I would like to congratulate you on a very one-sided article about the current incarnation of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity on the SMU campus. If you are going to write an article about the current house, but continue to talk about the history of those removed from active status, you should probably verify your facts.  We weren’t taken off campus because of “a high deactivation rate and a low GPA.”  We were asked to step aside to guarantee the future of the chapter on campus. Our alumni board, which wasn’t even controlled by alumni from our chapter and Sig Ep headquarters staff felt that the current 19 members couldn’t recruit enough new members to maintain the house. Where they got this idea I’m not sure. Sure, for the three traditional recruitment periods prior to Spring 2000 when myself and eight other men joined the house, only six men had been recruited. If you go more than a year without recruiting at least half the size of the house you are going to have a small house after your two largest recruitment classes (pledge classes) graduate. And that’s exactly what happened to us.  We had two senior classes of over 10 men graduate in 2000 and 2001, when that happens to an already small house your numbers aren’t going to be very good. Yes, we had a few brothers deactivate but every house does, but we also had to remove some men from our chapter, and when you are a small house that hurts even more.

Michael Thomas also goes on to demean our GPA. Yes, so we had a low GPA, I wasn’t proud of it but we had an academic chair that was working on helping every brother out. But I would like to ask Michael if he would be able to maintain his GPA if he and 18 of his other brothers were putting everything into trying to save a house that they loved with every part of themselves. My brothers and I had more social, philanthropic, intramural,and individual campus involvement last fall than our chapter had seen in recent years. We were working very hard to get the Sig Ep name out on one of the toughest, most image-conscious college campuses in the nation. Your grades might fall some, too, if you had the future of your faternity resting on you and only 18 of your other brothers. I would also like to remind the current undergraduate members of Sigma Phi Epsilon, that myself and my 18 other brothers are still fully initiated life members of Sigma Phi Epsilon and when a large chunk of us graduate in May we’ll be at the first alumni board meeting in the fall. In closing, to this day, I don’t understand why our National Headquarters and alumni felt if was necessary to cast aside 19 men who loved their fraternity it order to recruit a whopping 28 men, imagine there could have been 47 brothers wearing our letters on campus right now.

Matt Richardson
Senior finance major