ATTN: Chapter officers - Liability premiums

[Kapsig1]

As the Finance Commissioner for Kappa Sigma, we are faced yet again with the rapidly rising costs of purchasing liability insirance for our chapters.

I would like to know how a couple of the options we are currently faced with stacks up against our interfraternal friends.

Could you, IF YOU KNOW FOR A FACT, sound off with the cost of you CURRENT liability insirance assessment from your national organization? Most are a "per member" basis, if not, provide the chapter assessment and how many members you have in your chapter.

Thanks,
Brad

[Tom Earp]

Brad, while the cost of Insurance Keeps going up, we as Greeks only need to ask WHY!

It is called Risk Management for Groups who screw up and then the Law Suits Fly!

It will continue to escalate until some of the Morinc AssWholes who haze put a stop to it!

We as International or National Groups Do not condone it, it still happens and We All Pay For It!

Even some ot the Memebers Condone it so What do you think!

As the cost goes up per member to be a member, the membership dwindles! Will there soon be NO GREEK ORGS?

[DeltAlum]

Someone on the other thread where this is posted says that his chapters cost has gone from $20 to $150 per man.

If you read past posts and threads, you'll find that some of us have been talking about this for a long time.

It is possible, even likely, that in the future, insurance coverage will be so expensive that it will simply be impossible to obtain. A number of companies have already refused to issue policies to fraternities.

Is anyone listening?

Alcohol abuse and hazing are BY FAR the two biggest contributors to this situation.

[Kapsig1]

Originally posted by Tom Earp
Brad, while the cost of Insurance Keeps going up, we as Greeks only need to ask WHY!

It is called Risk Management for Groups who screw up and then the Law Suits Fly!

It will continue to escalate until some of the Morinc AssWholes who haze put a stop to it!

We as International or National Groups Do not condone it, it still happens and We All Pay For It!

Even some ot the Memebers Condone it so What do you think!

As the cost goes up per member to be a member, the membership dwindles! Will there soon be NO GREEK ORGS?

Tom, are you reading my mind? It is evident to me that if costs continue to soar, that the organizations will be faced with impossible financial constraints.

But I still want to see how this is affecting other orgs in terms of $'s.

Thanks,
Brad

[Kapsig1]

Thanks for the info! Let me help others who read my original post. I am the Finance Comissioner for the fraternity, not a chapter of the fraternity. So the purpose of the request was to examine the rising costs of our poor behavior together. The above numbers look to be a little more recent than the last FEA report I had. But that data tends to trail the "real time" numbers significantly.

Our overall costs will increase dramatically this year. Kappa Sigma decided about 2 years ago to "Tier" our chapters based on violations. So, like your car insurance, if you've got the fraternal equivalent of speeding tickets or wrecks, your chapter pays more. But our chapters on Tier 1 (no violations, etc) will still pay more in the future.

I also know that many orgs are in the market for a renewal/new policy as I write this. I also know that the last two years have been particularly high claim/award years for greeks, and Kappa Sigma too. We've all seen the articles.

The immature decsions that are being made by each of us, affects the future of the system. I predict that if claims continue at their current level, and if settlements and awards continue to increase at their current rate, that NONE of us will be able to afford insuance in 8 to 10 years.

For those who self insure (everyone does to a degree) it won't take more than 10 average major claims to wipe out the richest reserve currently held.

This is the single largest threat to our existence, and it all boils down to two things: alcohol and hazing. Period. Our insurance should be for accidents. Accidents raise premiums, but accidents don't generate NEAR the number and size of jury awards.

So, you hazing proponents - just keep on killing us all.

Brad

[James]

Expell members that drink underage. Immediately. They are in violation of the Law and are the single greatest threat to in terms of liability.

If they are drinking underage and get hurt the lawsuit is much more likely to come.

I am not advocating this personally, but this is certainly the where the context of many of our conversations are taking us.

If you are a National Officer why wouldn't you be recomending the expulsion of a person that was in clear violation of the law (underage consumption of alcohol) and therefore a risk management liability to the National Fraternity?

Unless you (as National Officers) are condoning breaking the Law?

[Kapsig1]

Originally posted by James
Expell members that drink underage. Immediately. They are in violation of the Law and are the single greatest threat to in terms of liability.

If they are drinking underage and get hurt the lawsuit is much more likely to come.

I am not advocating this personally, but this is certainly the where the context of many of our conversations are taking us.

If you are a National Officer why wouldn't you be recomending the expulsion of a person that was in clear violation of the law (underage consumption of alcohol) and therefore a risk management liability to the National Fraternity?

Unless you (as National Officers) are condoning breaking the Law?

My Brother, interesting. Because this is EXACTLY where I intend to go withing Kappa Sigma. Of course, the same will be true for those chapter officers that tolerate, or worse, provide for such violations.

I look forward to counting on your support!

