Moderator, Dr. Robert Massa: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our second virtual town hall meeting, sponsored by the Implementation and Assessment Group on Greek Life, or IAGGL, as we have affectionately called it here at Lafayette. Thank you all for joining us. My name is Bob Massa. I am the vice president for communications at the College. And I’m pleased to host this event today. With me is Dr. Celestino Limas, who is the vice president for campus life and senior diversity officer. Also, with us today is a member of the IAGGL group, Dean Erica D’agostino. Erica is the dean of academic advising, member of the Class of ’95, and was also a sorority member here on campus. We will be joined shortly also by Stewart Umberger, who is the director of fraternity and sorority life, and we’re hopeful to have a student or two join us as well. They’re not here at this point. But let me turn it over to Dr. Limas to begin the process. Let me also say to you, actually, two things, if you will, before we begin.
The first is that we did receive a number of questions prior to today and we will get to some of them. Obviously, we can’t get to all of them in the hour timeframe. And we will also turn on the ability for you to ask questions as we near the end of the slide presentation and then you can ask your questions and we will, again, try to get to as many of those as possible. The second thing I want to tell you, the last email that we sent out to all alumni included a special email notification address for those alumni and friends who want to continue to receive, on a regular basis, notification of the progress of the IAGGL group. We will continue to send to all alumni and all campus members a semester-by-semester update. But if you want a more regular update the email address for you to request that is IAGGL-join@mailman.lafayette.edu. And with that let me turn it over to Dr. Limas.
Dr. Limas: Great! Good afternoon, everyone. I hope everyone’s doing well. I wanted to, of course, begin as we always do with just a quick update. Since last February’s town hall, diligent work on crafting metrics has been done by the IAGGL committee related to the four objectives from the Board of Trustees. Just to recap for everyone’s clarification because I know there are some folks that are new joining us this month that weren’t here in February. The first objective from the board is fraternities and sororities must provide open access and engagement opportunities to all students at Lafayette. The second being fraternities and sororities must present demonstrated learning opportunities for students and provide benefits to the College as a whole. The third is academic performance of students affiliated with fraternities and sororities must be comparable to the student body as a whole. Then the last one being 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 to other organizations that are student based.
This was pretty important to us and we wanted to make certain we invested heavily in crafting metrics and, of course, I know many people understand that we had a chance to publish through the IAGGL website drafts of metrics for the first three objectives related to academic comparison, conduct comparison, and demonstrated learning opportunities to campus. And many people have submitted feedback and we’re really grateful for that. So the group went ahead and drafted metrics for those last three related to academic conduct and demonstrated learning opportunities. These have been shared. All of your feedback that you sent in we’re very grateful for. They have been shared with members of IAGGL and we will consider them along with other feedback such as the feedback from this town hall as we finalize the metrics for the three objectives. It is very important, I think, to everyone affiliated with IAGGL that we make certain that we’re taking the pulse on constituencies related to students, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees, and parents. And I think that the more of a wide net we can cast the better in terms of getting feedback. So thank you all to everyone who’s submitted comments to the website. Those have been shared with IAGGL.
Most recently, the group spent our last meeting, just last week, working on metrics for the fourth objective, trying to create a draft of that. And we’re going to posting that here in the coming month, that draft for metrics related to an open and transparent member selection process that’s non-discriminatory. It’s probably a bit premature to post that now. I think we still need to talk through them a little bit. But those will be up on the IAGGL website so that people can provide feedback again on that here in the next month or so. We have not yet finalized any metrics for any of the four objectives. I think that’s very clear in everything that we’ve written on the website, the different emails we’ve sent out, but I do just want to spend two minutes and speak to that personally here.
We’re in a draft mode. We posted what we consider to be drafts for these metrics. We know that people have thoughts on them and we’re integrating that feedback in our deliberations. And of course, we haven’t been working on the implementation recommendations that were approved by the board since October of 2011. We want to make certain we’re doing our due diligence to sequence these events so everyone that’s out there that’s wondering, are the metrics that are posted on the website set in stone, are they calcified. The quick answer is absolutely not. I think you can rest assured that we are taking into consideration very well all the feedback that’s being provided. So let me talk a little bit about some of these metrics. I want to spend some time this month for the members of IAGGL that are joining me so we can make sure we explain a little bit about why we chose some of these measurements and what they exactly mean and what we hope to, perhaps, capture as an assessment tool going with that.
