Moderator, Dr. Robert Massa: Welcome to our first virtual town hall meeting to update alumni and others on the progress made by the Implementation and Assessment Group on Greek Life. My name is Bob Massa, and I have the privilege of serving as vice president for communications at Lafayette, a position I have held for the last three years, but the most proud affiliation that I have is as the parent of a graduate in the class of ’08 who had an extraordinary experience here, which led me to come to Lafayette. With us today is Dr. Celestino Limas, who is the vice president for campus life and senior diversity officer. He’s also the chair of what we affectionately call the IAGGL group here on campus and there are several members of the group with us as well. And I will ask them to introduce themselves in just a few seconds. The format for today: We’ll begin with a presentation and Dr. Limas will lead that presentation. He will update all of you for approximately 30 minutes. He will also, at times, ask members of the group to give their impressions of the progress made thus far by the Implementation and Assessment Group on Greek Life. After that, approximately 30 minutes or so into the town hall meeting we will field your questions. You can ask those questions right on the website as you will see in front of you. We will do our best, our very best to answer all of the questions; we can’t guarantee that we will get to all of them. We had several questions submitted earlier from alumni and friends who could not join us today. I will remind all of you that this is being recorded and within several hours after the presentation today we should have a link on this, on the IAGGL website, for you and for others, for those who are not here, for your friends if you want to tell them to be able to listen to the entire presentation. We also plan to send an email out today shortly after the presentation to all alumni notifying them that they can listen in on the virtual town hall meeting by going to the website. So now without delaying any longer let me just ask members of the group who are here to introduce themselves and I’ll begin with Dr. Childs on my left.
Dr. Alan Childs: I’m Alan Childs from the Department of Psychology and I’m an at-large member of the committee.
Stewart Umberger: Hi, this is Steward Umberger. I’m the director of fraternity and sorority life here at Lafayette.
Michael Hanson: I’m Michael Hanson, I’m the librarian and also the faculty representative from the student life faculty committee.
Robert Young: I’m Robert Young, the student representative, not affiliated, class of 2014.
Dr. Massa: And I will now turn it over to Dr. Limas for his presentation.
Dr. Celestino Limas: Great! Thank you, Bob. Good afternoon, everyone. I really appreciate you all joining us this afternoon and hopefully this will be a very good and robust discussion. We’re going to take a few minutes here and let me walk you through what you’re seeing here on the screen concerning the slides that we have today. Going into that next slide let’s talk a little bit about how we got here in terms of the genesis of the group. At the October 2011 board meeting the Board of Trustees met and had a large discussion regarding the Working Group on Greek Life. That’s the IAGGL acronym reports and its recommendations. From that meeting the board actually sent out a note to everyone in the campus community that had the following: They directed the administration to work with the faculty in a community to develop an implementation plan that is consistent with the administration’s response to the working group’s report and to establish appropriate metrics and assessment procedures to ensure that the objectives listed below are achieved in addition to strict compliance with the college’s code of conduct. This embraces the recommendations of the Faculty Academic Policy Committee.
Before we continue onto the next slide, I just want to make certain that everyone realizes the faculty involvement process leading up to the October board meeting. FAPC, which is the acronym for Faculty Academic Policy Committee, they met and issued some significant advice to President Weiss that he then took to the Board of Trustees and that, I think, really is reflected in the administrative response. So let’s continue with the board’s note to campus. They then said that they want four objectives to be met by the institution. Those four objectives are as follows. Fraternities and sororities must provide open access and engagement opportunities to all students at Lafayette to a non-discriminatory selection of members. Fraternities and sororities must facilitate demonstrated learning opportunities for students and provide benefits to the college as a whole. The academic performance of students affiliated with fraternities and sororities must be comparable to the student body as a whole. And finally, the disciplinary profile of members of fraternities and sororities as well as the individual organizations must be comparable to the student body as a whole and other student organizations. This all, I’m sure, is not new to you because I know it was emailed out to alumni that weekend after the board meeting, but it’s important to reiterate this as sort of the jumping-off point so that everyone understands a little bit about how we got here. The board continued that, but the board has decided that if the above criteria or the above objectives have not been achieved in three years or interim benchmarks to be established indicating satisfactory progress toward their achievement are not met, the College will consider all options, including the elimination of Greek organizations from the Lafayette campus. And, of course, this note came from James Krivoski to the Lafayette community on October 22nd.
This is really, I think, a good place to sort of stop for two seconds and make certain that everyone understands where we’re now because, as you can see with those objectives, one of the first things that needs to happen is we have to discover metrics for how we’re going to measure those four objectives. And then, of course, when you look at that last bullet on that slide it talks about interim benchmarks. And so we really felt it prudent to form a group, the Implementation and Assessments Group on Greek Life, to as quickly as possible begin establishing those metrics so that we could be providing the board with counsel on those benchmarks and also report back to the Lafayette community about how things are moving on. So jumping into that next slide, how did we actually create IAGGL? Right.
We hold town halls with Greek students in the fall semester and one of the great things that have come about from this is that we now hold Greek town halls with current Lafayette students, both Greek and non-Greek, twice a semester. We do that once before winter break. I’m sorry, once before fall break, and once after, and then in the spring semester we do them once before spring break and once after. This is a nice chance, I think, for current students both affiliated and non-affiliated to sit with members of IAGGL but also members of the administration and talk a little bit about where things stand so that we do have transparency and anyone can ask questions. We now have regular meetings with Greek presidents along with myself, the dean of intercultural development, John McKnight, and the director of fraternity and sorority life, Stewart Umberger. And those now continue twice a semester in parallel with the Greek town halls. So this is one way we started last semester to provide mentorship but also some leadership opportunities for Greek presidents to have some conversations with the administration and talk about how things are working, ways that we can support them because it is a difficult job right now being a president of a Greek organization in this climate with a lot of the attention that’s focused on the Greek system. We want to make certain we’re supporting our Greek leaders.
