I must honestly admit that when I initially opened The Daily Collegian Thursday, I was quite shocked to see the fervor with which people had reacted against the Interfraternity Council's (IFC) "rape-free zone" initiative ("Readers react to story on IFC's plan to establish 'rape-free' zones," Feb. 12).

However, the deeper I read, the more I realized that readers were reacting mostly to the name of the initiative and had very little to say about the program itself. I will admit that when dealing with only the name, uninformed readers can easily joke about our houses being "rape-zones" or questioning when we were pro-rape. In retrospect, I can see the basic defect in the name chosen for our program.

I would, however, like to encourage readers to not immediately balk at the efforts the IFC is trying to make to improve the area. For me, the name of the initiative and the ability to place a sticker on your door are merely the first layer of a pro-active response that the IFC has taken to counteract the number of sexual assaults that occurred last semester. Unfortunately, since most of the parameters of the initiative were not reported, I cannot blame the readers of the Collegian for assuming that we will just put stickers up and hope that a serious change will occur.

The purpose of the initiative is actually two-fold. First, we hope to educate our fraternity members to both know what sexual assault is, and to help spot and prevent it inside our houses and in the Penn State community. We hope that proper education, through programs partnered with organizations such as the Center for Women's Studies, will ensure that all of our members are both aware of their own actions, as well as the actions of others. Secondly, we have added serious penalties to our constitution to deal with any fraternity member found guilty of sexual assault or rape. The IFC is committed to ending sexual assault and any incident related to our chapters will be dealt with the utmost severity.

Granted, skeptics may still find reasons to suggest that this program attempts to do what the law already does. But, we hope that by further educating our members, we can work together to create a safer environment.

In addition, by instituting stiff penalties for those who may be "bad apples," we can take positive steps to curb the increasing trend of sexual assault in this community by producing an increased level of accountability with and around our chapters.

Although fraternities may not have the best reputations, please support us, as we are intensely committed to taking pro-active steps to improving our campus community and will do whatever we can to continue taking positive steps forward.