Brad

[DeltAlum]

Bump...

Sorry, but this is too important to get lost. Maybe the single most important issue to GLO's today.

[James]

**Double Posted**


You might want to define the parameters of what you are suggesting Brad.

For example, do you mean that at any time someone is seen by a Fraternity member to be drinking underage that person should go before the judicial board and be expelled? By the way, that is the only way for that to work.

Its like execution, for it to work as a deterrant you need to execute automatically for certain offenses.

Following this train of logic, you would also have to place chapter officers and chapter members at risk. Basicially, if they don't report someone underage drinking for expulsion, they would have to face that penalty themselves. Maybe institute an award system for people to turn their brothers in, otherwise people will only turn on the less popular brother.

Doing the above would probably result in both a sharp decrease in overall numbers as well as a shift in the population base that you are drawing from. The Fraternity would probably lose a lot of the mainstream students and start picking up more of the students that would normally opt for Circle-K and Christian Groups.

Another easy solution would be to forbid membership to those under 21.

But anyway, we would need more information on where you are headed Brad, for us to provide more constructive opinions.

Semper

James

[KSig RC]

Originally posted by Kapsig1


My Brother, interesting. Because this is EXACTLY where I intend to go withing Kappa Sigma. Of course, the same will be true for those chapter officers that tolerate, or worse, provide for such violations.

I look forward to counting on your support!

Brad

So just to allow you to fill out the proposal a little bit . . .

are you actually pushing for expulsion of members that drink illegally? essentially, you're asking that any time a pledge or brother has a sip of alcohol, they are to be removed from the organization via j-board . . .

now, also, if you wouldn't mind doing the leg-work, can you find me any sort of statistics for the approximate percentage of college students who have a drink of alcohol at any point before they turn 21? I think the comparison may end up being fascinating.

[hoosier]

Some natl. offices publish their fees/insurance costs and all fees on their websites.

That's your best source for info.

[Kevin]

I may be misinterpreting some people here, but I see calls for automatic consequences to actions. In my experience, seeing things in black and white is never the best way to go.

Underage members WILL drink. There is absolutely nothing you can do to control that. You can pass all the rules you want -- the best legislation in the world could not prevent it. This in my eyes is irrefutable.

The question is, what can you do to encourage personal responsability and discourage alcohol abuse? I am sure if you did the research there would be a direct correlation between alcohol ABUSE (defined as being drunk enough to do something that you would not normally do) and liability claims (I think I've read several reports proving that to be true).

I think one of the functions of a fraternity should be to teach its members how to be true men, gentlemen even. A "gentleman" knows that drinking to excess is wrong. Always.

Fraternities cannot simply turn their backs on reality and declare in the name of reduced liability "We will no longer condone alcohol use by members". They must realize that alcohol is always going to be part of college life and the absolute best way to deal with the situation is education rather than prohibition.

LHT
Kevin Taylor
MT 5
University of Central Oklahoma

[James]

LEt me play Devil's advocate here for a second.

All of what you are saying is true if you are examining under age drinking as a social problem. Social problems often don't fit well within black and white definitions

Kappasig1 and Delta Alum, just to single out two people, are examining drinking as a legal problem. Legal problems are often very black and white, at least until you get to court.

From a legal perspective, you cannot educate people in how to responsibly break the law(an oxymoron) without creating liability for yourself.

As an example, I can't have a program to explain to you how to comport yourself while doing cocaine and heroin without leaving myself and my organization open to legal repercussions if something goes wrong somewhere.

When you say underage members will drink . . . the answer is maybe. Delta Alum and Kappasig1 seem to be moving in a direction that says: You want to violate the law and drink? Fine, we will expell you. The side effect should be that the fraternities eventually start drawing from populations that don't drink or rarely drink.

DeltaAlum and Kappasig1, if i am mistaking your meaning please correct me

As far as saying that faternities can't turn their backs on underages that drink . . . that is simply not true. If they want to they can.

Falling from Devil's advocate mode for a moment. I agree with you that drinking is a social issue, and that there are other approaches that can be taken. However, I am not sure that National Fraternity Officers as a whole have the necessary knowledge, background, or experience to make that viable.

Originally posted by ktsnake
I may be misinterpreting some people here, but I see calls for automatic consequences to actions. In my experience, seeing things in black and white is never the best way to go.

Underage members WILL drink. There is absolutely nothing you can do to control that. You can pass all the rules you want -- the best legislation in the world could not prevent it. This in my eyes is irrefutable.

The question is, what can you do to encourage personal responsability and discourage alcohol abuse? I am sure if you did the research there would be a direct correlation between alcohol ABUSE (defined as being drunk enough to do something that you would not normally do) and liability claims (I think I've read several reports proving that to be true).

I think one of the functions of a fraternity should be to teach its members how to be true men, gentlemen even. A "gentleman" knows that drinking to excess is wrong. Always.