Looking here at this slide for metrics for the academic comparison, one thing I know that came up from a few comments related to the IAGGL website was the question about the size, the number of metrics, that they seem to be higher and more for the academic compared to the other two objectives. And the short answer is they are, but what does that mean? A couple people wanted to know if that means that academics are weighted heavily, more than the other two. And the short answer is we’re not even there at that point yet. What we want to do is simply craft a set of comprehensive metrics that can speak to the particular objectives we have in front of us and it just happens to be that for some objectives it is easier to quantify some of these elements related to academics than others. And I think also the opportunity to have different data available to us more readily is easier for some objectives than others. So that’s why you see a girth of metrics there for the academic piece whereas you don’t necessarily see as many for some of the other elements. And we’re still struggling with this a little bit as a group because we want to make certain that there’s a perception that we have three different objectives that can be sort of slices within a pie and we don’t want to convey or even hint in any way that we’re sending a subconscious message about what our priorities are here. The academic metrics are large because they are more readily available to us and they allow us to capture a more comprehensive view when it comes to academic comparison.
Third semester, of course, that speaks to the first semester of the student’s second year. For the folks out there that have read the working group on Greek life report from the summer, one of the things that came up was that there was a perceived treatment effect whereby students when you can actually account for the academic comparison entering a Greek organization after a first year, if all things being equal students that are non-Greek and students that are Greek, once they enter their second year there’s an impact of negative academic treatment particularly related to fraternities. That’s why we want to get at that third-semester piece. We don’t see that impact in third semester with sororities historically but that’s part of why we’re looking at third semester in particular. So right away one question that came up from a couple folks was, well, why don’t you have a second semester GPA so that you can ensure that the students that are going to be joining Greek organizations aren’t necessarily dissimilar academically from their non-Greek peers. And I think clearly that’s something that is a great point and we’re, of course, going to integrate it and talk about it as an IAGGL group.
Fifth and seventh semester, of course, because what we want to do is ensure that we have representation across class years. Another question that’s come up is how much of a longitudinal examination are you going to be taking with this? Is this just a snapshot for one year? And I think the short answer to that is absolutely not. We’re not going to be doing this just one year. This is something that we want to do longitudinally. The way the IAGGL group has talked about all of these metrics is we want to take a very longitudinal view and so the goal that we have, and this is going to be probably a little bit difficult to accomplish, but it is our goal to start out. We would like to have data from 1980 forward when we examine these metrics. The reason why 1980 is because 1980 is when we had sororities first arrive on campus. So that would be a good point to look at sort of the dual placement of both sororities and fraternities on campus. Anything pre-1980 would have just fraternities on there.
Now the challenge is that, as an institution, record keeping and data collection is a whole separate entity, so we may not be able to go back that far but rest assured that we’re not going to be look at a static one-year or two-year window for some of these metrics, OK. Major distribution – this is one that we thought was really helpful because there really hasn’t been ever this kind of analysis to really understand if there is a higher concentration of majors in certain Greek organizations than others. Part of what I think IAGGL is very interested in, and I can tell you this very clearly, and Dean D’agostino and also Stewart Umberger are now joining us, they can reinforce this as well. IAGGL’s desire to include major distribution here was really related to see, in fact, if there is a higher concentration of some of our more difficult majors in some Greek organizations that maybe can account for a dip in GPA. I think everyone, of course, would agree that if you have a higher concentration of students with majors that historically yield lower GPAs then you’re not making an apples-to-apples comparison if you’re comparing those two majors that historically don’t produce that. So what we’re trying to do is really understand the issue there and we have no agenda set aside to wanting to look at major distribution or major concentration within a Greek organization as being a bad thing. This is strictly an assessment question that we’re wanting to get after there.
