Alumni Inter-Greek Council Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Fall Meeting: October 20, 2007 CII Low 4050

Transcription

1 Alumni Inter-Greek Council Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Fall Meeting: October 20, 2007 CII Low 4050 AIGC President Roger Grice called the meeting to order at 9:30 a.m. Attending organizations: 20 out of 32 active organizations were in attendance (2 of 5 suspended fraternities attended). Attendance list with s attached at end of the minutes. Present: Acacia, Alpha Chi Rho, Alpha Gamma Delta, Alpha Omega Epsilon, Alpha Phi Chi Phi*, Delta Phi, Lambda Chi Alpha, Phi Kappa Theta, Phi Mu Delta, Pi Beta Phi, Pi Delta Psi, Pi Lambda Phi*, Rensselaer Society of Engineers, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Chi, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Tau Epsilon Phi, Theta Xi, Zeta Beta Tau, Zeta Psi Not Present: Alpha Epsilon Pi, Alpha Phi Alpha, Alpha Sigma Phi, Delta Tau Delta, Lambda Upsilon Lambda, Phi Gamma Delta, Phi Iota Alpha, Phi Kappa Tau*, Phi Sigma Kappa*, Pi Kappa Alpha, Pi Kappa Phi, Psi Upsilon, Sigma Delta, Tau Kappa Epsilon* Theta Chi Reports: IFC: No undergraduate representatives. Brief report presented by Grice, fall rush period is complete, most chapters reported back to DOSO with bids, website is finally being renovated ( Greek hockey night was held Oct 9 th, They're selling more of the Go Red, Go Greek T-shirts and keeping the financial books balanced. IFC is going to do another philanthropy/ community service event soon. Elections will be held Nov 1. Grice reported that the AIGC board had met with the IFC board to get some face time with them and to discuss IFC operations. IFC organization is struggling with understanding and defining their roles as officers. AIGC attendees were encouraged to talk with their undergraduate members to stress the importance of electing officers who are willing to work on the various challenges and opportunities at this critical time not to elect just at the last minute and for resume filler. Panhellenic: No undergraduate represenetatives, Brief report presented by Grice. Panhellenic Council Fall Recruitment was successful. Current Sorority Membership Numbers: o Alpha Gamma Delta- 71, o Alpha Phi- 64, o Pi Beta Phi- 51, o Alpha Omega Epsilon- 33, o Sigma Delta- 14 Accomplishments of Panhel: RPI Panhellenic Council won 2 National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) Biennial National Awards: Progress Award and therisk Management Award. They were the only Panhellenic in the Northeast to receive a national biennial award from NPC; 1st time RPI Panhellenic has ever received a biennial national award from NPC. Charlotte Kaplan and Danielle Lebeau will attend the NPC Biennial Conference in Chicago on Saturday, October 27th to receive the awards. Successful Past Panhel Events: Greek Hockey Night on October 9 th, Potluck dinner with all the sororities at AGD s new house on October 13 th, Sorority members sold boobcakes to raise

