Another School, Another Mass Fraternity Suspension
 

San Diego State has suspended all 14 IFC fraternities. This happened at the beginning of Homecoming Weekend.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com...cial-gathering

Schools will keep doing this until they are sued and have to pay someone.

This report says the kid fell out of his bunk bed.

https://www.8newsnow.com/news/14-fra...student-death/

A better idea would be for the fraternities to change their behaviour and then no one would get suspended.

We've been asking that of fraternities since they've existed. Why think that 18-21 year olds of this generation are suddenly going to be different/better?

Because I keep hoping your alums would get the message

Wait.......what? A drunk man falls out of a 6-ft high bunk bed. His female friend "put him back in bed" and then checked on him the next morning? How in the world did one young woman get a drunk man back into his bed, getting him 6ft back up off the ground? Was she alone with him or did someone help her lift him up off the ground? Even if she placed him back in the lower bed, that's still an effort. Did she witness his fall out of bed? Did she see or hear him hit his head on the way down? Did she not decide to call 911 or for an R.A. or somebody?

The original news article says he was injured at a fraternity event. Was he injured there or in his room? I don't understand the facts surrounding this situation.

What's that supposed to mean? Our alumni are responsible for ensuring that 18-21 year old adults refrain from irresponsible alcohol use? Where has that ever been accomplished? Scientology?

It's bad enough that NPC groups push all of the liability for college partying onto fraternities, but to tut tut us about our alumni not getting the message is a bit beyond the pale. If all fraternal organizations adopted the alcohol policies of the NPC, I doubt many of our organizations would be around in 10 years time.

Alcohol isn't our raison d'etre, but it's part of college life and has been in U.S./European culture since college life existed.

The banning of kegs led to the use of hard liquor and thereby a doubling of the death rate in Greek organizations. Adults always forget about the unintended consequences of their actions. "Banning" hard liquor hasn't worked, as bans frequently do not.

We haven't pushed it off on the fraternities. We've just said not in the house. And I pledged in 1963 and we didn't have it back then so this isn't a recent event. There are plenty of NPC events where alcohol is served. You just have them elsewhere, with chaperones, bartenders, etc., Will it stop everything? No -but far more of it than today.

I didn't say it was a new thing. NPC groups would suffer in terms of membership if fraternal groups adopted NPC alcohol policies.

My point was that while you want to blame alumni for not getting the message, we know exactly what the issue is. Sigma Nu tried to pass an alcohol free housing initiative in the early 2000s. It was overwhelmingly defeated at our Grand Chapter. It's a non-starter, never going to happen.

We use education by mandating members take the alcohol.edu course every single year (maybe every semester?)

No amount of education, well-meaning rules, or threats is going to stop 18-21 year old people from overconsuming and doing stupid things. It's a force of nature.

What you can control at the end of the day is how well your organization reacts when someone does the stupid thing. That's where alumni can be helpful. It's also where alumni can be very unhelpful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keTbsSfMOdI&t=47s [whether that was allowed by alumni or perpetuated, it wins that category forever].

But blaming alums for 18-21 year old kids doing amazingly terrible things? Nope.

Oh I don't blame the kids. And maybe your group structure is the problem. Councils of NPC groups passed the no alcohol. It's not a constitutional issue for us -it's policy and that's Council driven....for the most part.

The young man from SDSU has died. Condolences to his family on what surely is a heartbreaking loss.

Article: https://www.10news.com/news/local-ne...ity-event-dies

Pick your poison.

Either throw your hands up in the air and just say 'Well, there's nothing we can do" and let the alcohol abuse continue, or get sued out of existence and / or get kicked off campus by school admins because your org is not taking control of the problem.

NPHC had a history of hazing problems - people were getting seriously harmed and some died. We were faced with dealing with the problem or literally getting sued out of existence. We made the choice - zero tolerance on hazing. Members and chapters caught hazing are disciplined (suspended, expelled).

I know that in SGR all undergrad sorority functions must have chapter advisers present.

My point is that it all depends on how IFC fraternities want to handle the problem.

If *you, IFC member*, aren't going to take control and deal with this, others will and they won't be so nice about it.

