For years, Greek life has flourished all over the United States, filled with tradition, philanthropy and a shared community of values spread all over the places we call home. From sororities to fraternities, no matter the different organizations, they all shared the core Greek letters as a bonding feature. These past years in Florida International University have been harsh for Greek life. Recently, organizations like Tau Kappa Epsilon, Pi Kappa Phi and Phi Gamma Delta got suspended for various reasons.
As more and more Greek banners get taped up in our beloved Graham Center, it comes to the Greek member’s minds “could we be next?” This past week, there were a few more fraternities marked with a possible end to their reign. After the homecoming tailgate, on October 13th, an email was sent to chapter presidents and advisors that the following fraternities were being placed on interim suspension: Sigma Alpha Mu, Sigma Chi, Sigma Phi Epsilon, and Zeta Beta Tau. What this means for the fraternities is that they have to decease from any social activity, desist on all chapter operations, stop the new member education, and are unable to participate in student coordinated activities and any intramural sports competition while investigations take place. The given reason for the terms of the suspension was that these fraternities had large amounts of alcohol in their tents and supposed underage drinking.
People everywhere were shocked by the conditions and what this meant for Greek life. Following the email, a meeting was held and mandated by Dr. DeSantis where all suspended chapters were invited to attend in order to explain the terms and consequences of the suspension. The meeting was useless, as many Greek members described it. An anonymous source told Her Campus how many questions asked toward Dr. DeSantis were answered very vaguely, and some of the genuine questions were not even answered. The source continued to say that his response for many of the arguments Greek members had was that the administrators were not suspending the chapters, it was the chapter’s behavior that resulted in their suspension.
Due to the suspension, many Greek organizations are having heavy repercussions. ZBT had spent $2,000 on a pageant they were hosting to raise funds for their philanthropy, a pageant that cannot be held anymore. For the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority this meant changes in their upcoming pageant where Greek members were participating in and they have no idea what possible changes need to be made in order for their pageant to continue. Greek life as a whole has no idea why administrators are being so harsh on them after they are the main contributors to FIU’s social atmosphere.
A lot of students feel confused, as Greek life already had partaken in conversations with the faculty and administrators in regards to the problems with the strict rules and restrictions. Following the boycott of an FIU tailgate, administrators and FIU President Dr. Rosenberg, decided to hold a meeting to solve these issues. Apparently, these issues are not being solved and more and more fraternities are being roped for a culture that has been around the United States for ages.
As members of the Greek community are the one’s that participate at FIU, give money to philanthropies, raise funds for FIU sponsored events, and are usually the leaders of this community, we feel all our wrong doing are usually highlighted and our good deeds are diminished. After all of these occurrences, it comes to member’s minds “is Greek life over?”