SMU has more than 200-chartered organizations on campus, covering a wide variety of interests, religions, areas of study, social activities and ethnicities. There are more than 6,000 undergraduate students that attend SMU and most find their place on campus through these organizations.
Participation in Greek life far outnumbers that of any other student organization. According to reports made last fall by both The Daily Campus and The Daily Mustang, more than 47 percent of females and 34 percent of males are currently members of Greek organizations.
Greek life has a large presence on SMU’s campus, which gives members of fraternities and sororities the strengths of both numbers and connections to garner elected positions more easily, as evidenced in last week’s Student Senate elections.
“IFC and Panhellenic have enormous impact on elections, just because of sheer size,” Haynes Strader, Interfraternity Council president, said. “I checked the numbers and 2000 students voted in the election. If every IFC member showed up to vote, we’d have more than 50 percent right there.”
Strader pointed out that for as long as he could remember, the Student Senate’s president has been Greek.
Last year’s presidential race between Stephen Reiff and Pi Kappa Alpha Patrick Kobler was the closet race between a non-Greek and a Greek in at least the last 15 years.
“I don’t want to discredit Kobler in any way,” Reiff said. “But IFC does have a significant sway in elections and it’s a powerful card to be able to play.”
Student Senate is in place to represent The Students Association of SMU, which “is comprised of all the University’s currently enrolled students,” according to the Senate Web site.
Nearly 75 percent of senators are Greek and although many students recognize the inevitably of these numbers, the downside is that it means other organizations aren’t equally represented.
“I wish there were more minorities and non-Greeks represented in senate,” junior Mai Lyn Ngo said. “But it can’t really be helped, because so many students go Greek.”
Recently elected Vice President Austin Prentice said that although the support of minority students was a driving factor, he was grateful when IFC began to support him in the run-off campaign.
“My big thing with IFC is that I spoke amongst IFC exec and Haynes Strader, the president, he endorsed me following the primaries,” Prentice said. “Haynes sent out an e-mail to all the presidents and hopefully it’s just a downward passing of information, just getting chapters to vote.”
IFC’s candidate endorsements are logical: the candidate is chosen that will keep it’s best interests in mind.
2010 vice-presidential candidate and current Chief-of-Staff Alex Ehmke said that he thinks it’s a shame that non-Greeks aren’t even considered.
“I don’t blame IFC for wanting to support a Greek candidate,” Ehmke said. “But I think I could’ve bridged the gap between Greeks and non-Greeks.”
Secretary Katie Perkins acknowledges that this is the way that the democratic process functions in elections.
“Of course it’s more difficult for a non-Greek candidate to run and be successful,” Perkins said. “Greek has a large visible presence on campus. Close to 40 percent is Greek, but 60 percent is not. The challenge for the non-Greek candidate is to reach that 60 percent.”