My chapter has never had a hazing problem--and that is an interesting discussion as we were chartered in 2002. We don't have a hazing problem because we haven't ever had members with a tradition of hazing. Looking at our larger, more traditional chapters, one can only speculate now, but when I was an active attending conventions, spending time with guys from other chapters, I'd say some definitely hazed.

This is pretty much the same for NIC (and former NIC groups) but YMMV as far as how responsive an HQ is.

How do you define a sorority function? I can see chapter advisers being present for initiation. But 6 of your members and their significant others and a few randos want to get together,and mayhem ensues, was that a chapter function?

Structurally, we are different than NPC and other conferences. The NIC does not govern. They do not legislate. They mostly represent our combined interests to outsiders by doing things like lobbying. What they cannot do is tell Sigma Nu we have to have fully alcohol free housing. It isn't their place.

IFC is a different group at each school at many schools, NPHC affiliated groups and MCGLOs are members of the IFC. SAE and Lambda Chi are not members of the NIC, but I'm sure most of their chapters still participate in their local IFC.

I, an alumnus, am not a member of any IFC. When I was chapter adviser, I did not answer to or have really any dealings with our IFC.

And I think we largely are taking care of business. I think you have a few schools with strong traditions of hazing and partying that are hard to change because those groups still have the same alums coming back to teach about how things were in the good 'ol days.

I think you'll see these trends are mostly occurring in chapters which have had these trends. Largely, newer chapters whose early alumni take care to isolate themselves from bad traditions are going to have a better trajectory.

Unfortunately, there's too much money in those mainline Division I school chapters to do what needs to be done in a lot of cases and let them sit dormant for 20 years or so.

I substituted hazing for alcohol abuse as an example of how the governing body of a GLO had to tackle an issue that was threatening the functioning of the entire international organization.

Again, SGR had a similar problem with older alums coming back to their undergrad chapters to teach them about pre-MIP pledging. To deal with the problem our IHQ revoked chapter charters and suspended / expelled members. Ultimately members started getting the message.

Our advisers are expected to be in attendance at any and all sanctioned chapter events - recruiting, initiation, parties, and fundraisers. If our undergrad members are going to have a function in the name of SGR an adviser must be there. Period.

You can give up 20 years and come back as a better chapter or you can give up the 100-150 years of existence.

Alcohol abuse isn't a threat to the entire organization for us. It's something which sometimes becomes tragic, but in many of these cases, those who drink assume the risk of their drinking. It's a free choice. Free choices come with consequences.

And again, I gave the hypo of 6 of your members getting together with their significant others and some randos. Is that an SGR event? What an "event" consists of has been a real problem as some would define an event as a gathering of 2 or more members.

That's a little much to be placing on the shoulders of alumni volunteers.

Alcohol abuse is a threat to the entire organization if it is being done in the name of a fraternity event. John Q. Public will not split hairs over whether or not a fraternity is IFC, NIC, NPHC, MCGLO. John Q. Public hears one term, "Greek Life". GLOs are all the same to them. For John Q. Public to hear that a young man died as a result of alcohol abuse at a fraternity event is enough for the public to pass judgement on Greek Life, a very negative judgement.


And please, you are too knowledgeable to be so flippant. Young men have died. It was last year or so that a young man died at the TAMU Sigma Nu fraternity house because of a drug overdose. So please, don't be so flippant about this.

https://www.kbtx.com/content/news/AM...390813801.html


If it is 6 of our members just hanging out with some randos whatever happens is on them. If it is 6 of our members at a sanctioned chapter event with some randos, then that falls on the sorority.

The way my org is structured is the Graduate Chapter (Alumni chapter) advises an undergraduate chapter. If an Alumna wants to volunteer to work with an undergraduate chapter, she must do so by being in good financial standing with the sorority at the local, regional and international levels. She must be elected by the sponsoring Graduate chapter members to function as an undergraduate adviser. She must go through the most current training of policies and procedures to advise an undergraduate chapter. We have a very structured way of managing our undergraduate chapters.