We also had discussions this past fall with faculty and AISB. I went to an AISB meeting personally in November, as did Dean McKnight. Stewart Umberger attends them regularly. But we discussed many things with the faculty throughout the fall because of the shared governance process. It was really important for all of us here at the institution to know that faculty were integrated into this process, as were students. And then, of course, we collaborated with the faculty governance structure to really shape the Greek life group to execute more directives. This is really important because many of you that are familiar with higher education know the way shared governance operates is that there’s an existing structure already within the faculty governance that allows for members of the institution to be informed. So we spent a number of hours working with many faculty all semester and gave the IAGGL membership recommendations to be approved by the faculty, I think, with a real strong effort to moving forward with a process so that we could actually begin our work before the end of the fall semester. So let’s keep going a little bit. Let’s describe who IAGGL is.
In addition to the chair, the group is comprised of six faculty, four of those members come from existing and germane committees and two of them are at large. The four committees that are represented, the four faculty committees that are represented on IAGGL are the Faculty Committee on Student Life, which Michael is a representative from. We also have the Faculty Committee on Student Conduct. Ian Peleg is a faculty representative from there. We have the Faculty Committee on Academic Performance. Jorge Torres is the chair of that group and he’s our faculty representative and then the final one we have is a Faculty Committee on Diversity. And Debbie Byrd is the faculty rep from there. So those four committees have charges that are quite in line with what IAGGL is being asked to examine and we felt it prudent to make certain that we engage those faculty committees and having representation from there. And again, these aren’t faculty that the administration selects but these are representatives that the faculty selected. And I think that’s really key. The same with the two at large. Michael Hanson is one of our at-large faculty members and I think it’s really important to note that the faculty on this committee are not cherry picked by the administration. In fact, they are represented by their colleagues in faculty and I think that makes our group that much more robust and also legitimate in terms of our representation here on campus, and five students.
We have three non-Greek and two Greek representatives, one representing sororities, one representing fraternities. The reason for that is the proportion of Greek students is about 40%, a little bit less than that actually, so we wanted to have student representation that is proportional with our current student body, hence the three non-affiliated and two affiliated members. And again, those students were not selected by the administration. They were nominated through the student selection process; the Student Government and IFC organizations along with Mr. Umberger were responsible for selecting the two Greek representatives. And Student Government weighed in heavily and selected their three non-Greek representatives of which Robert Young here is one of those members. We have three administrators. Stewart is one of them; John Colatch, who’s the associate dean of intercultural development and director of religious and spiritual life; and then Erica D’Agostino, who’s our dean of academic advising and also Class of 1995, and is a former Greek alumna. That was really key because as you can see from the membership list here that makes 14 people that are in the IAGGL seats. Fourteen of the 18 seats aside from the chair are people that are here on a daily basis that see what’s going on with the Greek system.
So we wanted to actually have a high proportion of IAGGL members, the main people that have moves on the street here, and can see things on a day-to-day basis and know where the Greek system is excelling in meeting metrics and also maybe where they’re not meeting them. However, given that fact we do think it’s pretty important to have alumni and trustee representation, we have three alumni, two Greek and one non-Greek. And the reason for that proportion is also to be sensitive to our history and that most of our alumni, not a huge majority, but more than half of our alumni are Greek, and so we wanted to have two Greek versus one non-Greek member there. Our two Greek representatives representing fraternities are Kevin Canavan, our sorority representative is Janine Fechter, and then our one non-Greek representative is Nkrumah Pierre, and so those three play vital roles in representing all alumni on this committee. Then, of course, our trustee is Alma-Scott Buczack, who was class of ’74, the first class to have women as part of their Lafayette class. And she’s also a very active member of our Board of Trustees.
So this is a very eclectic group, but it’s a robust and insightful group of 19 members including myself that have been hard at work trying to actually identify what IAGGL is going to be doing with our metrics, and actually a little bit about how we are going to shape our mission. That may be different than in previous incarnations. So with that let’s talk a little bit about what is the IAGGL and how does it compare and contrast with the previous working group on Greek life.
So the previous working group and our current IAGGL group are similar in that our charges are around Greek life. We are Greek life groups and also we represent multiple constituencies. However, this is an important point that I wanted to just unpack for people here because there are more things that are dissimilar about IAGGL compared to the working group on Greek life. For example, like charge. The working group on Greek life that was chaired by Barb Levy and had a number of different people on it, their charge was much more broad and they were looking at the Greek system in terms of a number of facets looking to establish benefits and traits that speak to a number of broad areas. Our charge is very confined. As you saw in the email that was distributed in October and what I just reviewed, we’re looking at basically four areas: having an open and transparent member selection process that’s not discriminatory, integration with the campus community and academic profile, having a conduct profile that’s comparable to peers, and having an academic profile that’s comparable to peers. That is very specific in terms of our charge and we don’t deviate around it or outside of it because it’s quite big in and of itself.
Our scope is very different as well whereas the first working group, I think, had a little bit more of an open-ended scope in terms of where they could go, ours in very confined. We’re looking at those four objectives and we’re looking at how does the current Greek system live up to those metrics. So I’ve had a number of conversations with alumni wanting to know about how does the IAGGL group plan on addressing various things such as community service, philanthropy, giving, and things of that nature. And we have some data on that, the college does, but IAGGL really isn’t speaking to that. That’s not part of our scope. And I think that’s important to note because the IAGGL group is going to be very busy and I want to make certain people understand exactly what we do but also what we’re not doing. Our membership is also dissimilar in terms of how we’re actually constituting the group. As I mentioned before, the majority of people that are on IAGGL are here on campus on a day-to-day basis and that’s very important. And the other members of IAGGL could speak to that as well, as we get going here in the next hour.
