This past Monday, StudLife chose to publish an op-ed piece entitled, “What is going on with our fraternities?” which criticized both Wash. U.’s Interfraternity Council and its 10 current member chapters. I felt that as president of the Interfraternity Council and a voice for Greek Life as a whole, this article warranted a response on my part.

Before I begin, I would like to note that the author has apologized for the “sarcastic, satirical, and mean-spirited” tone of his piece. While I appreciate this sentiment, I still feel that something needs to be said about the points he raised. The author positions himself as an outsider to our community, yet still deems himself able to judge that “the fraternity community is not up in arms.” As I hope is demonstrated by the very fact that I am sending this letter (after approval from our 10 current chapter presidents), this is simply not the case.

As suggested in the article, IFC is guilty of one of either two crimes: “that [we] did know what the chapters were doing and encouraged it” or we “simply decided to be complacent to the goings-on of these two chapters.” It is this false dichotomy that I would like to focus on. The author ignores the possibility of two equally viable scenarios: 1) that we did recognize the potential for problems within our community and tried to prevent them from becoming a reality and 2) that the community did not know what was happening. I believe that reality falls somewhere in between these two.

Pledge processes for almost all fraternities involve secrecy. As secret-ritual-based organizations, there are parts of our new member education that cannot be publicized. On a team-building level, closed events function as a way to bond new members both to each other and to the brotherhood as a whole. Most fraternities handle this independence maturely, creating a new member education program that is very much secret but also safe and controlled. The Interfraternity Council and Student Involvement and Leadership work hand in hand to encourage this type of behavior, on one end by providing informational sessions like last spring’s “Hazing on Trial” that educate the Greek and broader Wash. U. community on the issues surrounding hazing and on the other by meeting with pledge educators to review their pledge programs each semester.

Later in the article, the author suggests that we must have known what’s going on “as rumors are always quietly creeping across the student body.” Given his disconnect from Greek Life, he may not know that all allegations of misconduct against fraternities and sororities on campus are seriously investigated. If the infraction is deemed egregious enough, the fraternity is then either sent before the IFC standards board or the administration to receive their punishment. This is not a community that lives in blissful ignorance—once rumors become credible, we are quick to respond, find out the truth and work with the chapter to help them make changes. While the author may believe that some of our members hear rumors about other fraternities and choose to look the other way, it is foolish to generalize the actions of these select individuals to indict the larger organizations that they are a part of, especially when this belief seems speculative.

As we stand today, fraternity life is composed of 10 different chapters, each with its own identity. Contrary to what is suggested by the author’s use of the phrase “culture of the IFC and fraternity community” and his scenario where the “fraternities decide to clean up their acts,” the problems of one of our chapters cannot and should not be used to attack the integrity of our community as a whole. If one believes that all 10 of our chapters condone the behavior seen in the case of SAM and the allegations against Sig Ep, then they truly must not know us very well. Every week in IFC meetings, I watch the presidents passionately discuss various issues affecting our community, ranging from our relationship with the administration to our involvement in Relay for Life. While we can monitor and work to help our fellow chapters on campus, the final decision to make a mistake rests within the chapters themselves. And finally, were a new chapter to come to campus, I would hope that they would see themselves as one part of a larger group working towards the overall betterment of our community, rather than a Batman-type hero come to save us from our moral decay.