest in doing that," Smiley said.
Instead, the university hired an outside consulting firm to conduct more than 175 interviews with students.
Attorneys for the frats sounded the alarm, claiming that investigators were searching students' cell phones, and weren't allowing them to have a lawyer present. The University has denied those claims.
"The interesting thing in this case is even after the investigation, even after the dragnet of bringing hundreds of students in for individual interrogation, none of the initial rumors had any merit," Smiley said.
Two days after the lawsuit was filed, the Greek life suspension was lifted.
But the fraternities' attorneys didn't drop the suit; a sorority and several anonymous sorority members joined the suit too. They wanted a judge to formally declare that the university's actions were unconstitutional, to prevent something similar from happening again.
Fast forward to now - the judge has instead dismissed the case as moot, saying it's highly unlikely that the "storm of events" that prompted the order will reoccur.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman wrote in her opinion, "That crisis is over, and Greek life continues at the University [...] But the chances that the circumstances that prompted the University to issue the Order in March 2024 will recur are extremely unlikely. To find this case is not moot, the Court would have to presume that the IFC and PHA organizations will repeat the same misconduct and will refuse to respond to the University’s request for information about the allegations. The Court will not make that presumption."
"The judge could have said - the University has every right to do exactly what they did. She didn't say that," Smiley told WMAR-2 News. "She simply that, well the plaintiffs have already gotten what they asked for, and the University has indicated they're not going to do anything like that again so I think that that there's no reason to go forward. We see that as a victory as well."
But Smiley and attorneys for the Greek organizations had previously made the argument in court documents that the University was publicly celebrating its decision to suspend Greek life, so they had every reason to fear it happening again. Patricia Perillo, the vice president for student affairs stated in an interview last year that they believed they were "going to set a model for what universities can and should do when they learn about allegations."
Smiley is now optimistic that won't be the case going forward at other schools.
"We've gotten feedback from universities across the country that they have no intention of adopting this as any kind of a model," he said.
UMD sent the following statement to WMAR-2 News: "The University is pleased with the ruling, in which the federal court granted the University's Motion to Dismiss, and dismissed all of the fraternities' claims in the case. The University of Maryland will continue to prioritize the health, safety and well-being of our students and community."
A spokesperson also pointed us to this information on its website about the new "Fraternity and Sorority Transformation Initiative," which includes working groups and an advisory board made up of students, staff, and alumni to address health and safety concerns that the schools says were revealed during last year's investigation.