EXCEL Scholar participation, departmental honors, all of those, I think, are different academic metrics that really speak to excellence both inside the classroom and outside of the classroom. So since we have those data points available to us we want to know is there a higher concentration of Greek students in those areas than their non-Greek peers. If there’s lower, then let’s actually talk about why that’s the case but one of things that also has came up in many of the comments is a fear that perhaps if the Greek organizations or a Greek organization does not meet all of these metrics in comparison to their non-Greek peers, that somehow they’re going to be subject to immediate removal from the campus. And I can’t disagree with that more. I mean what we’re talking about here is a group of individuals that are part of IAGGL that want to basically ask a few questions and see what the data tells us. This is not a sort of a sliding floor whereby we’re going to be looking for an opportunity to play a game of gotcha. That’s not it at all. In fact, I think there will be probably some concern amongst IAGGL members if we didn’t have variance within this, if the metrics were all met or all not met by Greek individuals. That’s a bit of a problem because I think we’re either setting that bar too high or too low. Something in the middle that actually demonstrates here’s where we are now and let’s see if we can work forward. That’s really the best place to think about this. So I would just caution anyone that’s worried about whether or not this is going to be something that is prescribed already because I can tell you for a fact it’s not the case, not at all.
Study abroad, of course, that’s something that is an interesting facet for many of our student groups, and also many of our students and so, again, that’s a data point we have access to and we’re wanting to know whether or not Greek students participate in study abroad at the same, higher or lower ratio than their non-affiliated peers. And then, of course, the other departmental honors, other honor recipients, dean’s list, total cases, things of that nature. The co-curricular organizational membership, for example, if you’re a psychology student the psychology honors society is Psi Chi. What’s the ratio of Greek students that participate in those groups compared to non-affiliated student participating in those groups? And again, I think we made this a little bit clear on the website but I just want to reinforce it really quick. When we talk about non-affiliated students we are removing first years from that equation because, again, I think that would inherently bias the system in favor of non-affiliated students and we don’t want to do that. We want to actually look at a good comparison where we can. So when we talk about non-affiliated students we’re talking about second- through fourth-year students, not first years.
The internship one is pretty interesting. A few people have commented that they either think that’s a really good metric to be using and some are a bit concerned by it. For us we fully acknowledge that, for example, our career services office may not be aware of all of the internship pieces that our students engage in. And so this is going to be maybe one of those difficult metrics that we want to look at but maybe it’s not going to be comprehensive. So we know that going into it, but again, I think it’s something that we don’t have necessarily an agenda moving forward that we want to actually sort of prescribe an outcome. And some of these metrics, for example, they may have such low ends that it really isn’t statistically significant for us to be looking at it. So could I foresee a situation where based on the raw end that we’re talking about, IAGGL decides to really contract some of these different metrics such as EXCEL, BCs, academic probatation – oh, I’m sorry – EXCEL, BCs, departmental honors, into one particular metric. Sure, I think that would definitely work. Just, I noticed that I skipped over the academic probation. That is one thing, of course, we’re concerned about and we want to find out whether or not there is a higher prevalence, lower prevalence, or the same related to Greek students compared to their non-affiliated peers. So we can talk a little bit about some questions. I know there are some that come through but I don’t want to pre-empt that response time. So let me jump really quickly next to the conduct comparison metrics and let me unpack some of that for everyone here.
The conduct probation of individuals and conduction violations, we’re talking about two different levels of issue there, one, of course, being minor and one, of course, being a little bit more severe. What we’re interested in there in particular related to total cases and ratio is that we want to make certain that Greek students aren’t disproportionately hurt by having the raw ends be somewhat higher or lower than their non-affiliated peers so that ratio, I think, goes a long way towards ensuring that we can make certain that we’re having an accurate view of what some of these issues are. Individual key defenses – so we’re talking about recidivism there. Are there recidivism differences between affiliated and non-affiliated students. The sanctions issue – this is really, I think, a great one because IAGGL, we’re very committed to this particular metric. And what we’re trying to get at here just so everyone understands, there is perhaps, I think, a fear among some individuals that perhaps the conduct system related to how faculty oversee the conduct system, whether or not there is a higher level of penalty or sanction for similar cases that are done by non-affiliated students. And so we want to actually now drill down and do a qualitative examination of the sanctions that are issued. So if you have Jane Doe, who’s a Greek member, and Sally Doe, who is a non-Greek member, if they both do the same behavior yet they receive different sanctions we need to know why. And I think if there’s not an explanation for that but the only thing that’s dissimilar about them is one is Greek and one is not then we’ve got a problem there. And I think we really want to study that. So we want to sort of go a little bit deeper than the actual data and try and drill into the qualitative here. That’s why we have that sanctions issue piece as one of the metrics for conduct.
