When Michael I. Kotlikoff sat down to record that video message, he was not just reading a list of policy changes into a camera. He was stepping into a moment that a lot of campuses know all too well—a moment when trust has cracked, when students are angry and scared, and when the institutions that are supposed to protect them have to look into the lens and say: we hear you. His words, plain and careful, promised three things: more transparency, stronger accountability for Greek organizations, and a real commitment to sexual assault prevention. Those are exactly the kinds of commitments that matter when a community is hurting. But they are also the kinds of commitments that have been made before, on campuses across the country, only to get lost in bureaucratic language and forgotten action plans. So the question people watching that video wanted answered was not just “what are you going to do?” It was “do you actually understand what we have been through?” And in that sense, Kotlikoff’s message was an acknowledgment—a rare, public acknowledgment that the old ways of handling things were not enough. He did not get defensive. He did not hide behind legal language. He named the issues. He took ownership on behalf of the university. And he laid out a direction. That matters. It matters to the first-year student who is trying to decide whether to rush a sorority or stay away. It matters to the parents who have read the news stories and are wondering if their child will be safe on campus. It matters to the survivors who have been waiting—sometimes for years—for an institution to say out loud that it believes them and will do better. A video cannot fix everything. But a video can be the first honest sentence in a long and necessary conversation. And that is what Kotlikoff’s message felt like: an invitation to begin.
Transparency is one of those words that gets thrown around so often it almost loses meaning. But in the context of a university, especially after a scandal or a series of troubling incidents, transparency is not a buzzword—it is a lifeline. When Kotlikoff promised greater transparency, he was talking about more than just posting annual reports or holding a press conference. He was talking about opening the doors to how decisions are made. That means telling the campus community what happens when a complaint is filed, what resources are available, what disciplinary actions are taken, and what lessons are learned. It means being honest about failures, not just celebrating successes. For students, transparency can feel like a rare currency. They are often the last to know when something goes wrong, even though they are the ones who suffer the consequences. They hear rumors. They see institutional silence. And they begin to believe that the university is more interested in protecting its reputation than protecting its people. By promising transparency, Kotlikoff was trying to reverse that assumption. He was saying: we are going to let you see how this works, even when it is uncomfortable. That kind of openness is hard. It requires university administrators to let go of control, admit uncertainty, and trust the community with imperfect information. But it is also the only way to rebuild trust that has been broken. Transparency means publishing data on sexual assault reports and Greek organization violations. It means creating clear pathways for students to report misconduct without fear of retaliation. It means following up with the people who come forward, so they do not feel like a case number in a filing cabinet. And it means making sure that the campus community knows what the university is doing about these issues in real time, not after a lawsuit or a media investigation forces the information into the light. In that sense, transparency is not just a policy choice. It is a moral one. It says that the university believes its community deserves to know the truth, even when the truth is uncomfortable.
The second promise—holding Greek groups accountable—is one that will make some people uncomfortable. Fraternities and sororities have a long and complicated history on American campuses. They have produced lifelong friendships, charitable giving, and alumni networks that open doors. But they have also, too often, been the site of dangerous behavior: hazing rituals that land students in the hospital, parties where alcohol flows without limits, and social hierarchies that make it easy for sexual misconduct to go unreported or be covered up. For a long time, many universities treated Greek organizations as if they were separate worlds—a campus within a campus—where national rules applied but local enforcement was weak. Kotlikoff’s video signaled an end to that. Accountability means that every Greek chapter must meet the same standards of conduct as any other student organization. It means that when a chapter violates the rules, it faces real consequences, including suspension or permanent removal from campus. It means creating a system where hazing is not treated as a secret tradition but as a violation that gets investigated and punished. And it means holding national organizations responsible too—because local chapters cannot change their culture if their national headquarters looks the other way. But accountability also has to be fair. Greek students are not the enemy. They are young people who joined something they believed would be a home, and many of them are just as frustrated by the toxic parts of their culture as administrators are. The goal is not to tear down Greek life. The goal is to reform it so that it can actually live up to its stated values. That means involving Greek students in the conversation, listening to their concerns, and creating opportunities for them to lead the change. It means rewarding chapters that do the right thing, not just punishing the ones that fail. And it means being consistent—so that no chapter, no matter how powerful or well-connected, can escape the consequences of its actions. That kind of accountability restores integrity. It tells the entire campus that the rules apply to everyone, and that being a member of a fraternity or sorority does not place you above the community’s standards.