Our timeline in action is also very different. The first working group, of course, was asked to serve in a six-month process that turned out to be a little bit longer than that. Ours is going to be up through June of 2014; however, we are asked to establish interim benchmarks. And so we’re going to need to do that and those benchmarks can then trigger action that the board may or may not choose to take. So it important to understand how dissimilar our timeline and action steps are from the first working group. And also, communication. This is one thing that I think everyone is very appreciative of in terms of how we’re reaching out to the campus here but also alumni friends and parents so that you all can stay involved. So things such as this are going to be ways in which I think you can really engage us in a proactive fashion but also we want to take away that feeling that alumni aren’t sure what’s going on. There are going to be plenty of opportunities for you to know what’s going on and also engage us. And so I think that’s going to be a key difference between the first group and our group. So we’ll keep going here, just a few more slides and we’ll actually take a break and speak to some questions that I know Dr. Massa’s going to run through for us.
The IAGGL group has already met three times. And we will continue to meet every three weeks moving forward in the academic year. It’s possible that in future years we may engage summer meetings. That’s not on our plate at this point. We’re just going to have to take it slow and see what happens but we’re, of course, doing these virtual town halls twice a semester to help parents. That last bullet though on that slide – I want to make certain everyone understands this – if by chance you’re not able to listen in real time, we’re going to send emails out after every town hall. You can just simply click on a link and be able to stream this broadcast at your leisure so that you can really be in the loop. And that’s one more way we want to make certain you are engaged. I’m going to be giving regular updates on the IAGGL website in between virtual town halls. And also our goal is to really make certain that all of you are informed but also eliminate misinformation and speculation because sometimes I think that can be our worst enemy. When people are not aware of what’s going on, you’re going to fill in the gaps on your own. And so we want to try and help that process.
This is also really though an opportunity for the community to understand support versus control. And what I mean by that is for the alumni out there that are listening, the parents and friends that aren’t current members of Greek organizations or current students, your role is one of support. There are plenty of ways that you can engage your chapters, the institution, and let them know that you’re a supporter of Greek life or you have questions about Greek life or you’re concerned about Greek life. And you’re wanting to sort of do a little bit more to help the institution. That’s perfectly fine and we welcome that, absolutely. But the ball is clearly in our students’ court and I think they’re going to determine whether or not these objectives are met based on the metrics we set. And I think the students understand that. We’ve made that very clear and I think for our staff and faculty on campus they are very much looking forward to partnering with students in this process. But it is very important to know that the students are driving this process in terms of what is going to be the outcome. And alumni are somewhat limited in terms of how you can engage this process through a role of support.
So our first priority, let’s talk a little bit about what IAGGL is going to be doing here in the next many months. Our first priority has been to establish metrics for the first four objectives of the board for Greek life. We have those four objectives. We talked about them here already thus far. And some of them are very easy to do. For example, if you read the first working group on Greek life report you know that third semester academic performance is a bit of a concern for many people. Historically you’ve seen that Greek women, fall semester of sophomore year during the rush, perform comparably to other non-Greek women fall semester of sophomore year. But our men that are rushing and pledging during their third semester at Lafayette tend to have a significant drop off in academic performance compared to non-affiliated men in that same window. So those kinds of things are going to be easy to establish metrics for. Some of them aren’t though. For example, the objective that has an open and transparent member selection process that’s not discriminatory you could really define that in a number of ways and we’ve already, as a group, as an IAGGL group, started to talk about that a little bit. But we’re not quite there yet in terms of that particular goal. But our first priority is to establish metrics for all of those four objectives and then we’re going to transition to that next bullet which is having a discussion then about implementation of the 23 recommendations consistent with the administration’s response to the working group on Greek life report that the board endorsed.
They also, in addition to those 23, they had some questions and wanted some further discussion on six other recommendations and then there were two that they didn’t think were prudent but we’re going to move in sequential steps here. So first we’re going to establish metrics with the four objectives. Once that’s done then we’re going to transition to outlining a plan for how do we implement those 23 recommendations, then looking at those other six, and then once we’re done with that the group would then transition to a dashboard group of sorts that would monitor and evaluate progress. This, I think, is really key because what it allows us to do is then really do our homework in terms of how do we define assessments, then move in towards how might we try and implement the previous report and then the group transitions, of course, to being a little bit more of an oversight group that can report to virtual town halls, to the Board of Trustees, to the faculty, to the student body about how the Greek system is doing along the lines of those metrics that we’re establishing.
So really quick just some things to keep in mind. While our evaluation period ends June 1 of 2014 we have also been asked to establish interim benchmarks and the board can act prior to June 1 if satisfactory progress is not met. I see that it’s not necessarily to paint a doomsday scenario, but I do want to be honest with everyone. I say this often to faculty and to our current students here. It would be naïve for people to think that this is going to be a wait-and-see approach and let’s see what happens in June of 2014. There are many things that Greek students can be doing immediately to try and meet those four objectives. And so it’s important for them to keep that mind as we set our benchmarks because we will be doing that. And annually the board will be hearing about our progress moving forward. So something for everyone just to keep in mind. And then the second piece is that Greek alumni can really help immediately by encouraging current members of their organizations to meet the metrics established by IAGGL while also eliminating any negative influences and pressures on current members. We do hear this occasionally, particularly from some fraternity members, that when some fraternity alumni come back to campus, not all, but even just when it happens with a handful it really is a bit of an issue. When the current fraternity members are encouraged by alumni to sort of relish some of the older times when perhaps activities were a bit more out in the open that were in different areas and weren’t necessarily productive with a mission of the institution. That kind of peer pressure is not good right now because obviously the Greek system has a lot of attention on it and they need to be putting their best foot forward. So positive support, I think, is very key. And we would ask the vast majority of Greek alumni out there that are strong positive influences in their current students’ lives to just continue that. And anytime you see any kind of engagement with alumni with current members that isn’t necessarily going to be productive or helping the IAGGL process, just to try and step in and try to help that before it begins. I think being partners in this is something that we’re really looking forward to.