Administrative cases that go through hearings versus administrative panel cases – those two things mean two different elements. So when it comes to admin hearing cases the level of severity of those situations tend to be a bit lower than the admin panel. So what goes before the Faculty Committee on Student Conduct panel usually more options are on the table whether they be suspension and expulsion, revocation of charter, things of that nature, those aren’t really decisions that we would put before an individual administrator. So one of the things that we’re very curious about and we want to ensure is something that we study is whether or not there is a disproportionate examination of cases that involve Greek students or Greek organizations that get pushed to the more severe panel as opposed to the individual administrative hearing case. So we’re going to be studying that as well. And again, I think this is one way we’re trying to ensure that Greeks are being treated fairly in our conduct system, and I think that careful analysis is really needed to ensure that we’re doing our job related to conduct comparison.
The sexual assault and public safety reports – this one’s really challenging and let me spend just two minutes on this and talk everyone through as to why. With that first working group on Greek life report there was much discussion there related to sexual assault and sexual misconduct and its prevalence related to Greek versus non-Greek students. For us, as a committee we really sort of had a hard time with this because much of that data from that first report was from a self-report study. And that, coupled with the fact that sexual assault and sexual misconduct tends to be one of the more underrepresented or underreported offenses on campus really raise some flags for us because in order for us to really get our arms around this and accurately determine whether or not sexual misconduct is an issue more in the Greek system as opposed to the non-affiliated students, we felt we needed to be fair and we needed to be thorough with this. So we saw an issue with replicating the study that the working group on Greek life did initially and so where we sort of came down on this is we are asking now our sexual assault oversight committee, which, of course, is a group made up of students, faculty, staff, and the administration, to look at sexual misconduct and sexual assault prevention on campus to conduct their own program about sexual assault prevention and sexual assault awareness to all Lafayette students. Because if this is really important to the College we really owe it to all students to make this a campus life issue but we really are struggling with how to construct a metric to determine whether Greeks are more likely to commit sexual misconduct than non-Greek students. So we are not going to be including that as part of our conduct comparison.
But one data point that we do have, and it’s very incomplete, we do have a data point related to how many sexual assaults come through our public safety reports. And so it would really be, I think, foolish for us to not be looking at that data point but it is not going to be, in any way, shape, or form the pure predictor of how we address sexual misconduct. And frankly, I think the best way to describe it is IAGGL really can’t identify whether or not sexual misconduct is a greater issue through our metrics for Greek students as opposed to non-Greek students. So I really like the approach I think IAGGL is trying to take from an assessment perspective. We don’t have a good mouse trap so therefore we shouldn’t be applying it to our work; however, that being said, if sexual misconduct prevention and sexual assault awareness is important to the College then we need to do that for the entire campus. So that’s why we’ve shifted it now to this other group that is not related to IAGGL that’s going to be working on programming for the campus. So I can talk about that later if people have questions as well.
Compass is a program that Greek life has had for a while now and basically it looks at having a comprehensive approach towards integration with campus. And I think for many of our current Greek students, and one of the first things that Stewart Umberger wanted to do when he arrived, was talk a good sort of 30,000-foot look to 500-foot look at Compass because there are many things that we need to change about it in order to really have it do what we need it to do. As many of you are familiar with the 23 recommendations that the board approved from the October meeting, many of those recommendations really go part and parcel with Compass and how we can reconstruct Compass. So that’ll be something that we look at. And so this one is a simple yes or no checkmark about are Greek organizations in compliance with our Compass program when we actually make those changes to it that we’ll be doing here starting next year when we look to sort of have those discussions. So that’s our conduct comparison.
