December 19, 2011
As many of you know, on December 13, 2011, President Weiss sent a letter to students, faculty, staff, and Greek Alumni announcing the membership of the Implementation and Assessment Group on Greek Life (IAGGL). In a few short weeks, the response has been very positive. All nineteen members of IAGGL are committed to a thorough and objective examination of Greek Life. We held our first meeting on December 19. President Weiss joined us at the beginning of the meeting to express his thanks to everyone, offer his support, and also to affirm how important our work is to the College and our alumni community.
We discussed the role of IAGGL and our charge, and also addressed the membership construction/rationale for the group. From there, we outlined our labor sequence for the coming months, which will be to:
1) Establish metrics by which we can evaluate the Greek system’s ability to meet the four objectives spelled out by the Board of Trustees after their October 2011 meeting;
2) Discuss how to best implement the twenty-three Board-approved recommendations from the previous Working Group on Greek Life study and also the six recommendations that needed further clarification;
3) Transition our efforts to that of an oversight group that can receive data/input and assess how well the current Greek system is meeting the four goals outlined by the Board of Trustees.
From here we will be able to provide the Board of Trustees with regular updates enabling them to make informed decisions. We also discussed our meeting frequency. We will meet every three weeks for 90 minutes beginning in mid/late January.
An important communication tool will be our use of virtual town hall meetings to keep students, alumni, and faculty informed of our progress. Twice a semester, IAGGL will sponsor an hour-long discussion with several Group members on campus, broadcasting via the internet in a webinar format. We will provide the link in advance that will allow you to listen and ask questions. If you can’t listen in real time, we will archive the program so you can download it from the website and listen at your leisure. Tentative town hall dates are February 17 and April 13, so mark your calendars and we will have more information on these in late January.
I want to publicly thank all of the members of IAGGL as they are giving so much of their time, effort, and expertise to help make this process successful. I wish you all a safe and joyful holiday season and happy New Year from College Hill.
Celestino Limas