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Originally posted by GammaZeta
Does anyone have any statistics, or even know if its ever been done before, where a school/college/university had suspended a zeta but IHQ still allowed them to fully operate?
How does something like that work? Would the zeta simply be 100% on its own under IHQ guidelines?
Just curious.
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It is current Lambda Chi Alpha HQ policy that chapters exist only at universities where we're welcome. (that might not be the exact policy verbiage, but you get what I am trying to say). Essentially, if a university withdraws recognition, IHQ does as well.
Case: Alfred University. Kappa Sigma Zeta had just rechartered and was arguably the top chapter on campus. Alfred decided to abandon its Greek System. KSZ was subsequently closed by IHQ.
We raised hell on this board about it, too.
I don’t agree with the policy. It was crafted in the Spazyk days of gentleman’s agreements between schools and fraternities. Those days are long past. That was also the days before rampant lawsuit abuse and the social host liability agenda pushed by groups like MADD as a neo-temperance movement. Things have changed dramatically since Spazyk left the EVP position in 1990, but unfortunately we as an org have relied too heavily on our traditions and past to carry us through. That reliance on days gone by has taken us from first in the fraternal world to arguably third or fourth (being generous here), while other orgs who have adapted have sailed right past us.
We are one of the Few remaining orgs that have an archaic policy like this in existence. I think there’s a balance that can be struck between where we stand now and other groups who don’t see the value in a positive working relationship with a university administration. Some groups won’t establish any relationship with a univ. admin and use that as an expansion tactic. I think it's sleazy.
Its a thin line for HQ to walk and I think there needs to be some board leadership on this issue. Specifically, I think its time to adapt and direct staff to create some mechanism that allows for chapters with legitimate grievances to continue to exist on hostile campuses or campuses where there was no/or less than due process in the removal of their recognition. My suggestion is that upon losing recognition or in the event a group wants to exist without university recognition they should have to appeal to the GHZ. I believe the standard should be a high one. If not, every group that loses Greek Week is going to want to go independent of the university.
I think that we can hold on to our value system while adapting to the future. There arent always black and white issues and this is a perfect example. This very situation is being raised at UC Boulder (and was coming up at USF before a system wide compromise was struck), and it will continue to come up. The board can be proactive about it or be reactive to it. I think the former is the best choice.
Past boards have been hesitant to act on issues like this because they like to create the illusion that all chapters are treated the same. They arent. Many factors affect how a chapter is treated, when it was founded, famous alumni, chapter size, region of the country, health of greek system, etc. I think that the board and staff should embrace that differences exist and that they act for the good of the order instead if pretending (as past GHZ's have done) that our fraternity is a purely an egalitarian exercise. To me, thats insulting when I and everyone else can see thats not the case.
If you all will indulge me, I'm going to go off on a tangent to illustrate this point. We all know there are different 'tiers' of chapters. I'll call the top level the A Tier, which are schools that are older, are D1 or research intensive universiites, or are particularly affluent. The B Tier groups are LXA's bread and butter. They are the majority of chapters and are located at good schools. They arent standouts and can be chapters that are like Lennox's and mine. Approx 30 years old. Many of these chapters would be Tier A chapters if their universities were a little more prestigious or the chapters were larger. Finally, there the C Tier chapters. This includes colonies, brand new chapters or schapters that are struggeling. They also make up a small percentage of our chapters. Its obvious to my 4 year old nephew that a Tier A chapter and a Tier C chapter will be treated dramatically different even under identical circumstances because the factors affecting the operations of the groups are different. We as an org need to acknowledge that this is not some failure of brotherhood, but good business sense. When we trust the GHZ to make these sound decisions, instead of trying to hold them to some flawed ideal of equality in disparity, then they can make decisions to allow one group to stay open when their recognition has been pulled by the university, and in other situations to not grant it.
Back to the issue at hand, specifically UWW, there were underlying risk management issues regarding this chapter and the situation they found themselves in. (I know. I saw the photos posted on Webshots myself. Some of our undergraduate members might not fully grasp the power of a google image search with specific words searched, but thats another thread) It didnt reach a standard the Status of Chapters committee felt necessitated a closure (they were reviewed at Leadership Seminar in August). The university found that they did reach that standard for withdrawl of recognition. If we had a mechanism in place for a review through LXA, these brothers might have had one more chance to prove themselves.
But what the hell do I know. lol
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