Interfraternal Council (IFC) has been trying to share more governance with Campus Living and Community Development (CLCD), as well as take more Community Standards issues into their own hands.
As part of the bylaw revision that IFC’s policies are undergoing for the first time since 2014, IFC has submitted a proposal to become a more of self-governing council. “Hopefully the proposal will be implemented starting next year; basically IFC wants to take over certain things in the community standards process such as noise complaints,” Nathan Reed, IFC president, said.
The Risk Management Committee is overseeing this process, and they are currently in the late stages of their proposal, but still have to work out some details regarding how they will govern the IFC chapters. They still are clarifying what actions will require what sanctions and how their hearing board will work.
However, everything IFC proposes has to be voted on by the chapter presidents. “Everything that we do change, if it’s one word or even a number it’s all voted on to make sure everyone is aware of what is going on,” Nick Stepaniak, advisor to IFC and the National Panhellenic Council (NPC), said.
Stepaniak said that IFC and NPC are meant to be self-governed, but IFC executive boards of the past have not been interested in putting in the work sharing governance requires, most of the tasks have gone to CLCD. “This [policy revision] is the the executive board that is taking on the responsibility to be self-governing and follow up on noise complaints or unregistered events,” Stepaniak said.
One of the most complicated parts of becoming a self-governing council is taking some of the responsibilities Community Standards has. The process of moving event registration violations, for example, to go to IFC before Community Standards has to be consulted with a lot of administrators and requires many steps to be taken. “If IFC really wants to self- govern they really have to think about that for themselves of what that accountability looks like for them, and they need to envision that [their accountability] and propose that and then we can work with it,” Amanda Halfacre, director of Community Standards, said.
Nonetheless, even if IFC becomes a self-governing entity, they would still respond to Community Standards on some level. “If they want to share governance for hazing, if there is a hazing violation that is something the University will hold them accountable for,” Halfacre, director of Community Standards, said.
Even if IFC becomes independent, money from fines related to IFC rule violations will continue to go into IFC’s general budget.
However, if IFC becomes self-governing they would have their own hearing council and the money from any punishment given by that board will go to IFC. Currently, since Community Standards issues the sanctions, they use the money from alcohol or party violations for alcohol programming and money from non-alcohol related fines for their budget.
Stepaniak said, along with IFC’s plan to become more self-sanctioning, they are also working to get the pause issued earlier this semester to be lifted. The pause and the phasing out of hard alcohol was meant to help lower the amount of students who go the hospital due to alcohol. “By phasing out hard alcohol or at least starting that process--or at least how far the extent of the process has gone--has had a tangible effect by lowering the BAC [blood alcohol concentration],” Reed said.
If IFC becomes more judicially independent, however, Stepaniak said both his job and the IFC council’s job would become a lot harder. “If that were to happen we would have to have more hearing boards, which is fine,” Stepaniak said. “I think when peers hold peers accountable, I personally believe it’s better.”