Pennsylvania college's fraternities disband amid protests

SWARTHMORE, Pa. (AP) — The only two fraternities at Swarthmore College have opted to disband amid outrage over years-old documents containing derogatory comments about women and the LGBTQ community and jokes about sexual assault.

Delta Upsilon and Phi Psi announced their decisions in separate Facebook posts Tuesday night.

"We cannot in good conscience be members of an organization with such a painful history," Phi Psi said in its statement.

Dozens of student protesters at Swarthmore, a highly selective, private liberal arts college in suburban Philadelphia, had occupied the on-campus Phi Psi house during a four-day sit-in, calling for both fraternities to be shut down and the buildings put to other uses. Swarthmore had suspended fraternity activity while it investigated. Its lone sorority wasn't affected.

Earlier this month, two campus publications, The Phoenix and Voices, released internal Phi Psi documents from 2012 to 2016 that they said were anonymously leaked. The redacted documents included jokes about sexual assault; derogatory comments about women, minorities and the LGBT community; videos and photos of sexual encounters where all parties might not have known they were being recorded and a reference to a "rape attic."

The authenticity of the documents has not been verified. The college said Wednesday it was reviewing them.

In an open letter posted Wednesday on the college's website, Swarthmore President Valerie Smith wrote that "we respect these students' decision" to disband the fraternities, "and we appreciate their strong condemnation" of the behavior described in the leaked documents.

Smith also condemned what she called "unsubstantiated attacks directed at individual students or student groups ... as too many students have recently endured," taking aim...