And then the last bullet on that slide, we’re not reviewing, as an IAGGL group, how valuable Greek life has been at the College or how important it is personally to alumni that have been partnered with Greek organizations. We simply have a charge of evaluating how well the current members can meet the four objective outlined by the board this past October. So keep that in mind in terms of exactly what you’re asking of IAGGL. The charge on our scope is very confined and we’re going to be very consistent with that. We’re very, of course, open, the institution is. There are many people in terms of alumni development that can talk about this pretty openly in terms of the relationship Greek alumni have with the College. We need to have that conversation and we need to nurture that relationship clearly. But if you all can help us decouple that from what IAGGL’s charge and scope are I think that can go a really long way for us in this process, especially for the faculty and students that are on this process.
So our next virtual town hall, just to let you know, we’re going to be sharing the final metrics that we’re going to be using to measure progress on the four objectives spelled out in our charge so we will present that to you at the next virtual town hall in April. We’re also going to discuss some initial thoughts about how to implement some of the recommendations endorsed by the board. Our plan, our goal, if you will, would be to have all the metrics established with the four objectives and have a plan for implementing all of the 23 recommendations by the end of the semester. I don’t think we’re going to meet that goal because of the number of recommendations and how varied they are, but we’re going to do as many as we can. So that’s what I hope to come back and report to you on along with other members of IAGGL at our next meeting. So with that I think Dr. Massa has some questions that we pulled from the group and I think we can go ahead and get started from there with the questions.
Dr. Robert Massa: Great! Well, thank you, Dr. Limas, a very informative presentation and one that I hope our audience found equally as informative. Before we do get started with the questions, however, we’ve got just a few minutes if there are any comments at all that members of the implementation group would like to make before we get into the question area, anyone. I see a bunch of heads shaking no. Alright, so you can’t see that, but I could. So that’s fine. Let’s get right into the questions. Of course, Greek life has been an important and critical part of Lafayette for many years, many alumni are members of Greek organizations, prior education, of course, the fraternities served multiple roles in terms of housing and board for students. One question that came to us earlier is has the College accumulated comparative data on Greeks versus non-Greeks in terms of their percentage of giving. Dr. Limas, can you address that?
Dr. Limas: Yeah, we do have some data. This is from the Office of Development. Some initial Greek giving rates in terms of participation I can tell you: 2011, a Greek giving rate was 33%, the non-Greek was 35%. 2010, the Greek giving rate was 30%, the non-Greek giving rate was 31%. So I think we see strong parallels between Greek and non-Greek giving rate. Another unique data point development provided for me this past fall – giving was up 27% in terms of cash donations through the end of December. So I think that’s a really great testament to the fact that even in this process that’s a very critical step in terms of the College being honest with who we are and where we want to go and actively pursuing a pretty difficult question and putting a charge before the Greek community to say, let’s see how much we can be better at and let’s take a stand on some of these issues. We’ve received great support from the institution and from our alumni. So I think that’s a great testament to the Lafayette spirit.
Dr. Robert Massa: Great! Another question that we got a little earlier was how the IAGGL taskforce will evaluate and measure the ongoing benefits to the College from fraternity and sorority alumni. That was one of the questions that we got earlier including their financial and other support of the college. Is that part of the charge?
Dr. Limas: Yeah, it’s a great question and the answer is it’s not part of the charge. So that isn’t something IAGGL is going to be measuring. I think a fair question for the Alumni Council and the Office of Alumni Affairs to be tackling is how do we do that. And I think that’s a very fair point. But that isn’t going to be something that IAGGLis going to be touching on in any of our work.
Dr. Robert Massa: So another question that came in before had to do with the disparity between admission statements of fraternity and sororities and what’s actually occurred. So the question reads it appears that these organizations were created with the correct ideals in mind but those ideals have been lost and replaced by immature and mindless acts and events. How has the committee addressed this disparity, that is to say, the disparity between the mission of the Greek organizations and what’s actually happening, and what concrete evidence has been demonstrated by Greek organizations to retain and regain those strong ideals?
Dr. Limas: That’s a really great question and I’m sure members of IAGGL are going to want to jump in on this one. We began discussing this very topic here at our last meeting because I think part of what we’re seeing is that there’s an element to IAGGL’s work of being able to look at, and not just obviously the things that are measurable, but how is that connection between activities and mission closely aligned. [At] the last Greek town hall I know that for many Greek students this was a very vibrant discussion about what does it mean to be Greek and how do we make decisions that reflect our value. So I think within the Greek community they’re talking about it, and Stewart can probably talk a little bit more about that point. But in terms of exactly holding the Greek organizations accountable we’re making certain that where their mission and values are reflective in their activities, that’s something that we’re beginning to unpack a little bit, particularly as it relates to the objective that talks about overall contributions in the College based on academic achievements and academic activities. That’s something that we just spent a lot of time talking about. So, at this point, I would really ask members of the community to weigh in [as] they want to about that particular topic.
