Standards Board
 

Ok so here goes,

I am 2nd year member of my fraternity and I am having trouble with my standards board.

Long story short, my big bro and i were sorting out a parking situation with a girl in our lot (yes, stupid i know, but we only have enough parking for the brothers, and we have a brand new $3.7 million house and we don't take kindly to strangers, as many, many issues of vandalism have already occurred. we take this pretty serious.) and her boyfriend comes out of his fraternity house from across the street with 12-15 guys, thinking that we were giving her crap and were looking for a fight or whatever. one of their pledges comes across the street and literally out of the blue hit me up side the head. i leave after an exchange of words and go up to my room to sleep.

I find out the next day that a letter of standards is being written against me for causing a fight with another fraternity, yada yada yada. I have talked to members of said fraternity and they are taking the blame for their pledge and saying I did nothing wrong, my big bro says i did nothing wrong, but yet i am still going to standards.

Can anyone shed any light on this matter? what i should do? what is most likely going to happen? etc. any advice will help.

No, we can't shed any light on this because none of us were there.

And just in case, QFP

Lane swerving. It's a common misconception that (our) Standards process is only meant for disciplinary actions. Often it is simply an official process to obtain the facts regarding a situation. This way should questions be asked later by Inatl or the University we (the Chapter leaders) know what happened and heard it directly from the person/people involved.

/swerve

Zillini is right. Since this event resulted in physical aggression it is in everyone's best interest to have the facts on record officially, should something come of it later.

You should also realize that there are perhaps better ways to handle situations like parking violations than a face-to-face confrontation, especially if you and your big brother have no authority within the chapter to be dealing with this issue.

Finally, you seem to be very defensive - in my experience people who go to standards defensive and belligerent rarely get their way. I would recommend that you talk more with your standards chair to find out the specifics of your charges, the standards process, and what the board hopes to achieve from this action.

I guess im just defensive because generally when one goes to standards in our chapter they are going to face a very stiff penalty, or even be expelled all together. I am defensive b/c i do see the situation from many sides, but I don't feel as though I did anything wrong. I was in my authority to be handleing the parking violation, I was not starting a confrontation with the other fraternity, and I was the one that got hit. I just fail to see where I am deserving of punishment....

Tonight....
 

Tonight (most likely...) I am going to my fraternity's standards board for this incident

How should I approach standards board? I'm a little nervous because I have never gone before them before.

What should I wear?

What should/shouldn't i say?

Tell them what happened.

Again, none of us were present for the incident, so we can't guide you through the process.

In my organization, you're expected to dress professionally for official events/meetings, but it could be different for your organization.