The Interfraternity Council unanimously voted to accept a resolution that requires all fraternity chapters to attend sexual assault intervention trainings before their respective formal events this spring.

At least 75 percent of each chapter must attend one of Student Union’s It’s On Us to Intervene trainings before said formals or risk losing their social privileges. Fraternity men will still be allowed to attend their formals if they do not meet this requirement, but will be restricted in hosting any future social events until they reach the 75 percent threshold. IFC members have discussed making the requirement permanent.

The resolution was created by junior Mukund Murari, IFC director of membership education, and sophomore Jameson Cook, IFC president. All 11 fraternity chapter presidents voted on March 2 to approve the resolution, which went into effect immediately.

Student Union, when it announced the It’s On Us campaign, noted that it was hoping to see at least 1 in 4 Washington University undergraduates go through the program to combat the commonly cited statistic that 1 in 4 college women will experience sexual assault.

According to Cook, 892 men are currently affiliated with Washington University fraternities. Training 75 percent of these men would effectively result in training a total of 12 percent of the undergraduate population.

Cook is optimistic that the chapters shouldn’t have a problem meeting the requirement in time.

He noted that a central focus of the resolution was to encourage chapter presidents and chapters themselves to take an interest in getting trained and educated in these sensitive issues.

“Coming from the perspective of an IFC president, my goal has been able to not just mandate or try to force issues down a fraternity brother’s or a whole fraternity chapter’s throat, but [to] try to get buy in from the chapters and the chapter presidents…acting as the representatives of their fraternities,” Cook said.

He believes that the cooperation of Greek life is important in establishing the campus climate.

“[It] shows a huge sign for the amount of responsibility that the Greek community wants to take for our campus and the recognition and understanding that if we don’t take responsibility for it, and we don’t take steps to move in a better direction, who on this campus is supposed to?” Cook said.

President of Alpha Delta Phi and sophomore Nathan Gartlan expressed excitement about potentially carrying the objective forward into future semesters.

“I think it’s appropriate to have a consequence for not meeting that training to not have social events,” Gartland said. “That should just be a prerequisite to having them in the first place…I’m all for doing bystander intervention training in order to get guys more aware of situations that could occur at their events or other events, and that makes us a better campus.”

Sophomore and member of Beta Theta Pi Michael Collins, who also serves as an It’s On Us facilitator, questioned the effectiveness of the proposed punishment for not meeting the training threshold.

“A lot of fraternities get away with unregistered social events, and a lot of fraternities recognize that being on social probation or housing probation–it’s seen as not very binding or doesn’t really have teeth behind it,” Collins said. “My only fear is that if a chapter does not want to be trained, or [if] they don’t get to 75 percent, then they’re going to have unregistered parties, which is going to make it even more dangerous. So, I don’t know where the line is between the carrot and the stick.”

David Stetter, the coordinator of student involvement and leadership, who works closely with Greek life, gave the IFC advice in constructing the resolution.

“In conversation with Interfraternity Council leadership, I advised them [that] if this is something that IFC stands for and believes in, then we should put a resolution forward because technically right now we have no roots or no teeth in the game to say your chapter has to do this,” Stetter said.

With additional reporting by Zach Kram.