A new change to the Interfraternity Council (IFC) bylaws means that an IFC hearing board will handle most disciplinary charges against chapters instead of the SMU Conduct Board.
The change comes after a year-long effort by IFC to enact the board and get fraternities under its jurisdiction to be held accountable for their actions.
“This is a huge step in the right direction for the Greek community as a whole, but definitely for IFC,” IFC President Mike Alberts said. “This is probably the biggest thing that IFC has done in the past decade.”
Under the new process, the SMU Student Conduct and Community Standards department will assign conduct violation cases to the IFC hearing board when applicable. The hearing board will hear cases and apply sanctions if the chapter is found responsible for the charges.
The hearing board will be able to impose a wide variety of sanctions against chapters, including deferred suspension and suspension.
According to Kristal Statler, director of fraternity and sorority life, the board will also be able to levy restitution fines and social probation against a chapter.
Only chapters are subject to the hearing board; SMU’s Conduct Board will still hear cases related to individuals.
The hearing board will not handle serious cases such as hazing or sexual assault.
“I think it’s just a great learning experience for our students to be able to practice self-governance,” Statler said. “I think it’s more effective to hear what your peers have to say about choices that have been made.”
The board will be composed of 10 fraternity members, who have already been chosen and received training last weekend. A member will not be allowed to serve on cases related to his own fraternity.
“The hearing board is comprised of your peers, so if a fraternity is in trouble, they’re going in front of their peers,” Alberts said. “We find that your peers are going to hold you a little bit to a higher standard and probably come down on you in the right direction.”
The board will have two co-chairs: Michael Gruben and Travis Jones. Gruben said the board will show that IFC can “handle things internally.”
Gruben also said that it will “bring SMU, as a school, much more in line with other schools” which have similar types of peer-reviewed boards.
The implementation of the board comes after Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity underwent a membership review last semester, and Kappa Alpha Order fraternity was suspended from campus in February 2009.
Several other chapters have been placed on probation or deferred suspension for violations during the past few years.
Former IFC President Haynes Strader feels that the board will help fraternities take more responsibility for their actions. (Full disclosure: Strader is a member of the Student Media Company Board of Directors).
“The problem is a lot of that gets lost when the consequences are being delegated by administrators. Because it’s much easier to pass the blame on from your fraternity to saying, ‘The school is out to get you,'” Strader said.
“Whereas if you’re going in front of a hearing board…you’re going to take those consequences much more seriously, and you’re going to have to do some self-reflection because they’ve come from your own community and your own people and not from some other higher power,” he said.
Alberts also agreed that the board will help IFC become more accountable.
“I think it really stems from some of the incidents that happened last year and the year before that,” he said. “IFC said that ‘we really need [to] be holding each other accountable and doing something for our own community because if something bad is going to happen, it makes us all look bad. So we need to take care of it for ourselves.’ I think it’s great that we’re taking steps to really work on our own.”
Last year IFC started its “Frat Responsibly” campaign, which sought to change Greek culture for the better and promote responsibility among chapters. Strader emphasized that the hearing board is a by-product of this effort.
“The idea is that it’ll be just a huge reason for fraternities to really think about their actions and consider them a little more carefully,” he said.