2 awareness and support the fight against Breast Cancer, 1st annual Pink Day on October 25 th, Were Pink shirts to support the fight against Breast Cancer. Upcoming Panhel events: Annual Greek Lip Sync on Tuesday November 6th at 7pm in DCC 308, All proceeds will go to the Make a Wish Foundation, Soup and Sock Drive for all the sororities, Panhellenic Council Newsletter, Panhellenic Council Elections on Monday November 26th Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs: Jessica Wickiewicz and Mark Smith were in attendance. Grade summaries were released earlier in the semester, Fall rush/recruitment bids and pledging stats were handed out. Some chapters have not reported yet. Numbers look about the same as last year. Some groups have reported depledging already (22 men, 4 women, with Pikes dropping 11 of their reported 35, Delta dropping 4 of 16,and ZBT dropping 4 of 4). Fire safety inspections are due by the end of the month. Alcohol policy changes going into effect. (Witter handed out the summary sheet provided to the chapter presidents the end of August all documents are posted on AIGC and OFSA websites). New website is up and running. Jessica budget is $4000 and lost her admin assistant and fought hard to have a student assistant. Programming is supported by Health Center, but has more flavor for them rather than Greek organization programming because no $$ for OFSA. Alumni Donations can be directed to OFSA and some alumni have donated this way in the past. All groups were encouraged to tell them alumni about this option for donations. Mark Sterner will be the spring speaker right before Spring Break. Prof Rubenfeld is expanding his LEGO League initiative for inner city youngsters and is looking for Chapters to participate in the program. Event will be held in the Field House Dec 9 th. Current Suspensions: Phi Kappa Tau (not working positively), Tau Kappa Epsilon, Phi Sigma Kappa, Chi Phi, and Pi Lambda Phi. Judicial Inquiries: Pi Kappa Alpha (alcohol), Theta Chi (theft), FIJI (theft), Sigma Phi Epsilon (alcohol), Phi Kappa Tau (rush and alcohol while on suspension) (Phi Kappa Tau is on the verge of long term suspension/expulsion due to their repeated offenses and DOSO has no alumni contacts anymore if anyone knows a Phi Tau alumni have them contact Jessica and their chapter if willing to proactively help!) AIGC: Reports and Discussions ensued as reported below. Elections to fill vacated position on the board: Neil Eklund resigned as he was overcommitted. John Thomas (Sigma Alpha Epsilon) volunteered to fill the remaining director position. Nomination accepted and approved. Relationship Statement Review: Not much progress, have a copy of the word document to mark up. A cursory review of the We Will table that Mark Smith shows that many DOSO items are unable to be fulfilled due to the inadequate resource loading by the Student Life Division administration. With the focus some much last year on the initiatives, many undergraduate and alumni obligations were not met. But on a positive, the working relationships have been improved from the We-They of the prior 2 years to more collaboration and communication. Positive foundation on which to further improve. We ll continue the review and have recommendations in the coming months.

3 Geoff Seber, Associate Advancement Officer in the Office of Alumni Relations and Annual Giving, is the point-person for alumni Greek activities and has again offered his assistance to all chapters. He can be reached at or He helped sponsor the Greek Chowderfest on Oct 19 th and hopes to advertise the number of Greek alumni back for homecoming weekend. Also on the RAA homepage is an article about Sigma Chi s fall 2007 fundraising and alumni participation with work week. (more on this subject later) Article in Rensselaer Magazine: Roger Mike provided an editorial article for the alumni magazine in the One Last Thing section. A article reviewing the last year and also a call for further alumni support of their chapters. RPI Greek Population and Grades History: Witter presented the 10 year history of the population and grades for the greeks relative to the campus. The full report can be found at the AIGC website ( Panhel trends continue positively for recruitment and academics. IFC follows the male trends remaining ~0.1 below in GPA and size is stabilized at ~100 below trends before 2004 due to suspended chapter membership numbers not counted in as Greek. This is equivalent to a ~2% delta (i.e. 28% would really be 30% if no suspensions) in percent male Greek. The Initiatives The New Directions, New Opportunities report by DOSO and the Report on Greek Life at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute by Jonathan Witter can serve as resources for roadmaps for future work of the AIGC, OFSA, and undergraduate leadership. These reports are posted on the AIGC website. Alcohol Initiative (Roger Mike, Delta Phi): Full Policy has not been signed off yet, due to some Union Pub market research and policy changes that Pres. Jackson wanted. Greek portion has had no changes since the summer. Expect it soon. The handout brochure summarizes the changes. Good Samaritan protocol can help chapters do the right thing if injuries or incident at alcohol function and not face suspension. Idea is to avoid the incident in the first place by adherence to the policy, but in emergency if need won t need to question taking the right actions. Some chapters in the past have either taken the suspension when taking proper action, or skirted it by hiding things. As was found by DOSO research nearly all incidents of underage drinking incidents were independents, but those who had been at fraternity parties. So ensure your chapters know their guests and also limit social events with non-members. Recruitment Initiative Shannon Kelly (Pi Beta Phi) has led this team. Not much action due to the focus on the alcohol initiative. The rush survey will be administered again this fall in the coming weeks. Hope to have broader participation. Discussions need to continue on the length of formal rush in the fall, the timing, and the length of pledging. One vision is to shorten pledging, so continued awareness and participation in the discussions is needed. Housing Director Initiative (Roger Grice, Lambda Chi Alpha): Been resolved to a sanction for suspension recovery or if voluntary. The expections guideline and job description needs to be clarified. No report on how the current set of live-in advisors is going.