Fraternities cannot simply turn their backs on reality and declare in the name of reduced liability "We will no longer condone alcohol use by members". They must realize that alcohol is always going to be part of college life and the absolute best way to deal with the situation is education rather than prohibition.

LHT
Kevin Taylor
MT 5
University of Central Oklahoma

[DeltAlum]

James,

I agree with your characterization of legal vs. social problems.

Both need to be addressed.

I find myself conflicted in many ways.

Look, I would like very much to see the law changed back to allow 18 year olds to drink beer -- as it was when I was that age. I'm not alone in that wish, I know. One of our chapter advisors is the City Attorney in his college town, and he agrees with me. I know others do as well.

I also don't think it will happen, unfortunately. And, unless there are some cultural changes to moderate our behavior, I'm not sure it should -- no matter how much I want it to.

So I have a number of problems here.

The first is the legal problem. I've said about all I can about that. The law is the law. We don't have to like it, we have to obey it or get it changed.

The second is a social problem. How to drink responsibly so that we don't have alcohol poisoning and deaths. Some fraternities are trying to address this one with programs such as our, "Delts Talk About Alcohol." The jury is out in my mind on whether it is successful, but it is certainly worth the effort. I suspect that if underage folks drank in moderation, the cops and schools would not bother with it. They have more important things to worry about, believe it or not.

The third is a public relations problem. It is absolutely true that binge drinking is a college problem -- not just a Greek one. But all of the numerous surveys I've seen say the same thing -- it's worse in the Greek System than it is in the rest of the college population. And the percentages are fairly dramatic. Our chapters keep on hazing. How do we expect those actions to create any kind of image except bad?

The fourth is a problem of attempted transference. We look at the "bad press" we get from number three and blame the media. That's a cop out. When underage members drink and get hurt or killed, it's news. When chapters close because of that, it's also news. When the accidents or deaths are part of a hazing ritual which includes "forced" drinking, that's a legitimate story. Not that the media (which I was part of for years) is always correct and fair -- but they are more often than not.

The fifth is stupidity. If we understand the law and the rules and break them and lose our charters, that's nobodys fault but our own. Not Nationals. Not the University. Not the cops. Not the media. Ours.

The sixth is living in the past. Just because I was hazed in the sixties doesn't make it OK for me or anyone else to continue that tradition today. The times have changed and so have the rules.

We have backed the universities and others in authority into a corner. Look at the lawsuits. The university, the chapter and the national organization are generally all named. It's pretty clever how we have backed them into one corner and painted ourselves into an opposite one. That takes real talent.

I could probably go on for a while.

I'm not entirely comfortable with automatic expulsion. But I don't have a better idea to offer, unfortunately.

What pains me the most is that even as the evidence stacks up and more of our chapters close, our undergraduates continue to break the rules and the laws. And they continue to act like the agrieved party.

So, we do all of these dumb things, and expect the insurance industry (which is a for profit business, after all) to turn their heads and adapt a "kids will be kids" attitude? Not in this lifetime.

Despite how it sounds, I'm not a crusader. I'm just an old guy who is scared to death that my Fraternity and the rest of the Greek System won't survive unless we change. I have the advantage of some degree of hindsight and life's experience that our undergraduates don't. I've had the opportunity to see the changes over the years, and also raised three children of my own. Many (maybe most) of today's students are a hell of a lot smarter than I am, and I just can't understand why they don't see the handwriting on the wall.

There are a lot of reasons that the Greek System is in danger -- this liability thing is a result of all of those reasons.

Please, let's do something about them, or future generations won't have the opportunities to enjoy the brother and sisterhood that we have and do.

[Kapsig1]

Originally posted by DeltAlum
James,

I agree with your characterization of legal vs. social problems.

Both need to be addressed.

I find myself conflicted in many ways.

Look, I would like very much to see the law changed back to allow 18 year olds to drink beer -- as it was when I was that age. I'm not alone in that wish, I know. One of our chapter advisors is the City Attorney in his college town, and he agrees with me. I know others do as well.

I also don't think it will happen, unfortunately. And, unless there are some cultural changes to moderate our behavior, I'm not sure it should -- no matter how much I want it to.

So I have a number of problems here.

The first is the legal problem. I've said about all I can about that. The law is the law. We don't have to like it, we have to obey it or get it changed.

The second is a social problem. How to drink responsibly so that we don't have alcohol poisoning and deaths. Some fraternities are trying to address this one with programs such as our, "Delts Talk About Alcohol." The jury is out in my mind on whether it is successful, but it is certainly worth the effort. I suspect that if underage folks drank in moderation, the cops and schools would not bother with it. They have more important things to worry about, believe it or not.

