In an interview Monday, the presidents of the Greek umbrella organizations said that last semester’s alcohol moratorium has had a net positive impact on the Greek community.

“I’d say its positive impact outweighed its negative impact,” said Nicole Soussan, president of the Women’s Panhellenic Association. “What’s come out of it long-term has outweighed the short-term losses.”

Working together, the Interfraternity Council (IFC) and Panhel have used the moratorium as a springboard to strengthen Greek life. The first step in that process is the creation of a vision statement for all Greek organizations. The statement will be similar to the creed for each individual Greek organization but will not have any sort of enforcement power.

Soussan said that a vision statement necessarily preceded specific changes to Greek life: “It’s a fundamental place to begin. We want to use the dialogue from this process to then take it one step further so that tangible effects can be seen. It’s a process-it’s a work in progress.”

In the wake of the alcohol moratorium imposed by the Greek Life Office on the Greek community last semester, members have been examining what their role should be within the University community. According to IFC President Alex Curcuru, the University has been helpful to fraternities and sororities in this process.

“From the conversations I’ve had…the attitude isn’t, ‘Let’s see what we can do to keep the administration off our back,’” said Curcuru. “They’ve been incredibly helpful.”

One of Curcuru’s goals is to maintain that relationship with administrators, including having open dialogue so that Greeks can turn to the administration for help resolving problems and so that the administration can identify problems in the Greek community.

Fraternities and sororities recently participated in a risk management and brotherhood and sisterhood lecture by Judge Crane, who has experience in Greek risk management. Student Union funded half of Crane’s $2,500 honorarium.

“If you have speakers that are well-versed and educated and have a working knowledge of how the Greek system works, it would be more effective than a campus-wide speaker,” said Curcuru on why the Greek community eschewed the Office of Student Activities’ risk management workshop in favor of Crane’s. According to SU Treasury minutes, the Greek community had to participate in a risk management workshop to have the alcohol moratorium lifted.

Accurate evaluation of how effective these programs have been will not be available in short order. Sousson and Curcuru expect to see gradual improvement in the adherence to chapter creeds and in integrating them into the wider University community.

In addition to the vision statement being developed by IFC and Panhel, 10 of 12 fraternities on campus have agreed to adopt standards developed by the National Interfraternity Council.

According to Curcuru, campus fraternities will be working on implementing the standards over the course of the spring semester. The standards deal with recruitment, leadership development, educational programming, alumni development, financial stability and other aspects of fraternity management.

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