Just because one of our members may want to volunteer, she just can't do that. She must go through the proper channels. So for us (and other NPHC member orgs) there is serious responsibility placed on undergraduate chapter advisers. Everyone knows the structure so everyone abides by the rules. If you don't you get kicked out of the org. Rogue members (be they undergrad or grad) are not worth the risk.

To be honest, the threshold is even higher for some NPHC orgs.

You could be disciplined even if it's not a sanctioned event, if a reasonable person would think it was a gathering of members.

True.

And yet we still recruit well. The facts of the individual event matter. The current incident is under investigation. If it's true that a member drank heavily and fell out of a bunk bed sustaining a serious brain injury, and that he was assisted by non-members who didn't bring his condition to anyone's attention, then this is a tragedy for sure, but the fraternity isn't to blame.

Well, that was not last year, it was in 2016, and that chapter is dormant as far as I can tell. Drugs are an individual choice, and can happen in any chapter regardless of alumni involvement. If you think your chapter is immune, it is only a matter of time until you find out how wrong you are.

I didn't say it was sanctioned. It's 6 members hanging out with their significant others and some randos. I mention this because that's the kind of event which despite the chapter adviser having no inkling this is happening, something happens, and suddenly the school calls it an event of the organization due to overbroad definitions of what an event is.

Agreed here. So what do you do with long-time alums who come back for whatever event and share with the actives all of the brutal stuff which used to happen and scorn the undergrads for being paper members? Just boot 'em and to hell with them?

Okay, Kevin. If you want to split hairs.....:rolleyes:

A GLO can have 8,745,194 outstanding chapters and it is always that one bad chapter that people remember.

Then you need to have better communication with your undergrads. We stress that when you wear chapter letters / paraphernalia you are representing the org - we stress Sigma Image. We make the effort to teach that to our members - grad and undergrad. It is a very small world in NPHC orgs - somebody somewhere will know you or know of you. It won't take long for your business to get out. It is something like 3 degrees of separation. There is still a feeling of shame when you embarrass a NPHC org.



Yes.

https://www.sgrho1922.org/SGRho/Memb...c-869d96cc832c

Yikes. This is fantastic.

I'm not sure what further action could be taken against a chapter which had multiple members convicted of drug offenses and voluntarily relinquished their charter. That's well past double secret probation. I'm not sure how any amount of alumni training is going to completely eliminate drugs.

And honestly, until you posted that, I didn't know our A&M chapter had any problems. One of their alums used to post here frequently. I hung out with their president at the '01 college of chapters. He was a good guy.

We have an internal database which would show member status, but it's not open to the public and we don't really take action against alumni. I'm not sure there's even a vehicle to do that 2 years post-graduation. I really like that public list.

While NPC groups seem to be a little more forgiving,I can assure you we expel alums as well as collegians.

Dylan Hernandez's cause of death has been released - "According to the San Diego County Medical Examiner, the student died of 'blunt force injuries of head.' The death has been ruled an accident."

Article: https://www.10news.com/news/local-ne...ity-event-dies

Falling out of bunk beds happens more than we think. Trying to link this to the Fraternity system is a stretch.

My sister rolled out of her bunk bed at camp when she was a kid...she was taken to the hospital and treated for a broken arm, and she also chipped off 1/3 of her front tooth. Fortunately, she had her arm around her pillow when she fell out, so her head was cushioned by the pillow when she hit the concrete floor.

Condolences to Dylan's family and friends; this is tragic.

There was a whole article about falls: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...nities/357580/

It's weird how often this happens on college campuses.

While the article is heavily biased against Greek organizations, there's some amazing RM information in it that is, pun intended, quite sobering. It's a good read for anyone wondering what the consequences are when dire things happen (parents, students, advisors).

That article is a must-read, IMHO.

It's just pearl clutching. We are organizations of which the largest service we provide is housing for 18-21 year old students who are prone to doing dumb things and falling out of bunks. Are our organizations going to avoid liability when they can? Sure. That's what organizations do.

It keeps happening, though- these falls. Not even from a liability angle- but as brothers and sisters, how can we protect members? I think it's a valid concern.