As the Rolling Stone article broke, telling of a grave sexual assault on a female University of Virginia student by seven of her male peers during a drunken party, university officials scrambled to offer a qualified response.

University President Teresa A. Sullivan's initial move was to suspend all fraternity-related activities on campus until January, while the school's rector, George Keith Martin, issued an apology to the "victim," her parents, and "all survivors of sexual assault."

By these actions, the university was accepting the troubling story as truth.

But now that the RS article has been quashed, those same university officials have turned 180 degrees and are bashing the journalism they once believed.

According to The College Fix, Martin addressed members of a board meeting on Friday and said:

Our tightly knit community has experienced the full fury of drive-by journalism in the 21st century —- of callous indifference to the truth and callous indifference to the consequences. Our great university’s reputation has been unfairly tarnished.

The New York Times reported on this change in view, stating that "university officials were careful not to strike a defensive tone" in the weeks following the article, but they did have their doubts about the account. However, they ignored their gut and instituted sweeping changes to combat what appeared to be rampant campus sexual assault.

They began by adding more lighting and more counselors, according to the NYT. President Sullivan also appointed a special committee whose goal was to change the "social culture" around campus, targeting the school's housing policies and its drug and alcohol use.

The Fix believes that Sullivan and Martin should be held "partly responsible" for the "full fury media" assault against their community once they accepted the story at face value:

But now they're miffed at all the media coverage. What a shame.