On the night of Mar. 8, the Committee on Fraternities and Sororities (CFS) met with all campus fraternity and sorority presidents to discuss the future of the Tufts Greek system.
The meeting centered on a report on the Greek system by higher education consultant Thomas Jelke of the t.jelke solutions firm. The evaluation is based on Jelke's meetings with members of the Tufts community in September.
Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman gave the report to the CFS on Friday. It contains both an analysis of the Greek system and recommendations for improvement.
"You will not likely be surprised by Dr. Jelke's assessment [of the system]," Reitman wrote in his letter to CFS, which was enclosed with the report. "I ask the CFS members to consider Dr. Jelke's observations and his recommendations for change."
According to the executive summary of the report, Jelke expressed hope for the system's future. "While there are some significant problems with the fraternity and sorority system at Tufts, the situation is definitely reparable," he wrote.
Within its analysis, the report candidly assesses the problems that have wracked the system in past years.
"The core values and traditions of social Greek involvement and participation are weak or absent in many Tufts chapters," the executive summary read.
The summary also highlighted the system's positive impacts: "Several of the chapters, particularly the sororities, have excellent track records of participation in community and philanthropic activities," it read.
In fact, "[students in] sororities have a higher GPA than overall females at Tufts," Reitman told the Daily.
According to Reitman, the evaluation was not imposed from the top down. Rather, it grew out of student desire to revamp the system.
"The fraternities came to us and said, 'How do we fix this? Help us,'" Reitman said.
While the report provides insight and recommendations, Reitman sees it as a tool to help Greeks to jointly decide how to better their situation. "We need a Greek system, not a collection of houses," he said.
"In no way should this be viewed as us doing away with the system," Reitman said. "Instead, it is to make ... necessary changes."
In distributing the report to the campus' fraternity and
sorority presidents, CFS intended that the leaders begin to "develop recommendations [about] what aspects of the report [they] should focus on first," said Todd Sullivan, director of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs and CFS members.
"Hopefully it will spark fresh discussion within the system," Reitman said. "The broader cultural change will happen over several years, and it must come from the members themselves."
Presidents of all Tufts' fraternities and sororities will meet on Mar. 15 to discuss the report and steps that should be taken to fulfill its recommendations.
The CFS also asked the presidents to include the other members of their organizations in the process, and to incorporate their ideas as well.
Although the CFS is seeking input from the organizations themselves, the committee will ultimately be in charge of creating a plan for improving Greek life at Tufts.
According to Sullivan, a "new member forum" was held on Wednesday night to educate new Greek system members on how to act as responsible community members.
"We are hoping this spring is quieter, but pledging is in the spring," Reitman said. "We are hoping for a good season."
With midterms and spring break coming up, Sullivan does not expect the presidents of the Greek organizations to immediately conduct an in-depth look at the report.
An in-depth analysis of the report's implications for the Tufts Greek system will appear in the Daily next week.
Marc Raifman and Victoria Kabak contributed reporting to this article.