Jumping into those last few slides here, let’s talk about the metrics for demonstrated learning opportunities. And again, back to my first comment from the first slide, just because you see slides or metrics that are – a number of them are larger for the academic metrics – that doesn’t mean that they are more of an examination or things of that nature than the others. I think you can all understand that when you read the objective from the board it’s tough to come up with a list of measures that speak to many of these elements related to demonstrated learning opportunities. So we took this first pass at it and we wanted to sort of build from there. So I think your comments are going to be very helpful to us. Of course, one of the questions or one of the rubrics we’ve got right there are that each Greek organization plans and hosts five academic programs a year. And we really struggled with this a little bit about what is the appropriate number and things of that nature and why do we settle on five. It was really believed that two programs a semester is very easy to be doing. And if we can – but if we did three that might be a little bit more of a burden. Now you’re talking about once a month. So we split the difference and stuck with five. And one of the things that we made very clear as an IAGGL group is that these are not 50, meaning there are ten Greek organizations so five academic programs per. Some people have sort of made the correlation that we’re now adding 50 more faculty programs to campus. And that’s not the case.
What we are encouraging Greek organizations to do as we think about this is to partner with different academic departments, which of course, their students are members of different other campus organizations, to really sort of get a collaboration effort going to have these different programs now be cosponsored by religious studies and Kappa Kappa Gamma or having something put on by the econ department and Zeta. So I think that this is a way in which we’re trying to sort of have our current Greek students use their existing relationships with faculty and use their existing interest within their own academic departments to sort of present opportunities for other students to, not only get to know different academic disciplines, but also see that Greeks have a strong desire to make those a priority as well. That second bullet there, do each of the five programs meet the following criteria. We’ve compiled these all into one bullet but, of course, it’s not if you miss one you’re not meeting any of them. In our rubric as we sort of unpack this as a group, and Dean D’agostino and Stewart can weigh in on this as well, each of these were listed separately but simply to actually group them together for the website we wanted to compact them into just one paragraph. But are they open to campus? Do they have faculty involvement? Are they not social as a primary focus? Are they directly planned by Greek organizations? Are they approved by the director for fraternity and sorority life? And do they have active member participation? I think these are very easy to understand.
One question that has come up, I think, from a few folks is the whole notion of why does a learning opportunity have to always have a faculty member? And I think that’s a fair question. We talked about that a few times as well that the initial response, I think, that we sort of kicked around was that since we are a college with rich academic resources, and I think one of the issues we’re trying to bridge is for many of our Greek students here on campus, they would love to see closer relationships between their organizations and faculty. That’s why the initial push was to go ahead and have these be related with direct faculty involvement. However, could we actually add additional metrics that talk about learning opportunities that don’t involve faculty? For example, laid aside as a great example of where they do sort of a business leadership summit where they actually have a conference that draws many people from outside the area to campus, I think that’s a wonderful example of a way in which we could actually have that occur and really meet the spirit of what we’re trying to get at here. I think the real question’s going to be eventually is there a reason why those shouldn’t have faculty involvement. And I would imagine for many alumni that are listening the issue is not to have a – I’m sorry – the issue is not to have faculty directly and intentionally absent from some of these events but perhaps if it were a bit more optional. And I think that could be a great middle ground that we come to. So I think that’ll be something that we take into consideration very seriously, and again, thank you all for the comments with that.
And then that last bullet there on that slide, are Greek members actively involved in a leadership role of one non-Greek organization. Two quick thoughts on this, number one, if you talked to current members of Greek organizations, and I think Stewart can speak to this extremely well, these students are all-stars. They are engaged in so many things across campus and I can appreciate how some people that maybe aren’t as close to campus read that metric – they were a bit hesitant or maybe even worried that this would mean the dilution of the Greek organization’s impact, but I really think that a first question, this is sort of a gimme for many Greek organizations to be able to not just comply with, but really go way beyond. In addition to that, I think a couple folks from the committee made a great point that not all Greek organizations are the same. For example, many of our sororities have a very rich and vibrant number of different leadership opportunities within their houses which may be different than some of the other Greek houses. So one hesitation we have, as a group, is to treat this as a hard and fast yes or no: Is the number of Greek students that meet this metric higher, lower, or the same than the non-Greek peers; what does that tell us and why.
