THE DEPAUW
FRIDAY, NO V E MBER 11, 2 011 | INDI A N A’ S OL DE S T COL L EGE NE W S PA PER | VOL . 16 0, IS S UE 2 0
State of our fraternity life By MARITZA MESTRE news@thedepauw.com
As the university community reacts to recent occurrences of harassment and hate crimes throughout the campus, the culture of DePauw’s greek system — that of fraternities in particular — has also been drawn into conversations about making DePauw a safer and more inclusive place. But not everyone thinks it’s appropriate to blame fraternities for the recently turbulent climate on campus. “What I think sometimes the newspaper and others perceive as a fraternity problem is really a campus problem,” said greek life coordinator Eric Wolfe ’04. President Brian Casey stated that recent events have caused concern about the fraternity culture on campus, but he maintains the belief that there are various fraternity cultures on campus. The lack of “monoculture” in DePauw’s greek life makes it nearly impossible to pinpoint a single fraternity life. “I think houses have different personalities ...
I’m not sure you can say ‘fraternity life’ and have it mean one thing,” Casey said. “I think there are very distinct fraternity lives here.” As of Nov. 4, six of DePauw’s 10 Interfraternity Council fraternities are on probation, under review or under investigation. “I think we’re at a time now when we’re seeing that a lot of them are under investigation,” Wolfe said. “I don’t know if there’s one particular thing that has caused that, just sometimes it happens out of coincidence that we have a lot that are in that situation at the same time.” While at times there may not be any fraternities under investigation, Wolfe says the “feel” of whether or not a chapter is in trouble is sometimes more significant than actual restrictions or penalties. Senior Tyler Giesting, president of Sigma Chi fraternity, said it often seems that probations and investigations of fraternities on DePauw’s campus happen all at once.
Fraternities | continued on pages 8-9
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l i a H Mary
Ring Sing dance winners Alpha Phi sorority and Phi Kappa Psi fraternity performed their dance in the Lilly Center Thursday night as part of the Alpha Chi Omega’s Ring Sing philanthropy pep rally. Delta Upsilon fraternity and Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority won the week-long competition. HOANG. NGUYEN / THE DEPAUW
Take a look inside this issue for our coverage of the 118th Monon Bell Classic