Stewart Umberger: This is Stewart Umberger. What I can tell you is there are actually quite a few measurements that have been used in the past and are being revised. If we laid out their missions and tried to find metrics we would definitely see that they were fulfilling some things like everything from civically engaged, leadership development, interculturalism. So all these different areas are definitely being measured and revised. The past process was through the Compass system. Where I think we may have failed quite a bit is where fraternities and sororities as a community or even myself was probably making sure that that information was more available to all. My one example could be we had the groups recently in one of the civic engagement cohorts do a self-audit to figure out what do we do civically. And what we did find out is we have our fraternities and sororities on campus doing probably over 88 different initiatives on campus or off campus related to philanthropy or service involvement. So it’s a matter of us making sure that we are sharing all the information that others would likely like to know. It would probably reinforce the fact that what they do [shows] commitment to their missions.
Dr. Robert Massa: Great! Thank you. Anyone else to comment on that? We’ll take a question now from our participants. Okay, so we’re being thanked for the presentation but there’s a concern from our undergraduates that Greeks are treated differently than non-Greeks by campus safety and disciplinary boards. Is this true? Is there any merit to that? And by the way, there’s one other question that was similar to that. So we are responding really to two questions at once here by that.
Dr. Limas: The short answer is yes, we’re actually going to be looking at this, both facets of it. There are differences in terms of alcohol patrol and things of that nature, that the Greek system has as part of their structure that the aggregate community doesn’t. That would be something that IAGGL talks a little bit about and explains a bit in terms of our history as to why that’s in place. But I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge at the outset that there is a difference there based on some of the histories that we have. Related to the differences that may be perceived in terms of conduct outcome and conduct boards, one of the things that we’re going to look at with that second – I’m sorry, not the second but the goal, the objective that talks about conduct profile that’s similar and comparable to non-Greek peers. One of our metrics that we’ve actually decided on is to drill down and actually review sanctions that have been handed out by our conduct boards for our Greek students and Greek organizations versus non-Greek students and non-Greek organizations because we’re very interested in that question. Let’s actually see, is there a difference and if there is a difference why is that the case? Now, of course, everyone I’m sure can assume that one incident is never taken in a vacuum. There are, of course, histories but once you put those histories in context does that explain that difference? So our group is going to be looking at that along the way and we’re going to be, of course, reporting back on that as part of our normal process with IAGGL.
Dr. Robert Massa: Great! There’s a question that came up that I would just answer pretty quickly myself in terms of the data I’m giving. Is that just a number of donors or the dollars? That is the number of donors. The dollars are fairly close as well. <NOTE: THIS IS NOT CORRECT- GREEK ALUMNI GIVE AT THE SAME RATE AS NON-GREEKS BUT GIVE MORE DOLLARS>. So there’s not as big of a disparity there as we would think.
Let me go on and answer this next question right there. Your remarks imply that there will opportunities to pilot the proposed metrics. That is correct. When might these trial applications be started, Dr. Limas?
Dr. Limas: Yeah, I think probably the best way to answer that is there is going to be a chance to implement the metrics immediately. I’m not certain that we’re calling them a pilot because the metrics are what the metrics are, but we can apply once we have the metrics actually established, we are going to be applying them starting with the fall of ’11 semester. A great example for that is grades. We have fall grades from this past fall, third semester grades, and all semester grades actually for Greeks versus non-Greek students. And we talked about it in IAGGL already about ways in which the Greek system took advantage of the chance to really step up and do well academically in ways, perhaps, maybe they needed to do a little bit more. I can tell this group right now that the last semester GPA for third semester Greek women was 3.19 and the third semester GPA for non-Greek women this past fall was 3.17. And so we see that our Greek women outperformed their peers and it’s a great testament to their persistence. I think they really met the challenge and they said they want to do better. We’ve always had a – of course, I think our women tend to do much better as Greek compared to non-Greek than our men do, but they really stepped up their game this year and I let them know how much they’re helping the discussion by taking that on. With this past fall semester, third semester Greek male GPA was 2.88 and third semester non-Greek male GPA was 3.0 and so that was a bit disappointing to not see that opportunity taken advantage of by our Greek men because, of course, we talked about that straight away after the board meeting about the two things that our fraternity and sorority members can do to immediately meet the benchmarks set out for us by the board. Two of them cost no money to do and they’re very easy to accomplish. And that’s a conduct profile and the academic profile.
So minimizing the ways and the times that Greek members engage in conduct that’s detrimental to the campus and improving their academic performance are two things completely in students’ control that don’t need any modification or augmentation from the institution. And we saw that our women really did a great job with that, our Greek women did. And we’re really proud about that. And my hope is that the Greek men can continue to improve and see if they can rise to that challenge here moving forward during especially the fall semester which is our main concern related to rush and pledging.
Dr. Robert Massa: Thank you. Comments from group members. There were a number of questions that have just been submitted that are pretty similar to one that was submitted earlier and that has to do with the open admission question. In other words, can anyone get into a fraternity or sorority that wants to? What do we really mean by open admission? Is that discriminatory or non-discriminatory? How would you view that? How would the group view that?
Dr. Limas: Yeah, this is probably a good one to talk about for a little bit because the short answer is we don’t know yet. We’ve intentionally left that objective last and I’m looking at Michael and Alan and Stewart and Rob to reinforce this, but we’ve intentionally left it last of the four objectives for the simple reason that it is the most subjective because this is going to be a spot where IAGGL is going to have to sort of draw a line and decide this is what we can live with in terms of what’s transparent and what’s non-discriminatory. We know that right now the current process isn’t as transparent as it needs to be and we know that there are certain elements of discrimination that are quite present. I mean the most obvious being sex discrimination. And of course, in the other extreme would be to have fraternities and sororities be co-educational and to have criteria that are purely objective such as GPA, service hours logged, things of that nature that you could actually quantify. So if a student meets those criteria, either they’re in or they go into a random selection if we only have a set amount of spots to go in. That’s, again, the extreme on the other end. I’m not saying that’s what we are going to do and I think IAGGL can back me up on this. That’s not what we’re doing because we haven’t got there yet. We’re going to have to find somewhere in between frankly. And I think that’s going to be a real source of discussion for many people on campus outside of IAGGL because that’s a pretty tough nut to crack in terms of what is open and transparent. And probably my colleagues on the IAGGL committee can maybe ring in an opinion or two on this.