4 Discussion that notion of requiring sophomores to live in campus housing is being bounced around RPI Admin. Some alumni got wind of this and pursued with the alumni development office and VP Student Life Eddie Knowles. Has not been finally decided yet, but if do go that route, have some written assurance that Greek houses would be considered campus housing. This could be a good thing for occupancy if they go ahead with this and consider Greeks as campus housing. Could be very bad if not. WE all need to keep paying attention to this discussion. Some discussion from this topic about the conditions of houses and their corporation operations. The CHIA working through congress is on the minds of several groups as well as alumni support to RPI endowment earmarked for Greeks. Witter proposed a survey like MIT did in order further their living group support and endowed funds. Cornell has some endowment funds as well for Greek life and for their housing. The survey is an extension of the current DOSO Occupancy report. Other information is information from the public domain IRS900 tax forms filed by non-profit organizations or used by RPI when doing the Pro Forma for doing the billing for the ~5 chapters they do now. (RPI is thinking of extending the billing services to other groups building upon the Greek Registrar hold program). The survey will be a spreadsheet to fill out and only the aggregate information will be released. Idea is to get a pulse of how much money goes through our chapters, how our chapters occupancy is, how are long term financing and scholarships handled, to dispel myths of poor chapter house management, and to form a guide for promoting Greek Life and alumni support options to RPI. Can be used to help weaken organizations with some simple ideas for alumni relations and support and to strengthen best practices among all groups. Not mentioned at the meeting, but came in as part of Fraternal Law article: There are new requirement coming down for non-profits to file some one of the Form 990s, even if in the past haven t had to. If the group does not file the minimal e-postcard, they face losing their non-profit status. Here are two links to the news about this:. Discussion about workshops or programs that chapters can have for chapter house maintenance. Notion to form a consortia to pool resource for a house maintenance manager on retainer or help with contractors to be on retainer. Maintaining a chapter house today takes more than sweat equity from undergrads and alumni. Many undergrads have less handyman experience than prior generations and ensuring staying with local building code trends is tough for alumni from afar. Housing needs to meet campus standards for living: can help with recruitment and occupancy who want to live in a run down dump? Future forums could be for house corporations to continue building the body of knowledge and best practices. Examples include the Sigma Chi, Acacia, Theta Xi alumni coming back for work week, and Sigma Phi Epsilon hiring a handyman contractor for work week to act at work mentor for the undergraduates. A team to look at various proposals for the consortia was formed to alter the focus of this initiative group. Jim Ljunglin (ΖΨ), Rick Kasold (ΖΨ), Bob Miller ( Φ), Art Depoian (Acacia), Aren Paster (ΤΕΦ), and Jim Haley (ΧΦ) volunteered to join. A charter for the group would include: o Weigh options for consortia for shared property manager/contractor and make recommendation for a program o Evaluate best practices and contractors from the House Corp survey o Recommend future forums/workshops for the AIGC meetings or outside the meetings

