New Rule -- NO ALCOHOL
 

Ban on alcohol for a semester - greek orgs only.

whaaaaaaat?
 

What are they going to do, go into the bars and make everyone who's Greek leave? I don't think the bar owners will put up with that.

I would also like to see them tell the alums that they can't gather at a bar and drink.

If it's a private school
 

If it's a private school, and the houses are on campus property, they can pretty much do anything they want.

Do you suppose it applies to alumni receptions at the President's house?

You bring up a lot of valid points that need to be clarified. They didn't say "Members of fraternities and sororities", they said "fraternity or sorority". The first thing that popped into my mind was .. what if an alumna gets married? She can't have alcohol at her wedding?

The GLOs will need to have the administration define better what they mean..

Dee

This is a very poorly written rule. It also seems like hypocrisy to apply the rule only to GLOs and not to other student groups. Was there a specific incident that was the catalyst?

Something similar happened at my school. The catalyst was the alcohol-related death of a fraternity pledge. The administration's knee-jerk reaction was to ban alcohol at ANY event where even one person under 21 MIGHT be present. It was extreme (and the prohibition was later relaxed somewhat), but at least it was applied to everyone - GLOs, dorms, academic departments, and all student orgs.

A) The IFC should get lawyers. Firms will line up for this job.
B) Demand access to the disciplinary/incident records of all university organizations, dorms, etc.
C) The IFC should establish itself as a dis-affiliated member of the 'community' and concentrate on advocating for the fraternities.
D) IFC advocates should contact alumni directly with an aggressive program to expose the bullying and weakness of the administration. Make them play defense.

If this is the case, I'd just create a blanket organization with open membership called the "Greek drinking club".

The Greek Drinking Club will be in charge of all social events involving alcohol for Greek Life..

Problem solved :D

I have to wonder how the "2/3/4 members constitute a chapter event" rule fits with this. (You know the rule I'm talking about.....) What if 3 sisters go out to eat and have a beer or glass of wine (over 21)? Is that an "unofficial participation in a function that includes alcohol"?

Definitely need LOTS more clarification here.....

I can understand the "spirit" of the rule perhaps (getting things under control, etc.) but man....that was a big net to cast! It's so ambiguous that no one knows if they are complying or not.

PsychTau

I figured someone would post on WU's new "Greek Life" policy, and I thought as an alum, I'd give my $.02:

First of all, point of clarification Wine&Silver Blue: ZBT has never had a house on campus. They will never have a house on campus. When ZBT colonized, their HouseCorp bought them a house off campus to live in because there was no open fraternity house on campus to purchase and no place to build it (based on the way the old Greek Row was built without any buildings 'below the Row'). Over time, they enjoyed their house off campus and thought that it gave their chapter 'something different'. They were not the only chapter off campus through the 2000s (TKE had a house off-campus on U-Drive before WashU bought all of those buildings and built small group). When SGH was built, ZBT was offered a chance to come on campus and declined b/c they wanted control of their house and would have to give up control of their chapter house if they moved on campus, since WU now owns all of the fraternity houses (which they bought during the 2001-2002 school year). The university could not force them on campus, so they haven't.

Back to the issue at hand...
I'm not happy with this new policy. I think that the Greek Life Coordinator has been VERY bad for Wash. U. Greek Life as a whole. She's rude, she's mean, and she doesn't listen to the chapters, she just makes up her own policies. And for someone who is Greek herself, she seems to think that "all greeks are inherently bad". I think she doesn't remember what it's like to be in college. She even didn't reach out to help Kappa Alpha Theta as they were closing, and she's an alum of Theta!
I'm a law student (as some GCers know), and as I read the policy, it applies only to "official" events. Meaning that for example, the PiPhis couldn't have a party for all PiPhis off-campus at someone's apartment or a bar where they would have to go through their Nationals to OK the event and have risk management procedures in place. It would also apply, if I read correctly, to "sisterhood" or "brotherhood" events that are chapter-wide (e.g. movie night at the house).
Greek Life cannot stop people from drinking on the South 40 (the dorm area) or at a bar. If you read StudLife (the paper) carefully, she even says that with the policy, she knows she cannot control what happens at a bar or on the 40. If I remember the article correctly, it even states that a couple of guys informally hanging around in their house drinking beer and watching a baseball game wouldn't count b/c it's not an 'official' or 'unofficial' event--that's normal house behavior. They just couldn't invite a bunch of people from outside of the house to join in.
Confusing policy yes? Extreme? YES. Stupid? Not entirely, but highly unreasonable.

It's like the cease and desist from back in 2000-2001. The "greek life advisor" is basically just trying to save her job and her butt and kiss up to the administration to make herself look good and students look bad. If she really did her job correctly, things wouldn't go out of control.

PS: I don't think WU is trying to abolish Greek Life. They let Chi Omega on last year. I think they're just trying to control what happens so it doesn't escalate into large scale problems (like deaths).

/end long $.02 rant. Thanks for reading!

>A) The IFC should get lawyers. Firms will line up for this job.

The IFC should get lawyers if they have a lot of extra money sitting around and they want to get rid of it without bothering to set it on fire. You underestimate the amount of freedom private schools have to set rules for their students. Wash U could legally kick 22-year-old students out of school for having one beer if they wanted to. The question here is the wisdom of the policy, not its legality.

The funny thing about all of this is that in all of these cases so far, the students involved were already breaking university policy, their HQ's policy and the law by giving alcohol to minors.

So why does anyone thing a new rule is going to change anything?

