In an attempt to enhance the Greek system on campus and rebuild its values, Committee on Fraternities and Sororities (CFS) chair Ed Cabellon, the assistant director of student activities, has unveiled an initiative that calls for the creation of an independent Office of Greek Life. The office would work closely with Greek houses to create stronger ties between them and with the community as a whole.
The move is unprecedented in University-Greek relations, which have undergone conflict on several occasions over the last decade. And although the Greek system has not been under active fire this year, Dean of Students Bruce Reitman described what he sees as a general decline in the bonds of a true Greek community.
"Our Greek system appears to lack a feeling on the part of the chapters that
they all belong to one system," Reitman said. "Chapters act independently of one another. I don't think you can have pride in the Greek system if we're looking at individual cooperative apartments."
Panhellenic Council president Amanda Scheinfeldt agrees with the sentiment. "Right now, [the Greek system] is just about the individual houses," she said.
Reitman said that many of the national chapters of fraternities and sororities on campus have spoken with him and other administrators about strengthening the feeling of community among houses at Tufts.
Reitman is supportive of the proposed Office of Greek Life. "If we can afford it, I'd love it," he said. Funding for the office would most likely come from a combination of contributions from house corporations, national chapters, college funds, and possibly from students as part of house dues or Tufts Community Union (TCU) funding, Reitman said.
President Larry Bacow has not actively supported the Greek system so far but stopped short of citing concern, instead saying he has "expectations" of fraternities and sororities.
"I will look to Dean Reitman and his staff to work with our Greek system to ensure that our fraternities are faithful to their stated goals," the president said.
Reitman said he has communicated with Bacow about Greek like several times and insisted that administrative interest in fraternities and sororities is not inspired by plans for a crackdown.
The administration is not without its concerns, however. Reitman said that Bacow complained about beer cans and cups strewn about the Professors Row area last semester, and the president recently received a letter from 8th District Congressional Representative Michael Capuano regarding complaints of "noise, late night partying, and litter," from local-area residents. Community complaints about fraternities are nothing new, and it remains unclear how seriously Bacow will take them.
In either case, the president is not new to dealing with fraternities. During his time as chancellor at MIT, where he worked in part on undergraduate life issues, Bacow experienced a worst-case fraternity incident. In 1997, freshman Scott Krueger died after being found unconscious in the Phi Gamma Delta chapter house. His death was an alleged result of hazing, and MIT later agreed to pay Krueger's family $6 million for its role in determining housing and alcohol policies. Bacow was among the architects of hotly-debated residential life plan which eliminated MIT's tradition of housing freshmen in fraternities.
Reitman said there is no harm in a president's interest in Greek life on campus, especially since 20 percent of the University's undergraduate population holds membership in the system. But the self-described catalyst of any change will be Cabellon, who also serves as assistant director of student activities.
The plan is to hire a full time administrator for the office, who would be assisted by four graduate assistants. "I want to make sure that these students know they have a place to go, especially when they feel the administration is always after them," Cabellon said, adding that many other schools with Greek systems employ similar staffs.
One such school is the University of New Hampshire (UNH), which maintains a permanent Office of Greek Affairs. According to its coordinator, Steve Pappajohn, a dedicated Greek office is vital to promoting a cohesive Greek community. "The system as an independent entity is very advantageous," Pappajohn said.
Pappajohn, who has worked at schools both with and without separate Greek offices, says his office acts as a liaison between school administrators and students, not as another arm of the administration. Along with a graduate assistant and two interns, Pappajohn is involved in all aspects of Greek affairs at UNH, including alumni relations, philanthropy, and risk management.
"In many ways, we try to bridge the gap" between the university and the Greeks, Pappajohn said.
Cabellon hopes that such a dedicated organization will be able to reinvigorate fraternity and sorority members at Tufts. "They're the ones who are leaders on campus," Cabellon said. "The Greeks here ... haven't really dipped into their potential."
Cabellon said a major area of concern is community service and charity, and he recently asked the fraternities and sororities to summarize their efforts in this area. "Philanthropy is one of the backbones of Greek life," Cabellon said. "If that isn't part of their mission right now, I would ask them, 'What are you doing at Tufts?'"
Until the various houses provide Cabellon with the requested information, however, it will be difficult to tell how heavily any fraternity or sorority is involved in community efforts. "A lot of houses do philanthropy that no one even knows about," one sorority president said at a recent CFS meeting. Some fraternity members, though, speak about charity as little more than a paragraph of their credo.
On a larger scale, Reitman believes that the proposed Office of Greek Life will be most effective in creating stronger Inter-Fraternity and Panhellenic Councils, which he called integral to "maintaining the traditions and values" that the various Greek organizations stand for. Scheinfeldt, the Panhellenic Council president, acknowledged that the IFC currently exists in name only, and added that she and other fraternity and sorority members believe Cabellon's efforts to start a Greek office will "revamp" the current way of life and create a unified and tangible support organization.
Reitman is confident that Cabellon will be able to improve the visibility of campus fraternities and sororities and cast the Greek system in a new light. "He's our best chance," he said of Cabellon.
The tensest days for Greeks at Tufts came in 1995, when the faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering made a proposal to the board of trustees to abolish the entire Greek system. Their recommendation hinged on the view that gender-specific houses fostered communities of sexism and disrespect, according to Reitman.
"Faculty members were saying that women could not walk down Professors Row without catcalls and comments," Reitman said.
In response, the trustees created a committee to evaluate the complaints. After half a year of interviewing students and faculty and organizing focus groups, the trustees decided not to eliminate the Greek system.
While they did not see the faculty's concern regarding gender inequality as a major problem, the trustees decided to address what they saw as social exclusivity that many prospective Greeks were facing. They created a University rule that mandated guaranteed bidding, by which the fraternity and sorority system as a whole was required to accommodate any eligible student seeking bids from one of their houses. In other words, every student must receive a bid from a house, although a student is not guaranteed a bid to the house of his or her choice specifically. But most fraternities now do not adhere to this rule, while sororities do.
The faculty, whose original concerns were unheeded by trustees and who felt that they had no higher authority to turn to, voted to remove themselves from the Greek system entirely, which had been overseen in part by the Committee on Student Life. They have had no official oversight or involvement in the Greek system since.
In response, Tufts soon created the CFS, which includes members of the University administration and student body.
