The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
University of South Carolina students punished for parties,
The University of South Carolina took disciplinary action 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, South Carolina.
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.
Bob Caslen, the university’s president, admonished the actions of the students in a message to the university’s faculty and staff that was to be sent out Tuesday morning. Part of the message was provided to The New York Times.
“Our total number of active cases is larger than we expected at this point, and some student behavior off campus is both disappointing and unacceptable,” Caslen wrote.
There were 553 active cases of the virus among students as of Aug. 27, according to the university, which has 35,364 students enrolled at its main campus in Columbia.
The university, the largest in South Carolina, joins a growing list of higher learning institutions that have been troubled by clusters of new virus cases during the first few weeks that students returned to campus. Several of them have attributed outbreaks to students’ parties that defied mask requirements and social distancing rules.