Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

AEPi house at Northwestern under investigation

aepi

The AEPi house at 584 Lincoln Ave in Evanston. Image by Via Google Maps

Alpha Epsilon Pi at Northwestern University is under investigation after several people said they were drugged at the fraternity house without their consent.

An email from the university sent to students and faculty Friday said it had received multiple reports of drugging after a gathering on campus at 584 Lincoln St. in Evanston, which is the address of the school’s AEPi chapter. AEPi’s national mission statement bills itself as “the world’s Jewish fraternity.”

On Saturday, after receiving a separate allegation of drugging without consent at nearby Sigma Alpha Epsilon, a non-Jewish house, the school suspended all Greek Life social activities effective immediately.

Drugging without consent constitutes aggravated assault in Illinois.

“The University is investigating this report and continues to investigate separate, similar reports it received on Sept. 24,” read Saturday’s campus-wide email, which was signed by dean of students Mona E. Dugo and the school’s chief of police.

The school did not state whether members of AEPi were accused nor when the gathering at the house occurred. It also did not state whether local police were separately investigating the allegation.

Northwestern, which is based in Evanston, just north of Chicago, is perennially ranked among the country’s top 10 universities and has long drawn a large population of Jewish students. According to Hillel.org, which compiles data on Jewish student enrollment at American universities, there are about 1,200 Jewish undergraduate students at Northwestern this year, about 14% of the student body.

AEPi, which was founded at New York University in 1913 by 11 Jewish students, now has 170 chapters at universities around the world, according to the website of its headquarters. And while the organization and its chapters are open to non-Jewish members, the national website’s banner says it is “Developing Leadership for the Jewish Community.”

Its chapters have been the site of several sexual assault accusations in the last five years, including a rape allegation that involved unwanted drugging at the College of Charleston in 2016, and 12 separate rape allegations at the University of St. Andrews in 2020.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.