Throughout the firestorm, EI has been referred to as an “underground fraternity,” but that term inappropriately lends it the cachet of a Skull & Bones-type elite society.

In reality, EI is an unrecognized collective that formed from the wreckage of American’s former Alpha Tau Omega chapter, which was shuttered in 2001 after a series of hazing and alcohol abuse incidents, according to this AU guide to greek life.

As another AU frat put in a recent Facebook post, EI is more like a "freelance club of douchebags pretending to be a fraternity.”

Still, the group continued to recruit on campus, and some members reported experiencing a tighter bond with fellow members because of the club’s clandestine operation. An EI house was responsible for 15 neighborhood complaints in a single year, with locals complaining of “loud parties, public urination, and trash.”

In 2006, the university threatened to disband EI, saying it posed threats to the campus community because “it does not follow any sort of bylaws and engages in questionable behavior such as hazing and excessive drinking.” (EI responded by saying that it does have bylaws.)

Over time, the group’s name became synonymous on campus with sexual assault, more as a heuristic than a known correlation.

"Let's get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI [fraternity] party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy's room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK?” wrote Alex Knepper, a columnist for the university’s paper, The Eagle, in a controversial op-ed in 2010. Knepper was castigated for seeming to justify date rape, but it was no accident that he named EI in his example.

"The EI frat on campus is notorious for its hardcore parties and which do end up with manipulating and drugging," he told ABC at the time.

We won’t know for months whether the EI members are actually guilty of the actions they brag about in the emails. Groupthink and posturing can be powerful forces within a clan of young men desperate to impress each other.

And there are plenty of other limitations here, too: Texting someone that a woman deserves to be raped isn’t illegal, though it could fall under AU’s policy against discrimination. Some of the men might have graduated, so the university would have little power over them now.

The EI emails reveal disturbing ideas, and possibly a history of disturbing acts. But “inappropriate behavior” and “fraternities,” at this point, go together like “beer” and “bong.” One in five women is a victim of “attempted or completed sexual violence” while in college, and fraternities are implicated in between 10 and 55 percent of all campus rapes.

Last year, the University of New Mexico revoked the charter of the school’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon after a party where an alleged sexual assault took place. Yale suspended a Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity chapter for a 2010 incident in which its pledges chanted “No means yes! Yes means anal!” in an initiation ritual. When the mother of a Florida State University student complained that her daughter was sexually battered at a frat there last year, “the police response was to inform the mother of a self-defense class for students,” according to the New York Times.