Where do they go to get their reputation back?

The Virginia Alpha Chapter of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at the University of Virginia has been reinstated effective immediately, University and Phi Kappa Psi national officials announced today.

The reinstatement resulted after consultation with Charlottesville Police Department officials, who told the University that their investigation has not revealed any substantive basis to confirm that the allegations raised in the Rolling Stone article occurred at Phi Kappa Psi…

Last Tuesday, Sullivan authorized new addenda to the University’s Fraternal Organization Agreement that were submitted by the four student-led Greek leadership councils. The new addenda outline specific practices that each fraternity and sorority will put in place to enhance the safety of their members and guests. Sullivan also announced the immediate reinstatement of all social activities, with the stipulation that the FOA addenda must be signed by the president or designee from each fraternity and sorority by Jan. 16. Phi Kappa Psi became the first fraternity to sign the Inter-Fraternity Council’s FOA addendum on Jan. 8.

Ah, so that’s where they go — proving their good faith by becoming the very first signatory to UVA’s new code of conduct for frats. Among the changes: Limiting the types of alcohol that can be served at parties, maintaining guest lists, and requiring some members of the frat to remain sober just in case, I guess, someone needs to intervene to stop the sort of gang rape that never actually happened to Jackie. Some people will knock them for signing a statement like that when they’re innocent. After all, why help the university save face when its dopey president suspended the entire Greek system at UVA after the Rolling Stone story came out, before there was a scrap of evidence collected by police to substantiate Jackie’s claims? You know why, though: There’ll be no convincing the local SJWs that Phi Kappa Psi is innocent, no matter how obviously phony Jackie’s narrative now seems and regardless of the fact that they’ve now been cleared by police. Like I said the last time I wrote about this, the “privileged” are always guilty of something even if they’re not guilty of the particular thing you’re accusing them of. The Phi Kappa Psi house has already been vandalized, with no regrets by the lead suspects even after the Rolling Stone story fell apart. Adopting the new code of conduct is PKP’s way of trying to coexist on a campus where they’ll always be under suspicion from bien-pensants.

Which is exactly how Rolling Stone author Sabrina Rubin Erdely wanted it. Here’s a tidbit from mid-December that I missed at the time but seems worth re-reading now that the frat’s been exonerated. She didn’t set out to write a story about a horrendous rape that was callously ignored by the victim’s campus community. She set out to write a story about a horrendous rape perpetrated by a frat, specifically, that was callously ignored by the victim’s campus community. And so obvious was that agenda that it shone through even when interviewing other rape victims for the story:

In an interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter, Alex Pinkleton, a rape survivor and U-Va. student, said of Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who wrote “A Rape on Campus“: “I think she had her heart in the right place. She wanted to bring light to this issue and it is a prevalent issue at U-Va. and on campuses across the nation,” said Pinkleton when asked to comment on Erdely. “However, she did have an agenda and part of that agenda was showing how monstrous fraternities themselves as an institution are and blaming the administration for a lot of these sexual assaults.”

Fraternities were important to Erdely, as Pinkleton, a friend of Jackie’s, told Stelter: “I didn’t like that it seemed like she was looking for a story that had to be at a fraternity,” she said. As “A Rape on Campus” noted, fraternity men are three times more likely to rape than non-fraternity men, according to studies.

Even so, Pinkleton said, “As a reporter, you can’t be like an advocate and support a story and listen to it and think everything is true and then report on it without trying to figure out if it’s true. My job as an advocate [for sexual assault survivors] was never to question Jackie’s story or question the details, because I didn’t need to. But the role that she’s in as a reporter, she needed to do that.”

How biased must you be as a reporter to leave a rape survivor/activist thinking, “You know, maybe you should be a little more skeptical about this story”?

Exit question via Reason’s Robby Soave, one of the early skeptics of Jackie’s allegations who was naturally viciously criticized for it: When does UVA President Teresa Sullivan apologize? She’s the closest thing to a Nifong that we have in this case, yet there are no regrets in today’s press release by the university. I realize the new campus standard for sexual assault claims is “guilty until proven innocent” but Phi Kappa Psi has, for all intents and purposes, now been proved innocent. Where’s the administration’s remorse for suspending fraternities for two months?