So we’re reserving the right to sort of be qualitative with any of these measures just because, I think, anyone out there listening understands half of the story is really in the raw data. The other half is in the rationale that actually presents why certain situations occur. So we’re going to be very diligent with all of these metrics. But also with this last one, in particular, we know that we’re going to have to sort of drill down and understand it a little bit better. This is really, I think, just a chance for us to ask the question and see what we’re getting at there. So there’s no agenda there and, frankly, I think that for many of our Greek students and people that are here on campus on a day-to-day basis, we see this as probably being a very high percentage for our Greek students to achieve, probably much higher than many of our non-affiliated students. So that’s the logic with that.
So if you go to the next slide we can talk a little bit about sort of the next step that we’re going to be doing. So our next virtual town hall will take place in October – so in the fall quarter right before the – or right around the time of fall break, and we’ll continue to use the IAGGL website, however, to post updates. But IAGGL won’t be meeting over the summer. I think we’ve not a lot of scheduling issues and, of course, students are very hard to bring back to campus. So we’re going to be taking a bit of a hiatus over the summer. But if you can do us a favor and watch the IAGGL website in the coming month as we’re going to post a draft of the four conjunctive metrics, really wanting to get your comments. And, of course, as Bob alluded to earlier, if you haven’t already subscribed to the mailing updates via the IAGGL website that would be great for you to do just so we can keep you in contact with what we’ve got going on. So that’s sort of a quick overview of the metrics. I know there have been a lot of questions coming about those. We’re going to take some time right now and have some Q&A with that.
Dr. Robert Massa: Great! Thanks Celestino and it is – we’re about halfway through. We do have several questions that have come in. We’ve received quite a few beforehand so I will tell you right now that we simply are not going to be able to get to all of them. But there are a number of questions that have similar themes. So if we don’t answer your question specifically our hope is that we will get to the theme. A couple of comments that I would want to make before we begin to answer the questions: At the last town hall I’ve got to admit that I misspoke on the notion of contributions, financial contributions by Greek and non-Greek alums, and I want to take the opportunity here to correct that. What I said initially was correct. And that is that the percentage of Greek alumni and the percentage of non-Greek alumni who participate in various Lafayette campaigns, whether they’re the Annual Fund or others, is virtually the same. But the dollar amount is not. That is to say that Greek alumni contributed more funds certainly over time than non-Greeks. And that makes total sense because prior to the advent of co-education 95% or so of Lafayette students were Greek. So clearly they contribute more. Apologies for that misstatement.
The other comment that I do want to make before we actually get into the questions, there were a number of concerns both in response to our opening up the website for comments and also with regard to questions that were asked specifically for this event in which some alumni and friends questioned, quite frankly, the integrity of our process here – that this is just simply a veiled attempt to rid the campus of fraternities. And I’ve got to tell you I’m personally, not as a vice president for communication, but as a parent of an ’08 grad and as a higher ed professional for 38 years, I’m actually discouraged by that and I’ll tell you why. In my experience, which is vast in terms of length and institution, I have not really seen a more dedicated group than the members of this committee of alumni, students, faculty, and staff to really get their hands around a challenge like no other institution has done that I’ve seen. And they’re taking their responsibilities seriously. That was their charge by the Board of Trustees. It was not to look into other organizations. It was to look into Greek organizations. They’re taking it seriously. They want this to work and I know that I probably would never be able to convince anyone who thinks otherwise, but that is my experience. So I wanted to get that on the table and now open it up to questions. Let me ask the first one that came in prior to the town hall today. And the first one is that I see that the metrics for demonstrated learning opportunities all require faculty involvement. Can you speak to this and will there be space to have non-faculty-led metrics as a part of this objective?