Sexual assault prevention is the third pillar of Kotlikoff’s message, and it may be the most important of all. It is also the hardest to talk about, because it requires us to confront the uncomfortable truth that sexual violence happens on college campuses—and that it happens in environments that are supposed to be safe. Prevention is not just about telling students to be careful. It is not about posters with red flags or online trainings that everyone clicks through in five minutes. Real prevention is a cultural project. It means teaching young people about consent in a way that is honest and continuous, not just a thirty-minute module at the start of the year. It means challenging the attitudes and beliefs that allow sexual violence to flourish: the idea that some people are trying to get what they can get away with, the assumption that survivors are lying or exaggerating, the instinct to protect an athlete or a fraternity brother because he is popular or important. It means building a campus where bystanders have the skills and the courage to intervene, where friends do not laugh at jokes that diminish women, where parties are structured so that alcohol does not create vulnerability. It also means making sure that survivors have real support—counselors, confidential advocates, medical care, academic accommodations—so that coming forward is not a sacrifice of their education and their peace of mind. Kotlikoff did not get into all of those details in the video. But by naming sexual assault prevention as a priority, he was making a promise. He was saying that the university is not just going to react to individual incidents after they happen, but is going to work to stop them from happening at all. That is the kind of prevention that actually prevents. It changes the conditions that make sexual violence possible. And it sends a message to every student: you deserve to be safe here, and we are going to do everything we can to protect you.
Of course, announcing a commitment and actually living it out are two very different things. Anyone can stand in front of a camera and say the right words. The hard part comes after the video ends, when the commitments have to be turned into budgets, policies, personnel, and training. That is where the university will be tested. And that is where Kotlikoff’s message has to be judged not by what it promised, but by what it produces. There are real challenges ahead. Change is slow in institutions that have been doing things the same way for decades. There will be pushback from people who think the university is overstepping, from alumni who love the fraternity system and do not want to see it changed, from students who worry that new rules will ruin the social life they were looking forward to. There will be legal questions about due process, privacy rights, and how to balance fairness to the accused with support for survivors. There will be moments of frustration, when a report that was supposed to be handled quickly gets tangled in red tape, or when a survivor comes forward and the system fails them again. The important thing is that the university does not stop trying. It has to keep listening, keep learning, keep adapting. It has to bring in outside experts who can offer fresh eyes and honest assessments. It has to collect data and share it with the campus, even when the data shows that things are not getting better as fast as anyone would like. And it has to make room for students—especially survivors and their allies—to be part of the solution, not just the subject of it. The most successful reform efforts on other campuses have been collaborations, not top-down mandates. They have been built on relationships between administrators, students, faculty, and community organizations. They have been patient and relentless at the same time. Kotlikoff’s video was the beginning of that work. But a beginning is not a destination. The real work is in the details, in the follow-through, in the moments when no one is watching.
In the end, what Michael I. Kotlikoff said in that video was not just a list of policy goals. It was a vision of what the university wants to become: a place that is honest with itself, accountable to its community, and committed to the safety and dignity of every single student. That is a vision worth fighting for. But it will take more than one administrator to make it real. It will take every faculty member who notices that a student is struggling and reaches out. It will take every Greek leader who decides to say no to hazing, even when it would be easier to look away. It will take every student who steps up when they see something wrong, and every staff member who supports a survivor on their worst day. It will take a campus culture that values care over silence, courage over convenience, and justice over comfort. The video may not have been perfect. It may have been short, or too general, or exactly what a lawyer would write. But the words matter less than what happens next. We should hold the university to those words. We should ask tough questions. We should demand to see the policies, the training programs, the reports, and the numbers. We should celebrate every chapter that turns itself around, and we should speak out when someone falls back into the old patterns. And we should remember that change is not a single event. It is a slow, difficult, sometimes discouraging process. There will be setbacks. There will be days when it feels like nothing is working. But that is exactly when the promise has to be renewed. Michael I. Kotlikoff stood in front of the camera and made a commitment. Now it is up to all of us to make sure that commitment turns into something real. Because a university is not a building or an administration or a brand. It is the people who learn, teach, live, and sometimes struggle together. And when those people are safe, when they are heard, when they are treated fairly, everyone does better. That is the promise at the heart of his message. Let us hold them to it.
