Brad Cohen, former SAE

[SAEalumnus]

By now you may have already heard about the very public resignation of Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s immediate past national president, Bradley M. Cohen, and his subsequent tirades and pleadings for yet more attention. What you may not know is why this occurred or who Brad Cohen really is.

SAE is divided into geographic regions known as provinces, each governed by a volunteer province council whose members are elected at biennial province conventions timed to occur during the intervening years between biennial national conventions. This past weekend, Province Chi-Alpha, which generally covers San Diego and Orange Counties, held their Province Convention. This is significant in that Brad previously served as Archon (President) of this province and also recently served as Eminent Supreme Archon (National President) and resides within this province’s territory; either of these two conditions alone grants to him a seat and a vote at the Province Convention. Not wishing to miss an opportunity to push his agenda for the Fraternity, he was in attendance at this Convention.

As confirmed by eye witness reports, during the course of this weekend’s Province Chi-Alpha Convention, Brad Cohen told the president of our Chapter at University of California, Irvine, to “shut the f[expletive] up” and yelled at him, telling him his Chapter was a “s[expletive] house” and that they “didn’t deserve to be members” of SAE. This reportedly occurred just after Brad was heard “talking s[explitive]” about our Fraternity’s current national vice president. I obviously cannot comment about the content of SAE’s oath of initiation, but I’m sure no surprise will be had by acknowledging that this behavior runs counter to that oath. Furthermore, if this isn’t conduct prejudicial to good order and unbecoming a gentleman, I don’t know what is. In either case, Brad’s actions this past weekend constitute offenses cognizable by our national Fraternity Laws to support the preferment of charges against him -- except for the fact that he publicly resigned. In his own defense, Brad posted the following statement in reply to an SAE on Facebook just last night: “No he was f[expletive] rude. Defended 3 out of 75 guys there for a ceremony and delinquent in their dues. Perhaps you should be there to open toe [sic] fat mouth”. Brad was gently admonished not to speak to his brothers in that manner and was reminded of the virtue of civility, then he said this: “A brother reaches out and asks a question. That’s not a brother.” Moments later he ‘unfriended’ those brothers who admonished him to be civil and has since adjusted his privacy settings to exclude those not on his friends list from seeing his current posts.

Due to his experience over the weekend, Brad Cohen publicly announced his resignation, not just from the SAE Foundation Board of Directors, but from Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity itself. A copy of a screen capture of that emotionally charged and decidedly impolite statement has been posted to TFM in a recent article they published. Later, Brad posted an almost-retraction, saying his wife convinced him to reconsider his resignation and that he would sleep on it. The next day, he posted a retraction of his resignation, after it had already been posted publicly on TFM.

Brad’s actions over these last few days is just the most recent in an interminably long string of offenses against his brothers and of prostituting himself and sacrificing his integrity on the altar of public opinion and favorable media headlines. He has repeatedly cherry picked which of our national Fraternity Laws he wants to observe and enforce, which he’s willing to disregard on account of their inconvenience and tendency to obstruct his agenda, and which he’s going to reinterpret and reinvent according to his own whim in the interest of political expediency and railroading his agenda through the Fraternity’s national government. One such action of his explicitly disenfranchised our undergraduate brothers and denied them any voice or vote in major changes that were made to our Fraternity’s national operation. Other such actions have denied both individual members and entire chapters of the right to due process. He is also guilty of forgetting his history. In its early days, Sigma Alpha Epsilon was governed nationally by a Grand Chapter, with the undergraduate chapters taking it in turn as to which of them acted as such. SAE was literally governed at all levels by undergraduate, active members, not a 5-man clique of alumni, lead by one with an ego large enough for all of them combined. SAE belongs to our active brothers. It is their birthright. They are the alumni’s legacy. The only real, legitimate function of a government composed of alumni brothers is to provide a framework within which our undergraduate brothers might develop into scholars, leaders, and athletes, and by which they may remain on the ‘straight and narrow’ road. It is not up to us as alumni to dictate the future of the Fraternity to the undergrads; rather, it is the right and prerogative of the undergrads to dictate that future to us.

Brad has caused significant and lasting damage to SAE. Brad Cohen is the worst possible example of a ‘Brother Zero’ and it was a dark day indeed in the early 1980s when our Arizona Alpha Chapter offered him a bid. Having very publicly resigned, Brad Cohen strictly speaking stands as a FORMER member of SAE, not a current brother. It would require a vote of our Supreme Council (national officers) to reinstate him, assuming they’re willing to follow our national Fraternity Laws in spite of Brad’s tendency to consistently disregard them. Resignation of one’s membership is an effectively irreversible decision. His ‘ooops, just kidding’ retraction is invalid and his holding himself out as still a brother now makes him no different from any other impostor. Brad Cohen needs to take his snake oil salesmanship, arrogance, and vitriol and disappear, never to be heard from in the world of SAE ever again. Only then, perhaps, can any real healing begin.