Dr. Limas: Yeah, it’s a really great question as I alluded to before. I think for us as an IAGGL committee, which again, includes alumni, students, staff, faculty, and trustees, it’s something that we really thought it would be odd to exclude directly faculty just because we have some of the best in the world here. This space, I think, definitely exists to have opportunities for metrics related to that objective that are not faculty based or perhaps maybe like faculty collaboration. One of the things that I think everyone here can agree on is that the more that you can encourage student, faculty, and alumni group collaboration, the better the product you’re going to get. So I think there’s a – the short answer to that question is absolutely and I think we’re currently trying to construct maybe a couple more that could speak to some of these particular points directly.
Dr. Robert Massa: And I think a related question that came up is, and I’m paraphrasing here, because a number of members of our community ask this: Why focus so much on academic learning. Learning also occurs outside of the classroom and perhaps talking about why the proposed metrics seem not to measure service and social contributions.
Dr. Limas: Yeah, that’s a great point. I think the reason why they lean so heavily towards the academic and faculty partnership is because outside of the classroom there are benefits when you have our faculty involved. And again, I think we’re all on the same page here. I don’t think anyone is arguing to actively exclude faculty. I think what many people are wanting to sort of understand is could we have space for existing opportunities that demonstrate learning collaboration, things of that nature, than we could also maybe invite faculty achievement as well. But if they don’t come, or they’re not participating as we would like, can that still aid in the cause of evaluating this? And I think absolutely. With the second piece to that question about how do you assess, why not assess the social value of Greek organizations and the philanthropic value of Greek organizations. The short answer to that, at IAGGL we talk about this quite a bit. The short answer to that is unfortunately that’s not part of our charter in terms of what the board has asked to measure. It is, of course, very valuable and there could be a very momentous opportunity when we get to the recommendations to really focus on how some of those elements can live a little bit more.
But it is a really tough job, I cannot stress this enough. It is a very difficult thing to be constructing metrics for these four objectives as it stands, without expanding our scope because I think once we do expand our scope it would be very difficult to say what we should add and what we shouldn’t because I think everyone could talk about a number of great things. I mean you talk about social contributions and philanthropic efforts, you could also talk about giving. You could talk about fits and how that actually nurtures that relationship there with the college. You could talk about retention in some of these things. And I think those would all be really great things for a college to study. But again, I think our charge is very specific and limited to those four objectives. And so we’re trying to stay confined there because as you all can see we’ve been working very hard for many months now, and this what we have. So to inject additional tasks, number one, that would be not within our charge but I think, number two, it would really almost slow down what we’re currently being asked to do. But it is something I think, of course, there’s value in. I think what a lot of people sometimes perhaps maybe misunderstand where this is going is we’re looking to sort of construct answers for these four objectives and I think any decision that any college would be making about how we can augment or amplify a Greek life experience on campus or even looking at pruning or scaling back a Greek life that springs on campus – we need to be a comprehensive effort. It wouldn’t be just these four objectives that we’re looking at. So for me I think that’s why many people on IAGGL, we’re comfortable that there’s not much volatility to our efforts before we feel like our charge is very limited. And I think some of the worst-case scenarios, fears that many people have, I understand why they have them, but that’s really not what we’re thinking about because our charge wouldn’t even be looking at some of those things.
Dr. Robert Massa: I’d like to direct this next question to Dean D’agostino, and it actually comes from one of our participants today. And I’m going to paraphrase here. We’re requiring Greek organizations through the metrics, through the proposed metrics, and again, as Dr. Limas said, it’s not set in stone yet, to conduct five academic programs per year. So the question is why these five programs – is it quality what we’re really looking at more than quantity? Erica?
Dean D’agostino: And, of course, I think we would all completely agree that the quality of the programming is what we’re looking for. Again, remember that this is – right now as Dr. Limas said we’re in this draft period. So we are grappling with the ideas of how much are we looking for the Greeks to do? We certainly don’t want to impose on them a vast number of additional commitments that are going to spread them thin, spread their budget thin. That’s not what we’re looking for. My guess, as a former sorority member here, is that most of our Greeks are probably already doing a number of programs within each of their organizations. Our hope at this point is that they’re able to reach out more to the campus community at large and involve other people. And I think that really will be the new piece to this. I do think that our Greek students are doing a lot of incredible programming that are already academic in nature. So the hope here is that it won’t be an additional piece of a commitment. It will just be a bit of a change in terms of how they’re running these different events and it will be pulling in more members of the community.