Michael Hanson: I would just say that so far discussion – this is Michael Hanson – that so far in discussions in IAGGL we’ve tried to, I feel, give plenty of voice to all constituencies and lots of voice to the two presidents who are representing sororities and the fraternities and to give lots of consideration to their concerns. And I would think that that would be the case here. But yes, it certainly is the buy-all item on the list of metrics for the reason that we plan to have what I imagine will be quite a bit of discussion on it.
Dr. Robert Massa: OK, Stewart, do you have thoughts on that?
Stewart Umberger: I don’t have a comment on that.
Dr. Robert Massa: Alright. Let’s turn to grades. There were a number of questions that have been posted prior to the meeting and today from the participants having to do with grades and how we’re measuring them and how they compare with others. But let me ask this particular question from one of our participants. How does the GPA for men, Greek versus non-Greek, and that would be 2.88 versus a 3.0, compare to – how does that compare to anything that we have historically? Is that an improvement? Are we going – are Greeks down in terms of their GPA? Where does that leave us?
Dr. Limas: You know the best way to answer that is when we get to the future town halls where we can actually unpack a dashboard and show people the longitudinal data. I think that’s the best way to speak to this because I would be a bit hesitant to contextualize the data just in a two-minute comment. What I do know is that the fall grades are what the fall grades are for third semester students. And we’ve got 2.8 to 3.0, but one of the things I want to do in the town hall is have a slide that actually unpacks the past ten years’ work of Greeks so that we can actually see that difference. Then, of course, talk a little bit about the variation that might exist. The piece that’s really important to know, and I’ve had this question come up from a few folks, is why are we comparing men to women on this. Why aren’t we comparing Greek men to an aggregate student population? And the reason for that simply is we’ve got to compare apples to apples. I think our women at Lafayette, just like women in higher education in general, consistently and routinely outperform their male counterparts academically. And so it’s important to know that we’re actually comparing similar demographics. So when you see us compare that 2.88 to 3.0 you’re looking at students, male, that are either Greek or non-Greek. And there’s no mixing of data in that with any female students even if they might be third semester. So that’s a very longwinded way of saying that I think it would be best to wait and present that data to everyone in a slide and we can get through that moving forward. So thanks for your patience on it.
Dr. Robert Massa: Sure, and let me just say again on the subject of grades, there are a number of questions asking if we’re comparing to other student groups and athletes or whatever. But the bottom line on all of this is that the implementation group is here to really assess fraternity and sorority performance. That’s what they’re focusing in on and that will continue their work. Let me ask this question from one of our participants. Regarding the distribution of GPA data, do we see that the third – do we see third semester weaknesses across all students, all organizations, or are there particular concerns with Greek organizations in the third semester? And let me remind all of you that it’s the third semester. In other words, the first semester of the sophomore year that students begin the pledging activities. So do we see this in general or is this something just specific to fraternities and sororities?
Dr. Limas: Yeah, this would be a good one for Michael and Alan to weigh in on as well after I’m finished. I think what we see is that there’s a natural elevation between first to eighth semester when it comes to grades of our students. And that progression, it jumps a little bit more in some years than others, but there is one hypothesis that perhaps a third semester decline may be a natural byproduct to life at Lafayette, and the data simply don’t support that. There is a natural elevation that we see from first to eighth semester and that’s what makes the third semester drop off so intriguing and perplexing for us is because we’re trying to drill down and understand what is it about these young men’s experience. And again, what makes it also a little more intriguing is that we don’t see it with the women. So one thing that we’re talking about very actively in IAGGL right now are what does pledging and rush look like for women and why can’t that maybe be replicated by the men? Now, for the first time ever we are going to be looking at how those processes overlap and how they’re similar or dissimilar, but we’re not seeing that drop in any other direction. Michael and Alan can probably speak in general about your experience with your students if maybe you want it to the 20,000-foot level.
Alan: Yeah, sure. I think that’s an important issue and I think one of the other issues that has always interested me as an adviser is remembering that the first two years students are primarily taking core requirements, broad college requirements, asking them to be in a variety of areas. And I’m wondering about the degree to which there might be gender differences and difference in those core courses as opposed to not. I don’t have any data to support that but it would be something that’s a testable question. Grades generally go up for most students in the third and fourth years and the reason there, of course, is now they’re typically into a major, something for which each student, as one would hope, has a passion, an interest so that there’s sort of a natural motivation that takes one through those third and fourth years. And we do see those grades consistently improving generally overall. It is that big drop off in the third semester and I have seen that for years. And even back in years earlier when we rushed earlier that would be much more cataclysmic because it would happen within the first year of a student here when they were rushing in the first year of school, which is why the faculty and the board decided to push it back to that second year, that third semester. That caused a lot of concern at the time, feeling that things were going to drop off in terms of participation. I’m not sure that happened but what it did do, I think what we intended it to do, was to give people a good firm foundation in that first year with minimal disruption. But now it pops back up in the third semester and that’s the issue that we’re trying to sort out through the data.
Michael: What we’ve heard, I know Alan, from some students is that, well, if the difference is there, why not allow us to rush earlier. So that way we have more semesters to make up the difference. And what members of IAGGL and members of the faculty will always retort to that is that our issue is not when the dip occurs, our issue is that the dip exists, right. And so we’re trying to understand what we can do to mitigate it and remove it completely. And that’s why moving rush back is a non-starter on the discussion. We’re more interested in what’s the genesis of the dip.
