Patrick Romero-Aldaz, who currently serves as assistant director of fraternity and sorority life for Virginia Tech's Greek system, will become Tufts' new director of fraternity and sorority affairs, Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman announced last week.
The post had been vacant since former director Todd Sullivan left almost a year ago in June 2006.
"[Tufts is] a great campus," Romero-Aldaz told the Daily. "I think students are highly engaged. It's a very strong opportunity for me to come and be part of some positive change."
A 1999 graduate of the University of New Mexico, Romero-Aldaz holds a B.A. in psychology and an M.A. in educational leadership and policy studies from Virginia Tech.
He is currently a member of the planning committee of the Association of Fraternity Advisors and the vice chair of the American College Personnel Association's standing committee on LGBT awareness.
Romero-Aldaz was selected after a search process which featured ample input from students about applicants for the position. Eventually, the committee narrowed the pool down to three finalists who each visited Tufts to get to know the system and meet students.
"Patrick struck everyone as having the most experience. He's been running ... a very large system at Virginia Tech," Reitman said. "Their Greek system is as large as all of Tufts' enrollment."
In his new post at Tufts, Romero-Aldaz plans to advocate for more interaction between the Greek community and other campus-life and cultural groups. "That's a plus for the Greek system, if they're better connected with other groups," Reitman said.
In doing so, he will call for some reforms. "[We'll be] rebuilding the community, and doing that in partnership with the faculty and staff and town of Medford, and really helping organizations to grow and prosper according to the mission and values of Greek life," Romero-Aldaz said.
He said he "absolutely" thinks the Jelke report, which was issued to fraternities and sororities in the spring of 2006, will help shape the process.
The report, which was written by t.jelke solutions, a firm specializing in Greek life consulting, offered several suggestions. It recommended, for example, that the Greek chapters make themselves more accountable for their actions and cooperate to foster greater inter-chapter connections. Ultimately, the report offered hope for a successful future.
"I think Jelke highlights a lot of areas for improvement and things we can use to build those relationships we're talking about," Romero-Aldaz said.
"There's been some work on the [suggestions] made in the Jelke report," Reitman said. "Some of them are no-brainers, and some are more controversial."
Reitman said that in the future, it will be important to bridge the gap between national fraternities and sororities and the campus chapters, which often butt heads over student behavior.
"It's going to be a challenge to do that in a way that [keeps] the Greek community feeling that the changes are going to work for them," Reitman said.
Romero-Aldaz will return to Tufts on April 17 and then finish out the year at Virginia Tech. He will start at Tufts in mid-May.
Reitman said he is excited about Romero-Aldaz becoming part of the staff. "Patrick has a lot of interest in student affairs in general, so I'm looking forward to having him as a member of the student affairs team," he said. "He's going to be able to do a lot of collaborative [work] with others in our community."
According to sophomore Jessica Snow, the public relations chair for the Inter-Greek Council (IGC), the Greek community on campus is equally encouraged by the appointment.
She hopes that Romero-Aldaz will fill the void left after Sullivan's resignation and take some pressure off of the IGC. In doing so, she hopes that he can help increase communication between the chapters themselves and also between the chapters and the Tufts community.
Snow said that the Greek community feels like Romero-Aldaz will be a good person to help them realize those goals. "He just seemed very enthusiastic about the Tufts system," she said.