IvySpice: OK, let me clarify. I agree with you that lawyers are generally not the answer to what is more of a political problem than a legal one. And I do agree with you that one should never enter into a lawsuit unless prepared to lose, and pay dearly for the experience.
What I had in mind was pro bono involvement by alumni attorneys from a number of fraternities and sororities - or - a limited representation of the system by one attorney retained specifically for the purpose of carrying their message to the administration.
You are right about the power of private universities. But, there are two influences on them greater than on public schools: first, they are very sensitive to public 'trouble', and second, they are extremely sensitive to unhappy alumni.
The description of the Greek Life dean in one post above ("mean, rude", unresponive, dictatorial) is typical of a bullying, self-important administrator. people like this are bullies becaose NO ONE EVER OPPOSES THEM. Undergrads are short-sighted and scared. What absolutely staggers these people and sets them back on their rude heels is to be faced by someone their own age who has the confidence and substance and authority to get the attention of the right people.

unofficial may be the solution here...
it is and it does...but it is not officially promoted as such.
yet life goes on...

if that makes sense.

Update:

I was talking to a friend of mine who is currently in a fratnernity at Wash. U. (affiliation to remain nameless) who said that any event is considered to be an 'event' per the terms of the new rules if 5 or more members of that sorority/fraternity were at the same location/party. So more than 4 guys, for example, cannot sit in front of the big screen chapter TV to watch baseball and have some brews. However, they can have the game on and drink throughout the house behind closed doors (with less than 5 guys in any 1 room). Same goes for off-campus parties...can't have more than 4 girls or guys of the same affiliation at a party. I don't see how they can really control that though. Especially at bars too...there is NO WAY that they can control that. There would be no one at Blueberry Hill (a popular local bar) on Thursday nights!
I also don't know how this will work with on-campus apartment living situations. I know that there were plenty of 5, 6, 7 and 8 person apartments with all DGs when I was in school...how can they tell people they can't drink at home?
Stupid Greek Life Advisor...she needs to GET A LIFE!

While I agree that the new policy seems both broad and confusing, I'm not as sure as some other GCers are that it's entirely the product of the Greek life office at Washington U. A policy like this at a school where about 1/4 of the undergrads are Greek is rather likely to have been reviewed and either formally or informally approved by people considerably higher up in the university's administration, in my opinion. Given the recently-publicized fracas on the Row where a couple of security guards were injured (mildly) and last academic year's brouhaha about drinking / possible hazing at one of the fraternities, I wonder whether Washington U is trying to stave off the possibility of further alcohol-related negative publicity.

I think it's a real possibility; WU has put a lot of effort and money into successfully raising its general profile and academic reputation in the last several years. (Just see the three-page article entitled "A Hidden Gem No More" in the 2005 edition of U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Colleges.) It seems to me that Washington U has zip zero nada interest in being known even remotely as a U of Colorado-style party school. I think it wants to maintain -- and probably increase -- its reputation as at least a peer of Columbia, Northwestern, and the like.
And while some people might wonder whether "alumni giving" could be used as a lever in dealing with WU and the alcohol policy, we may need to remember that with its existing three and a half billion dollar endowment, it would take a whale of a lot to affect the university seriously, I think.

Edited to add: The Oct. 20 St. Louis Post-Dispatch story on the ban quoted, among others, the vice chancellor for students at Washington U. It seemed pretty clear to me from that article that the new policy was okayed considerably higher up than just the Greek life office.

One picture is worth a thousand words, they say, and the Washington U student paper took an interesting one. The Oct. 20, 2004 issue has a photo accompanying the story titled "Prohibition on the Row!" that shows "beer cans litter Frat Row after a big party weekend."

http://www.studlife.com/main.cfm/inc...yid/77378.html

Now, I've seen worse litter after parties more than once, so I'm not shocked to the core. BUT the photo is extremely interesting in light of the current ("2005") U.S. News & World Report America's Best Colleges. On page 36 of that special issue, in a three-page article singing the praises of Washington U, this appears:

"Yes, the frat houses have beer cans in front of them, but, incredibly, they're in garbage bags." (Italics in original.)

I wouldn't be surprised if the contrast between the picture of beer can litter and the image Washington U has worked hard to develop, nurture, and project -- a highly selective, rigorous school with top-flight students and faculty, a beautiful campus, etc -- has deeply disturbed the university's administration. And I think some of the recent quotes from administrators about "civility" and conduct that does not befit Washington U students reflect that concern. As I said in my previous post, my guess is that "party school" is not the image WU administrators are loking for. (Some parents may not be, either, especially if they're paying the full price of about forty thousand a year for tuition, fees, room, and board.)

And this is why kegs are better than canned beer. The amount of garbage cans must generate is insane, and I've actually heard of environmental groups on campuses fighting the no-keg policy because of it. Limiting the number of kegs is a far better idea than cans or BYOB.

anyone else find it funny that right next to the story about making the fraternities and sororities dry...there is a link for the "student bar guide." interesting.

Update: Washington U (St. Louis) Alcohol Ban Lifted
The alcohol ban has been lifted, although it looks like rush still has to be dry. Student paper article with some student reactions:

http://www.studlife.com/news/2005/01...h-835167.shtml

There seem to be concerns about a possible effect on fraternity rush and about how programming on core values will work oout.

A discriminatory policy against a single group, gee if that doesn't sound so Dartmouthish :rolleyes:

My whole position is, if you are going to pass a shitty policy, make it equal. Why is it that the governing association is not bound by this policy and can throw a raging keggar and not the greeks? Make the policy for all students and see how well they react to it.

Go underground is my advice. Host illegal parties (probably will happen anyway) and show them how idiotic is to push social life out of control. At least with greeks hosting parties, the situation is under control.

Oh well, I'm just glad I don't go there...