Gistapo Style Campus Corporation
 

Our Fraternity is a substance free fraternity. Over spring break while only about three fo four people were in our house, our chapter adviser and our campus coporation president raided our rooms for substances. Some were found and some weren't. However, it was the belief by us that they needed to tell us that they were going to be doing a room search 48 hours before. DOes anyone know for sure what the law is on this. I know it is usually different in every state but anything would be appreciated.
Thanks

Jay Yedinak

P.s. They left our door unlocked as well.

It might have to do with who owns your house. Does it belong to your school, does the chapter itself own it, or do you have some sort of housing corporation? is your chapter house located on campus or off? are there any guidelines about searches listed in your organization's by-laws or in a housing agreement? and does your campus have any specified regulations about searches?
There usually has to be some sort of probable cause for a search, but things can get really tricky with orgs. and universities. I would answer those questions and then see if you can make any headway. Hope that helps!!!

Not necessarily. State by state it might differ. At my school they recently tried to put fraternity/sorority houses under the jurisdiction of DPS like the dorms are. In the dorms they can conduct searches whenever they feel like it. We voted unanimously against it and haven't heard anything else about it since.

Look and see what your housing contract says. As a Corp Board member, I have the right to search at any time day or night. However, I would never do it without another Corp Board member and a resident of the house----and there would have to be a pretty good reason to do it.

I remember from my school (this applied to the dorms, not the off campus fraternity houses) they warned us that our rooms can be searched during the winter break and spring break. They posted the notice on the bulletin board in the lobby, but they considered that the warning.

I don't have experience with off campus GLO houses, sorry!

Hah, I've had dealings ... although we're a private university so we're pretty much up shit creek without a paddle as they say....

in anycase ask a lawyer or http://law.freeadvice.com

Advice: Throw out the chapter advisor. The advisor is a brother, not an eye for the university to see everything you do, they should be loyal to you before the university. We did it and the University got royally pissed but we handled it this way:

If you know that throwing him out will anger someone high up on the todem pole.... the solution is to replace the advisor with someone HIGHER on the todem pole then the person that is going to get pissed off....... that way they arent allowed to be pissed off.... we got lucky and the person was not only higher on the todem pole but happened to be really really friendly and a great brother.

In your case, its a bit harder because the person you're dealing with is the Corp. President which is the highest you can get. If you can snag someone with alot of clout though, like someone who donates alot of money to the school, or a past University Corp president like we did, you'd be golden.

Another piece of advice would be to change your locks, or add a card key lock to your front door. We have lock systems at our school that work with our university IDs. Program the door lock to allow entrance from the advisor/other non-brothers that must have entrance rights at times which are convienent for you (which could be not at all, wink wink). Allow entrance by brothers at any time.

If university officials want to know why they can't get in--It's modern technology, so just play like the lock is goofy and someone programmed wrong....and you'll have it fixed, eventually (not).

I'm thinking this is some BS issue with the university being really petty and searching for booze in your house... I'm hoping this is nothing too serious.

(PS Please don't quote me in any responses you make, I can't delete your quotations)

Ok...I'm a little confused. Are these advisors representatives of the university or are they alumni of your chapter? If this house is owned by an alumni house corporation, check your lease agreement. State law also may figure into this, whether or not a landlord (the corp. president) can enter an individual room to do inspections without prior notification of the tenant.

More info
 

Okay so there are a couple questions out there...

1: Voting out the advisor would be voting out one our 9 national representativies that act as a governing body. Kinda like voting out of office a supreme court judge. It is possible though. However, from a national stand point we would be screwed. He is one of the highest people there is. There is no one higher really.

2: Our Campus corporation is run from a standpoint of renters. The house is independently owned by our alumni. They are currently paying off the loans. As are we.

3: It is in our lease agreement that we have to have our locks keyed to a master key.

