Through efforts by Tufts Student Services and the University's Greek community, the Greek Working Group has been established in order to address some of the problems plaguing the fraternity and sorority houses on campus.
Margot Abels, Director of Drug and Alcohol Education at Tufts, and Elaine Theodore, Violence Prevention Program Coordinator at the Women's Center, initially approached the Greek community about creating the group. They are now the faculty coordinators and student services representatives of the group.
Abels said she describes the group as a "way for members of the Greek community to get together and openly talk about the issues happening, and ways to resolve them."
The Greek Working Group was also created to start dialogue about changes that need to happen with relation to the Greek community, Theodore said.
The primary student coordinator of the group is Inter-Greek Council (IGC) President junior Alexis Liistro.
Liistro said she was encouraged by the fact that Abels and Theodore were so willing to start the program. "[It's nice to know that] around campus there are faculty and administration who want to help the Greek system," she said.
The group was conceived with no specific plan other than to discuss the problems on campus. After four meetings, both Abels and Theodore said they are happy with its progress.
"We are most proud of the fact that people are coming and enthusiastic," Abels said.
Theodore agreed and said that all three sororities and between five and seven out of thirteen fraternities were represented at each meeting.
"[It's a] huge success [and a] powerful beginning," she said.
Leaders of the campus fraternities, which have been experiencing greater problems recently, said they share a positive view of the group's development.
"The Working Group is going very well," junior Matthew Toia, President of Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT) said. "We talk frankly about problems and how we can fix them ... I see the group continuing to proactively [help] improve the community."
Junior Charlie Thomas, a brother in the Zeta Psi Fraternity, said that the group also aims to show that the Greek system is an important part of campus life.
"One of the main functions of the group is to make sure we have positive [public relations] for the Greek system," he said.
Another one of the group's goals is to back the newly conceived GAMMA program. This program stems from the international association of college educational programs called BACCHUS and GAMMA, which focus on drug, alcohol, and sex education.
BACCHUS and GAMMA have previously been represented at Tufts, but is being re-examined by the Greek Working Group. Thomas and other members of the group hope to introduce certain aspects of another initiative that is currently in place at the University of New Hampshire-the Sexual Harassment and Rape Prevention Program (SHARPP).
The central idea of SHARPP is to have trained and accessible peer leaders assigned to each registered party on campus. Thomas said that he would like to see it instituted at Tufts next year, with the hope that it will make people feel more comfortable at fraternity parties even if they do not know many of the people there. This will work toward the group's goal of making fraternity parties safer.
Aaron Rosenberg, a brother in the Theta Chi fraternity, said he supports the idea because he believes it will show that the fraternity system is concerned about safety and are not necessarily at fault when someone at their party makes bad decisions regarding drugs and alcohol.
"[This should] ease some of the pressure off the houses having parties," he said.
Should the program be instituted - which Todd Sullivan, Director of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs, said has "not been fully decided" - it would not be difficult for fraternities to comply with it. GAMMA members would only need to be present at parties with over 50 people in attendance. Parties of this size are already required to be registered with the University, but Sullivan said that this has been simplified with the recent addition of an online party registration form on the Fraternity and Sorority Affairs Web site.
Rosenberg said that in the event that the program is put into place, each house will likely have its own GAMMA members, so the GAMMA student wouldn't have to go out of his way to be at the party.
"It makes so much more sense for it to be an internal thing," Rosenberg said.
Abels said that several houses already have unofficial forms of this system in place. This would simply make it more consistent and as Rosenberg said, show in a more public way that fraternities "are concerned about safety."
The decision to implement this type of program would have to come jointly from the Working Group and the Council on Fraternities and Sororities (CFS), co-chaired by Sullivan.
According to Sullivan, the Greek Working Group is designed to send feedback to the CFS while still being able to discuss things without a Greek administrator present.
Toia said that the scope of the group was University-wide. "Non-Greeks attend our social events and are affected by changes in the Greek system as well," he said.
"The idea behind the group is finding ways to make the Tufts community better ... the group is not just about us," Toia said.
