The ‘Greek Life’ section of the DePauw University website has not been updated for several years, lacking current information on a variety of topics pertaining to fraternity and sorority life such as registration instructions, chapter scorecards and grade reports, governing council and chapter leaders, and more.
Daylon Weddle, associate director of fraternity and sorority life (FSL) said the main reason the website has remained out of date is due to staffing issues over the last few years. When Weddle took his position in 2019, the once four person FSL office was cut to two people and the director at the time resigned, leaving Weddle to run the office alone until the current director, Frae Binder, joined in 2021.
Additionally, Weddle said he and Binder do not currently have access to update the website. Weddle said they have chosen to “prioritize time and energy on the direct relationships with students to help impact their experience as much as we can” over coordinating the website revamp as it is a “rather sizable undertaking.”
Recognizing the website is an important resource for the community, the FSL office is currently searching for a media intern that will be in charge of updating and maintaining both the website and FSL Instagram account. Weddle said they were unable to get any interns last semester, so they’re “really looking forward to adding this new position” this year.
While the website lacks current information, Weddle said all four governing Greek councils use Instagram heavily to market their events and get information out into the community.
Instagram has been a useful resource for some, but not for all, as first-year Tom Nguyen said social media did not have all of the information he was looking for.
Nguyen said that as an international student, he had very little knowledge about Greek life entering college. Upon his arrival at DePauw, Nguyen said “it took a long time [to learn about Greek life] since there is no platform or channel that really describes or promotes Greek life, the only thing that gave me more insight into Greek houses was going to parties, which [was] inconvenient at some point.”
Because of his lack of insight on fraternity and sorority life in comparison to domestic students, Ngyuen felt it was too late to join the Greek community once he learned more and became comfortable with it.
Nguyen said it would have been beneficial for him to be able to access things via the website such as information about the recruitment process, housing costs, various events each chapter holds, and chapter histories.
Similarly, first-year Jackie Le said part of her decision to not join Greek life this semester was due to a lack of available information. “I feel like the houses’ instagram pages are very generic,” Le said. “I couldn’t find out what the houses and their members are like.”
With the FSL office working to renew the website with the help of an intern soon, look out for updated information in the near future.