4: Our house is off campus but must abide by the national laws as well as our by-laws and campus corporation (housing corporation) agreements. These include a strict paper we signed (or didn't sign) that we're thrown away anyways. So legally they do not have us having signed anything that says we will not drink in our rooms but we still don't.

Hopefully that helps a little.

Although, the problem has been worked out. No Fines and No eviction (they said we were going to get evicted). It was a first warning supposidly. The eviction did seem a little harsh.

U1016

Is this national advisor a graduate of your chapter? probably not. Our national advisor is pretty uninvolved and we like it that way. If you throw out the advisor, what will nationals do? Nothing. They might be distastful of it but thats about it, what can they do? Nothing really. They're not going to yank your charter or fine you, it wont happen. If you could replace the advisor with one who would be more apathetic then that might be good.


In our fraternity, what the Alumni says takes precident over what National says and this is the way it should be. Local alumni should support what is best for the chapter, not what is best for the national. The bottom line is that the brotherhood you have locally is more important then what national letters you are wearing...and local brothers come first. If your alumni haven't lost touch with that then you might have some ammo through your alumni. Sometimes people also lose touch on the fact that a national fraternity is supposed to help YOU, you are paying your national and they are supposed to provide services and support. If your alumni understands this, and your national has become more of a pain then it is worth, there is nothing stopping you from leaving your national and becoming a local organization. This happened before, at my University and 30 years later that fraternity still exists as a local.

Yes he is a graduate of the chapter. We can in essence suspend him from any fraternity proceddings if we wanted to. Except if we did that they would definately yank our charter because we have had 3 risk managment violations in the past year. I guess. None of them were true even though we have payed for all of them.

We may replace our advisor though. It is up in the air. We need to find someone that will be able to do it. There a couple people in mind that are more understanding of todays fraternity and is more locally oriented I guess. Maybe that will happen. We are a national fraternity however and cannot survive without our campus corporation. This is due to the way that our house is paid for. Pretty much our local alumni put up the money through mortgages on their houses and things like that. They are currently paying off the laons needed with our money. Its a wierd system if you ask me.

OK, so your house was searched by your chapter advisor and the campus corp president (who I am assuming is like the campus greek advisor?). Was the search called for by your advisor or the school? Are you nationally a substance-free org, or is every GLO on campus supposed to be a "dry" org? Because if you are nationally substance-free, and the search was called for by the campus cor president, what does he care if y'all drink? (again, I am assuming that the "substance" found was alcohol - maybe I am assuming too much, but I hope not! :eek: )

Check one of the threads above about contacting a lawyer.

As a renter, you have certain rights no matter where you live.

Depending on your lease contracts with your housing corporation will make a large deciding factor.

As a member of our houseing Corp. I respect the privacy of our members and woiuld never go sneaking into a Brothers room.

While the house manager has a key it is a responsability that is taken very seriously. It can be construed as entry with out authorization. It is not breaking and entering.

I am not sure from what you wrote all of the ends and outs of your situation but there seems to be more to it than what is written. Sorry, but I try to make enuff sense out of something to really give an indepth reply and I have already done more than I should!

No the University Corporation President is FAR FAR higher then the greek life advisor, and even higher then the University President. That president, at our university, chairs meetings which are composed of people whos families have campus BUILDINGS named after them...

And as for not being able to leave your national, that is a situation which your founders and alumni may have overlooked. Being a founder myself, and speaking for the other founding brothers, we would find placing ourselves in such a position extremely dangerous.

point:

We do not have university campus corporation advisor

However, good news..

after a great speech by one of our guys last night, our advisor stepped down and we have a new better one

Thanks for all your help

That's for an agency of the government, such as the police. There is no probable cause requirement for the owner of the home. State law or the lease may restrict the landlord's rights to come on the property, though.

NICE. Just make sure that the replacement is someone who sides with the brothers on all issues... this is very important and will help the future of your group.