Alan: Right. In fact, I would argue that – this is Alan again – I would argue that the first-year dip would be a much more, and was a much more, dangerous one because you’re establishing a GPA at a very low level. By the third term hopefully you had a good first year, a little cushion so that if a dip happens you’re working at a higher average than you did before where if it was your first or second semester, your first year here, that creates an enormous problem. And what concerned us faculty then and still now is the blunted aspirations that these sorts of things foster. Once you’ve blunted aspiration, students coming in with high dreams, high hopes, that grade point drops off particularly early in your career, it’s very difficult now to build it back up to put yourself in a position to qualify for medical school, graduate school, law school. And as an adviser, that was always the most heartbreaking kind of conversation to have well into the junior year. My grade point started very low, now how do I get it up to make myself qualified for these kinds of graduate programs. And the answer then would be a much longer journey than they might have had to take going to a secondary graduate program to get into the places that they want to be down the road. And I think that was always the hardest thing for me to try to deal with as an adviser, that blunted aspiration. They all come in, obviously, qualified to do that work here. Something happens after they’re here that causes those grades to drop off. And it’s not just one thing. It’s a lot of different things. But it was – we kind of did a natural experiment here when we had a first-year rush and we moved to second-year rush and something changed. And the evidence there is compelling that that made a difference.
Stewart Umberger: Just to give you all an update, this last current semester, we broke down with the academic officers of the chapters. We came up, we probably had about 89 students total that either fell below a 2.7 either for the semester or as a cumulative and what I did is I’ve been meeting with them the last four weeks doing one-on-one self-assessments and putting the individual academic plan together. Now this is a very anecdotal statement I’m going to make but the one thing I’ve noticed very consistently so far, which I’ve got to narrow down a little better, but what I’ve noticed to date so far is with either men or women, and I bring the men in to figure out what’s going on. With the men it seems to be a consistent time management and scheduling issue as the core of the whole thing. For a lot more of the women it seems to be more of a transition with the content of the different course load that seems to be them being confident enough to go seek the help they need. But definitely I can tell you with the men it is consistent across the board – we don’t use calendars, and we don’t keep track of anything beyond a week out.
Dr. Limas: What’s really great about that Stewart, I think, is that that presents all kinds of opportunity for alumni to then engage the chapters and reinforce that point but also support that piece as well. And so I think sometimes we talk about alumni giving up their treasure but I think what’s overlooked is the value of alumni giving up their time. And I think that this can really be a chance for particularly fraternity alumni to step in and reinforce exactly what Stewart’s talking about, but how do you be a good young man and how do you be a good student and having those two things be part and parcel. Before we served in the past, I think it’s really important to know how much I think the difference between our men and our women are existent and our women need to be congratulated because I think when we talk about this particular issue with third semester grades, they are doing very well, and they’re doing as well as their peers. And so there’s also a great case study for the men to be looking at in terms of their sisters and maybe compare a little bit of notes. As I mentioned we’re going to be doing that, the students are interested in doing that. But any kind of support that you all can give to sorority, current sorority and current fraternity members to be doing that thing as well is really great.
Dr. Robert Massa: Well, I was going to move on, and I will in a second, to some other questions about grades. But actually Dr. Limas you just answered a question, I think, pretty fully that an alumnus asked earlier on and that was how can I as an alumnus without a house currently on campus help this process? And I assume what is meant by without a house means without a chapter, that it’s a chapter that no longer exists. I don’t know if you want to supplement what you’ve said but I think you answered it pretty fully.
Dr. Limas: Yeah, in addition to that I think that there’s a moment for us to really sort of rally Greek alumni that don’t have current active chapters and have them sort of reach out to the institution through Stewart’s office and through Alumni Affairs more importantly. I would say Alumni Affairs is a great place to start instead of Stewart. Stewart’s primary function right now is our ten organizations and making certain that they’re going to be thriving and I know everyone appreciates that. I just can’t say enough about how much of a great job he’s done coming into the situation. But for alumni to reach out to the alumni office and ask for ways that they can get connected, particularly with Greek events, so that we make certain that we’ve got good robust support, even if you’re an alum that is of a chapter that isn’t currently active on campus, you can do quite a bit in terms of reinforcing points to students about how not just to manage time but how to think about how your course schedule is sequential and it builds on each other. Faculty, I think, talk about this at length with students about your selections making basically progress for you and how do you actually build upon some of these things for internships, externships, graduate programs. But the more I think you can talk about what you could do over again and what you really had good success with, the value of vicarious learning is so immense and I think that our students really eat that up. Robert, you could probably talk to this in terms of how valuable alumni interaction with students is, particularly when it’s rooted in how can I help you in terms of sharing my experience and giving you guidance about ways in which you can be successful. I mean, that’s something that you probably appreciate, right.
Robert: Most definitely, just because Lafayette is a culture where it’s very prestigious and it’s hard to get in and it’s an honor to come out of. And one thing that, as a non-affiliated student, it helps me when alumni come and talk about ways that, just some of the ropes that they had to jump over to get to where they are now. That really helps and encourages students to come ahead and say, OK, well, they can do it, so can I. And it also helps with the process of internships. For you to come in and talk to us and say, hey, you’re taking this class, you’re looking at this major, these are some of the ways you want to approach certain classes. Or this is how you want to evaluate this. And one thing that really sticks and helps is when alumni come and are very sincere about how they overcame some of their obstacles as far as course load, balancing academic and social life at Lafayette, and then what’s next after Lafayette. So alumni have a strong influence on the student body now.
Dr. Robert Massa: I’d like to go back just quickly, we have about six minutes left, to two questions that are related with regard to GPAs. One has to do with how this compares if we know to other institutions in terms of the GPA disparity, how does it compare to other institutions that we have data on. And the other has to do with comparing Greeks versus non-Greeks in semesters beyond the third.
