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Originally Posted by ktsnake
The University wants to impose restrictions on organizations it doesn't 'recognize.' Technically, as far as I know, these unrecognized organizations can do whatever the hell they want to do regardless of what the University's policy is.
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The way I read the article, the university bans
any organization, recognized or not, from wearing letters or other identifying logos, etc. during move-in because of the short amount of time available to get new students in and settled.
I think that there also are some misunderstandings of what really happened last year.
As a point of clarification, the deferred rush was to second semester of Freshman Year.
First, the fraternities are not "independent," at least as I understand the term. The groups are still part of their national organizations, but are not officially recognized by the University of Colorado -- which makes them ineligible to use university facilities (buildings, rooms, etc.) for rush or any other functions. It may be that the ban is on free use as oppossed to total use -- I'm a little unclear on that. This includes IFC meetings, etc., so there is some financial burden. In addition, there can be no "official" recruitment on univeristy property.
An "arms length" situation toward GLO's at Boulder if far from new and goes back several administrations. The university has long taken a "hands off" attitude toward Greeks in the hopes that, given enough rope we will hang ourselves. We've come pretty close. I've written in other forums about the demise of our chapter at CU, and won't bother to do it again, except to say that we're probably not interested in recolonizing there.
After the Gordie Bailey death at CU, hard on the heels of the Samatha Spady death at Colorado State, the CU Administration apparantely felt that, for liability as well as other reasons, it had to step back in to do something about groups that were allegedly somewhat out of control -- and did so with a number of rules. The IFC, claiming financial damage would be caused by deferred rush and loss of housing revenue during the first semester of Freshman year, refused to abide by at least that rule. CU gave a deadline for compliance which IFC refused to meet, with the result being de-recognition of IFC if the rule wasn't met. IFC declined and the administration followed through with its policy/threat.
All of that is to say that the chapters themselves aren't "independent" as in being rouge chapters. Again, they are still recognized by their national organizations, and subject to their rules and guidance. The IFC, and thus the chapters arent' recognized by the univesity, though.
I believe that these
new rules don't have much effect on sororities, since they were already basically in compliance before this all began.
A simple personal read between the lines on the latest article in which the CU administration decided to allow letters to be worn during move in would be more in line with President/Senator/Brother Hank Brown's feelings. When he was President at The University of Northern Colorado (UNC to those of us here), and I was an advisor there, he was a strong supporter of Greek Life -- including actually coming to Delt Rush functions (although he was very fair in terms of talking about fraternity life -- not just Delt). He also spoke to/at Delt Alumni Chapter functions.
I know that his Delt experience was positive, and that he was a leader on the University of Colorado campus (Student Body President, I think) during his undergraduate days. Besides Brown, that chapter spawned a Mercury Astronaut a pro football player or two, and many local and nationally known alumni.
Unfortunately, given the Spady and Bailey deaths, along with a couple other alcohol related deaths on Colorado campuses shortly after, Greeks have a huge black eye with a large number of state legislators, and I doubt that big changes in the relationship between Greek Letter Organizations and this major source of university funding will come anytime soon. Following those circumstances came the incident also mentioned above of the several women suffering from alcohol poisioning on the same weekend, which really heightened the situation. As I recall, there was also concern about date rape drugs -- but I don't believe those were ever proven. Many (or all -- I don't remember for sure) had attended the same fraternity parties.
The final result, I guess, is one that is not really comfortable for the university or Greek Life. As noted above, the IFC has been forced to impose, sometimes only temporarily, many of the administrations rules that it felt were so agregious.
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