Okay,

so its kind of amazing that many alumni are now coming back now that our advisor has stepped down. They have been saying that the reason that they would not come back was due to this advisor. Amazing what one advisor can do. This was all due to a very bad thing that happened where the advisor told them to do something then and then turned on them after they got caught. Resulting in 40 guys being evicted by our nationals. Not only did they dislike the advisor, but turns out that a lot in the 80's didn't want anything to do with the house if he was advisor. Good for us I guess.

Again, our campus corporation just runs our house not the whole campus greeks. He is not high up at all. We elect him once a year, which he will more than likely not be reelected this year.

A great thing has happened to us. And a lesson should be learned from this: If you as brothers (or sisters) do not like a situation you are in, you do have the power to change it, and if you don't... it will only make things worse.

A tip, I think you should motion for the following at the next regular meeting so this bullshit never happens again.

Make your advisor an elected position.

Amend your chapter bylaws or consitution to make the advisor a position which is elected by the brothers and serves a set term just like any other elected position.

Why? Because it makes it easier to remove any future advisors that are a pain in the ass.

It's EASY to rally enough support from brothers to not reelect a person to a position...and it wont piss your national off as much.

On the other hand, throwing someone out of a position forcibly is A LOT harder to rally support for... and pisses your national off A LOT MORE....

In your case you got lucky and the guy resigned...now if he would've fought you tooth and nail the story could have turned out different. But, if you change your consitution to what I suggest, and a situation similar to this one happens again (and dont think that it couldn't) I assure you the advisor would simply not get reelected and the problem would take care of itself and not cripple the fraternity with a giant issue like throwing out an advisor.

Do you see the benifits to what I suggest?

About the campus corporation, It must be something other than what I believed it was... because the "Duquesne University Corporation" at my school is like so high up the students dont normally ever hear from them or know it even exists. It basically consists of priests and alumni who are extremely rich and have campus buildings named after their families. Our advisor is an ex-officio member of that board, and was the former president of it, so we have a lot of power we have yet to tap there...

Just had to nitpick the thread title... :D

BTW, the proper spelling is 'Gestapo' and is actually an acronym for the German word Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police). Their unlimited police powers in silencing opponents of the Nazi regime in WW II gave rise to the modern word 'Gestapo tactics' in referring to heavy-handed enforcement of laws, rules and regulations. The Infernal Revenue Service (oops... Internal Revenue Service) has usually been likened to the 'Tax Gestapo', for its ruthless and sometimes unconstitutional enforcement of the tax laws.

Other WWII German abbreviations and words that entered modern English:

Flak - Abbreviation for Fliegerabwehrkanone (anti-aircraft cannon). This word was brought home by the B-17 and B-24 aircrews that flew missions over Germany, and 'catching flak' is now a common term for getting chewed out.

Stuka - Abbreviation for Sturzkampfflugzeug (dive bomber). The Junkers JU-87 airplane, while notorious in its role as a dive bomber in the early days of WW II, suffered heavy losses during the Battle of Britain. Later models of the Stuka served as effective tank busters.

Blitz - The word by itself means 'lightning' but was actually shortened from the word Blitzkrieg (lightning war); from the tactics used by the Germans to achieve quick surprise on the battlefield in the early years of WWII. Today, you'll hear the word 'blitz' to refer to football plays.

Strafe - Actually means 'punishment', but used nowadays to refer to low level machine-gun or rocket attack by airplanes.

Our advisor is a elected position, however, alumni and current brothers each get one vote. This is done no our founders day. He would have been voted out but that would have not been for a couple months or so. This was alot quicker.

Our campus corp is just for our house. Every house on campus has a campu corp that acts as a landlord or something like it. thats why we think that it is unlawful for them to search our rooms without a notice to us.

A lot of states run websites that post all the state statutes on them (Oklahoma does). There's probably some kind of state statute for renters or something. You might try something like your attorney general's website, state court or something like that. It makes researching laws and such VERY easy.