The third is a public relations problem. It is absolutely true that binge drinking is a college problem -- not just a Greek one. But all of the numerous surveys I've seen say the same thing -- it's worse in the Greek System than it is in the rest of the college population. And the percentages are fairly dramatic. Our chapters keep on hazing. How do we expect those actions to create any kind of image except bad?

The fourth is a problem of attempted transference. We look at the "bad press" we get from number three and blame the media. That's a cop out. When underage members drink and get hurt or killed, it's news. When chapters close because of that, it's also news. When the accidents or deaths are part of a hazing ritual which includes "forced" drinking, that's a legitimate story. Not that the media (which I was part of for years) is always correct and fair -- but they are more often than not.

The fifth is stupidity. If we understand the law and the rules and break them and lose our charters, that's nobodys fault but our own. Not Nationals. Not the University. Not the cops. Not the media. Ours.

The sixth is living in the past. Just because I was hazed in the sixties doesn't make it OK for me or anyone else to continue that tradition today. The times have changed and so have the rules.

We have backed the universities and others in authority into a corner. Look at the lawsuits. The university, the chapter and the national organization are generally all named. It's pretty clever how we have backed them into one corner and painted ourselves into an opposite one. That takes real talent.

I could probably go on for a while.

I'm not entirely comfortable with automatic expulsion. But I don't have a better idea to offer, unfortunately.

What pains me the most is that even as the evidence stacks up and more of our chapters close, our undergraduates continue to break the rules and the laws. And they continue to act like the agrieved party.

So, we do all of these dumb things, and expect the insurance industry (which is a for profit business, after all) to turn their heads and adapt a "kids will be kids" attitude? Not in this lifetime.

Despite how it sounds, I'm not a crusader. I'm just an old guy who is scared to death that my Fraternity and the rest of the Greek System won't survive unless we change. I have the advantage of some degree of hindsight and life's experience that our undergraduates don't. I've had the opportunity to see the changes over the years, and also raised three children of my own. Many (maybe most) of today's students are a hell of a lot smarter than I am, and I just can't understand why they don't see the handwriting on the wall.

There are a lot of reasons that the Greek System is in danger -- this liability thing is a result of all of those reasons.

Please, let's do something about them, or future generations won't have the opportunities to enjoy the brother and sisterhood that we have and do.

DA has been reading my mind! I don't pretend to have all the answers. What I do know is that if we continue to "do business" as we have for the past 10 years, we will continue to face numerous chapter closings and mounting legal and insuance bills. Make no mistake - this WILL kill the fraternity system as we know it; which in turn WILL kill the sorority system as we know it.

Legal Issue - yes James, my proposed response to expel underage members that are found by the General Fraternity to have been drinking ON OUR PROPERTY or AT OUR FUNCTIONS (ANY - no BS definitions) is aimed sharply at the legal/insurance side of the issue.

Social Issue - underage drinking is a social RESPONSIBILITY issue too. EVERY time someone underage drinks in our houses or at our functions - it becomes someone elses problem too, not just the "lawbreaker." For that matter, EVERY time someone drinks to impaired judgement it is much the same. The largest fraternities have spent the last 10+ years attempting to deal with the social issue - education, sanctions, dry housing, etc.

THE PROBLEM IS, that the legal and insurance ramifications are outpacing ANY arguable progress these efforts have made. I think you're right, we DON'T have the resources in house to fully address the social problem, we DO have the resources to handle the legal problem. I'm I naive enough to believe that ALL of our chapters will self-police - sadly, no. But I can tell you that I truly believe (but could be wrong) during the past 10 years, if we had taken every discipline case that came before an officer of the organization which involved underage drinking - had we expeled those guilty of infractions, including members/officers who contributed, we would indeed be in a very different place today.

What it would look like, I do not know. Would we be drawing from the 30-40% of the student population that doesn't drink regularly, yes. Is that necessarily a bad thing, I don't think so.
FACT: we drink more and more often than our non-greek counterparts. The problems we would face would INDEED be different, but I'm to the point where I'm willing to make that gamble - because if we "let it ride", we will disappear. It could blow up with 10 large judgements in a given year, or it could be a slow "death by insurance cost increase."

Either way, we're dead without revolutionary change.

More subtle changes that will help:

- require the chapters to purchase "special event" insurance for events that meet/exceed certain criteria

- a meaningful risk management policy AND PROCESS, that will help our chapters limit risk during the event planning and implementation process

- Invest big $'s in ongoing local risk managment advisers

- Using the chapter that seem to have no problem with this issue, and believe me there are many that have NEVER had an alcohol related violation, to "imprint" other chapters.

There is no simple solution to the social issues at hand. Colleges and in turn, we, are admitting an increasing percentage of drinkers out of high school. That side of the issue may be too big for us. Not that we shouldn't do our part, but we may have to cry uncle.

The solutions will be complex and painful, but less painful than watching something we love die.

Brad