Junior Tyler Notch, president of Interfraternity Council confirmed Thursday that IFC will penalize fraternities that violated terms of quota but hasn't yet determined how much each fine could be or which houses specifically will be penalized.
PJ Mitchell, a greek life coordinator, said that the executive board of IFC and chapter presidents have been working together to come up with alternative solutions to the fines.
Fines given to certain houses are in the works to be reduced, either through a formal investigation through the Greek Life office or IFC. The investigative team consists of eight people: IFC's VP of Risk, VP of Operations, VP of Recruitment, the IFC President, the chapter's IFC advisor and three chapter presidents not involved with the incident.
Mitchell said the formal investigations haven't begun yet, but probably will in a week.
"One of the challenges IFC and the chapter presidents face is financial realities are not the same [for every chapter]," Mitchell said. "One fine for a chapter is hard to pay, but another would have an impact but not the same impact."
If a chapter accumulates a large enough fine, a reduction of the pledge class for next year could be enforced instead. This reduction can be up to 50 percent if enough fines are accumulated, Mitchell said.
He did not point out if this was a real possibility for the houses under investigation.
"IFC continually looks into different ways [to enforce the rules] with the same impact as fining," Mitchell said. He noted that for certain houses, the face-value fine they earned could be a financial death sentence.
That's especially true because some houses are willing to shoulder fines to exceed quota, Notch said.
"There are so many loopholes," said Notch.
This year the potentially steep penalties were enforced to discourage fraternities from continuing the practice of taking more pledges than the set quota, Notch said.
"We needed a reasonable fine so this doesn't happen again in the future," said Tim Connor, IFC's vice president of finance.
Fines weren't just because of going over quota, foul language during recruitment and Rho Gamma penalties factored into houses total.
IFC and the Greek Life Offices both stressed that they want to keep greek life healthy and thriving on DePauw's campus. But houses have to follow the rules in order for that to happen.
"We're working on holding chapter houses accountable and working with chapters as a whole to have the ability to succeed," Mitchell said.
Fines levied to greek chapter houses will go to charity and promoting a healthier greek community. IFC plans to reexamine penalties in the future.
Notch plans to put a certain amount of this money into philanthropy events chapter houses have on campus. This number will be uniform across the houses and will also be used to fund alcohol education but also uniform recruiting events with the chapters, giving equal exposure to all.
"[The potential new members] will get to see more fraternities, not just the ones they go to on the weekend," said Connor. "We want to try to get it so they see the houses more evenly."
In the past, the money collected from fines went to charity in Greencastle.
"A lot of the chapter houses don't know or understand where the money goes," Notch said. "They think it gets distributed randomly."