Dr. Limas: So with the cross-institutional comparison, that’ll be a subject that IAGGL takes a look at as sort of a secondary or maybe a tertiary data point. It’s important to understand sort of the context of what Greek life does to the college experience overall; however, it’s not going to be a primary direction for us because we’re mainly concerned about having the charge be met from the board which is a comparable academic experience. And I think it would be naïve to say that, in general, if there’s data out there that shows that Greek organizations inherently, members of Greek organizations inherently do poorer academically than others, that’s not going to be a good answer for us. Our charge is that it’s comparable and we’re going to be looking at that. However, it would be naïve for us to not examine sort of what’s going on at other schools that may be like us that have Greek systems. What’s really important to acknowledge with this though is that we’re in a bit of a different situation in that we’ve had large attrition of our fraternities in the past couple of decades. So when you compare us to other Greek systems you’re hard pressed to find a natural peer. I would think that we could find many cousins but I’m not sure how many siblings we’re going to find. But even still we do want to do some peer analysis. But, as I mentioned, it would be probably a secondary or tertiary, more than likely a tertiary, comparison. We’re more interested in comparing Greeks versus non-Greeks locally. And then with the second piece that you talked about, Bob, in terms of the question regarding other semesters and how that’s going to work out. We’re going to be comparing data points for all eight semesters but in particular from the first working group report, the third semester grades were extremely troublesome to the faculty and the administration as well as the board. So that’s our primary focus but it will weigh much heavily, much more heavily than on the other semesters but we will be looking at the other semester performance as well.
Dr. Robert Massa: Great! I just want to paraphrase the question. It has to do with the openness of the IAGGL group and the transparency. Do we plan to make sure that our alumni, students, and their parents – actually, there was a question about that a little earlier that we’ll get to how we inform parents of Greek students of all of this. But are we going to have an open process where the members of our community at large are aware of the work on a regular basis of what IAGGL is doing?
Dr. Limas: That’s what we’re doing and I think if someone perhaps defines “open” differently then I’m not quite sure what we can do about that, but we’ve been very clear [that] we’re going to be informing the community. We’re having these town halls. We post updates from the chair. We have representatives from all constituencies on campus sharing updates and getting counsel from their particular groups. But I think what you’re seeing is what you’re going to get and I think that the overwhelming response from all constituencies has been very popular to the approach we’re taking. I would very hesitant to get into a discussion about how do you define “open” because I think we’re defining it right now with our actions and so I think this is how people should measure us in terms of how open we’re going to be based on what we’re setting out right here.
Dr. Robert Massa: Of course, I want to remind folks that the virtual town hall is not the only way that you can get information on a regular basis after each meeting. Dr. Limas will post an update on the IAGGL website in terms of the activities and the progress that the implementation group has made. So I think that’s an important point for everyone to understand.
Dr. Limas: Yeah, and just one more thing with that, the parent piece, I think, is really key and, of course, we’re going to be engaging parents just as well as alumni in this process but we’re heard from a number of concerned, not just students, but also parents about say, when they join a Greek organization, they learn after the fact that that particular organization’s on probation, things of that nature. And so there’s a little bit of an issue that comes up there. So one way that we want to be open with families that are looking at Greek life is actually publicizing institutionally here are all of our student groups that are currently having conduct issues and what that probation status means. And here’s who it is. Not just Greek organizations, but all of our student groups so that anyone who looks at a student organization, this is why we’ve got a moment here to look at comparison. But, I think, particularly for the Greek organizations, truth in advertising is pretty key and it always has been for families and prospective members to know exactly what the state of an organization is. So rolling out starting next year that’s going to be something that we’re going to be posting and letting Greek organizations and any organization, club sports – not varsity sports, they’re not a club – or student organizations. They’re a Lafayette entity but the French club, anyone that is under a conduct issue, we’re going to be able to post that and have them speak to it.
Dr. Robert Massa: And what you see is what the board will see as well. In other words, there’s no secret kind of meetings going on. What the transparency is for the alumni and other interested members of our committee, of our community rather, will be what the college administration and the board sees. We have time for one more question and then a wrap up. That question is a good one, as they all have been, and I’m sorry we couldn’t get to them all in this short time. We’re already a minute over. But we’re going to take this question. Do you foresee working individually with a fraternity or a sorority if they fall lower than the mean. In other words, if their GPA gets to be a little bit lower or if anything else is below the metrics that you establish. We’d be working with them to help them rise above.
Dr. Limas: Yeah, the short answer to that is absolutely. And I think that once we get these metrics set it’s going to be very easy for an organization to take their pulse, if you will, and look at the dashboard and know how things are moving with that. That I think is going to be important for two reasons. Number one, that requires an organization to be self-aware of what their issues are and to then bring it to our attention. I can tell you that the institution looks differently when we have to tell an organization you’re missing a mark versus when an organization initiates contact with us and says we could really use some help on this. I think our faculty would absolutely echo that statement as well. But I think moving forward we’re going to have to be surgical with how we address some of these things. And I think support is going to be in direct proportion to how much solicitation organizations reach out to the institution width. So I think that’s a real strong point we’ve made to all ten organizations that it’s really up to them to engage us and ask where they need help and assistance and if we can provide that we will. But there’s a bit of Darwinism here. I think that’s going to be just very obvious that we have to own. So I think this is going to be a charge for our students to be self-aware and let’s see how they reach out. And I think if they do that that’s really in their best interest. And I think we’ve already seen moments where that’s happened. And it’s always produced great results. I think that’s never a poor decision by an organization to come forward and say, gosh, we’ve got an issue here and we could really use some counsel.