5 o (Review the IRS990 form revision implications for RPI campus House Corps - possible idea for this group) o (Review the live-in advisor protocol and help to resolve the program shortcomings possible idea for this group) Jessica offered up the following names from RPI who might be able to help with contractor lists, electrical services, plumbers, etc.. Witter reported Fahey was very helpful with some troubles SAE had with fire alarm system contractors. Mark Frost Dir of Physical Plant (although he does have a slight bad impression due to the Delts and other chapters housing issues) Pete Collopy Dir of Environmental Site Services Will Fahey Risk Management Dave Ira Physical Plant Bruce Kunkel can lead to architects Business and Discussion Campus Security and Safety: DOSO is working on better communications tree for campus security and safety. In the wake of the Virginia Tech event, RPI is working on new security plans and warning system. Having challenges with off campus students, e.g. to warn not to come to campus. Need cell phone contact lists for emergency. House phones are not the best option these days. Are sending around notices for Crime Watch to the undergrad leaders. Suggested OFSA send the notification to the advisors as well. Had some robbery assaults (luckily no injuries yet) on the edge of campus and have made some arrests. Recording Industry subpoenas students: RIAA is back again and issuing new subpoenas for song downloads. Campus has RUCKUS service to use, which was implemented following the last round of legal action. This cost a lot of money. As found on other campuses, if find the IP address for the sharing, and it is a chapter house will go after the owner of record on the cable bill. So remind members to not be doing this. RUCKUS is actually free to students (and since lots of RPI student help during setup phase, the service is reduced cost to RPI). The Movie Industry may be following the path by the RIAA with movie downloads and sharing. Troy Code enforcement: Some groups reported seemed more stringent now, others felt the same. Some may have been related to the Delts situation with Fire Dept responding to fire alarm and finding the house a mess, so brought in code enforcement. Mostly cleanliness, but some structural work needed. Troy shutdown Delts and gave 10 days to fix and then decided to visit the neighboring chapters of Acacia, Ski Lodge, and LXA. Was especially bad since Delts is technically RPI property and IFC president is a Delt. Conditions of houses for summer break and work week is of concern to Pres. Jackson as well and mentioned at her ice cream social that perhaps chapters should be cleaned and fumigated at the end of the semester. Collegiate Housing and Infrastructure Act: DOSO was asked if RPI had a position on the legislation working through the Congress. They did not have any written statement for or against it. Chapters had received news from their national organizations about this and could be a help for future renovations and alumni donations. Information can be found at and (H.R 643/S.638). Members are encouraged to write their senators and congressmen.

6 AIGC Greek Housing Financial and Operational Health Study. As mentioned in the House Director Initiative, AIGC intends to perform a survey on the health of the Greek Housing. This follows the current DOSO occupancy report and is similar to a survey done in the late 1990 s by the AIGC. This will help provide a foundation of understanding current situation and guide future AIGC activities in this arena. It will support the team formed to look at house maintenance issues. It will be rolled out in November with goal to have completed before the Greek Leaders Retreat in January A question will be added to list of contractors used (good/ok/bad recommendations). Greek Leadership Retreat, January 26, The AIGC is sponsoring and facilitating the Greek Leadership Retreat in January It will have workshop components for alumni AIGC leadership and undergraduate leaders (current and future). Keynote speaker with be Dr. John Minasian, Vice President and Dean of the Rensselaer at Hartford (who is a National officer for LXA as well). Components will include recruitment, officer management, IFC/Panhel relations, chapter operations. If AIGC can get RAA funding for a followup spring speaker/workshop we d like to get Dave Stollman who many undergrads and OFSA have wanted for a while to visit the campus. Ray Lutzky is coordinating and we ll send out news in the coming weeks. Next meetings: January 2008, Greek Leadership Retreat April 2008, same day as the Awards of Excellence. Meeting was adjourned at 11:37 a.m.

7 Attendance Contact Sheet Chapter FirstName LastName Phone Acacia Bennet Chan Acacia Art Depoian Alpha Chi Rho Adam Metzler Alpha Epsilon Pi Alpha Omega Epsilon Laurel White Alpha Phi Jessica Reichard Alpha Phi Michele Budrow Alpha Phi Alpha Alpha Gamma Delta Kirsten Kropp Alpha Sigma Phi Chi Phi Joe Daucette Chi Phi James Hanley Chi Phi Kent Worden Delta Phi Robert Miller Delta Phi Roger Mike Delta Tau Delta Phi Gamma Delta Phi Iota Alpha Phi Kappa Tau Phi Kappa Theta Chris Hayes Phi Kappa Theta Erwin Schweigardt Phi Mu Delta Steve Smith Phi Sigma Kappa Lambda Chi Alpha Roger Grice Lambda Upsilon Lambda Pi Beta Phi Margaret Harvey Pi Delta Psi Peter Tu Pi Kappa Alpha Pi Kappa Phi Pi Lambda Phi Pete Michels Psi Upsilon RSE Mike Trbovich Sigma Alpha Epsilon John Thomas Sigma Alpha Epsilon Jonathan Witter Sigma Chi Chris Gibbon Sigma Delta Sigma Phi Epsilon Eddie Chin Tau Epsilon Phi Aren Paster Tau Kappa Epsilon Theta Chi Theta Xi Brad Spencer Zeta Beta Tau Frank Zadroga Zeta Psi Jim Ljunglin Zeta Psi Rick Kasold