ITs not so much making houses substance free, its a matter of limiting liability!
For example: If I, James, invite a bunch of my friends (even a few hundred) to my house(in my name) for a party, and for some unfortunate reason a lot of my friends are in the same fraternity, it seems to be considered a Fraternity Event. Assuming something goes wrong, or some administrators get wind of it. It may certainly be considered a Fraternity Event by the National resulting in a loss of charter, andprobably also will be by the administration of the University. Legally it may or not be depending on how good the lawyers involved are. This is even though that the entitiy I belong to gave me no funds, never discussed the party in a business meeting, and provided no support.
Now, if I get off work from say, Xerox, and throw a party at my house where couple hundred Xerox employees, show up and go to town, and lets say there are so many Xerox employees waring Xerox t-shirts that non-employees think its a xerox party . . . and something awful happens like underage drinking an injury etc, guess what, Xerox is not going to be legally liable.
But if Xerox were silly enough to make rules that said whereever 5 Xerox employees stand together, they are conducting official Xerox business, then that would open them up to litigation.
Which leads to Problem number 4 . . .
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Originally posted by DeltAlum
James,
Who sues whom for what is totally out of control. I'm sure your memory about a suit involving a fraternity and a third party vendor is correct. The climate seems to be, "let's throw mud at everyone and see who it sticks to."
We will never eliminate liability problems, but must try to minimize them. Perhaps your solutions will help some.
"Hanging out" certainly is a part of the problem. A lot of damage is caused by, and a lot of injuries happen to non-members on our properties.
So, do we make all houses substance free and not allow anybody in except members? I don't think either will work -- but I can see how many organizations will grasp at those straws.
In my mind it still comes back to taking responsibility on the chapter level to "do the right things."
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