And back to the piece, I just wanted to reiterate, where we’ve had some questions about non-faculty-involved programming. Again, as Dr. Limas said, this is a draft period and certainly I would hope that if, for example, my sorority were to have me work with them on an event or some sort of opportunity that they would like to have done at the house, I would be happy to be involved in that. And I would hope that despite the fact that I’m not a faculty member that that can – that would satisfy that piece of having someone involved in the activity.
Dr. Robert Massa: There was also a question about the national survey of student engagement that came up today from one of our participants. And the short answer to that is, yes, we do participate in NSSE. In fact, I think we’re doing it this spring, if I’m not mistaken. We’ve done it two years before. And I’m not – perhaps you know – the person who asked the question whether we can break Greek affiliation out of that survey. And if we can I think we certainly will because those contain a lot of good information. Let me ask another question that came up earlier and that is – and this is open to any of our three IAGGL members who are here – will Greek students need to meet or beat their non-Greek peers in all categories?
Dr. Limas: Yeah, this one I think is a great question and, frankly, it was probably one of the first ones that students – I mean per Stewart and I, we can speak to this pretty well. It was one of the first questions that we received from our current Greek students from the get-go. And both myself and Stewart, but also Dean John McKnight, who oversees intercultural development, which includes fraternity and sorority life, we’ve been steadfast in saying that I think it would be foolish to believe that you’ve got to bat a thousand here. I think what’s really going to be key is as we go through this process and we identify sort of where are the important issues going through here, and frankly we don’t know what those issues are right now when it comes to our metrics. We’re kind of casting a wide net and we’re going to kind of scale back. But the short answer, I think, clearly is that no, they don’t have bat a thousand. And then, of course, more importantly, the whole issue is whether you can disaggregate and treat groups separately. And I think absolutely we’re looking at drilling down because if there is an issue that’s located, say, in one Greek organization I think Stewart and I and Dean McKnight’s approach would be to, number one, let’s first call attention to that issue if that is one of the metrics we want to look at, let’s bring it to the attention of the group. Let’s ask; maybe we can sort of understand why that issue is present, and then let’s come up with a strategy about remediating it. But I think there’s nothing that says right out of the box everyone’s got to bat a thousand and if you don’t then good luck. We’re just not even having conversations like that. But I can appreciate why some people are nervous about that. But Stewart, I know you have many conversations with students. And I think we try and reassure them that this isn’t the case at all.
Stewart Umberger: Just to reiterate that we have plenty of conversations all the time and, once again, we always come back to this is a learning experience. Even our values, while they are very high and admirable, we’re trying to really teach them, how to espouse them in their actions, behaviors, and attitudes. And that just is also going to transcribe into everything we’re doing here. It’s just a matter of them learning how to navigate this and do the best they can. And when there’s moments that need to be taught or we can come back and reflect and decide on how to do things better that’s really what we’re looking to do with this stuff.
Dr. Limas: The other thing too that I think, often it’s tough when students ask a question. And it’s also, I think, difficult when alumni ask the question about can you just tell us the number. Tell us where we need to be so we can aim to that. And we really can’t tell you because obviously we’re not picking out an arbitrary endpoint but much of this is directly related to comparison, how the Greek students compare with their non-Greek peers. And so there’s an element of, I think, fairness in that particular standard; however, it’s not lost on us that that can be worrisome because you’re unsure of exactly that quantitative goal is. And I think what we always try and do with the Greek students is, of course, we have many meetings, not just individually or with chapters, but with the entire Greek community to have these town halls that we do quarterly here on campus with all of our Greek students. And we give them a chance to ask whatever they want to know and we give them updates and the simple rule that we have is we don’t leave until they get their questions answered because for them there is so much more riding on this as current members of the system. And we like to tell them very clearly that we realize that it’s a burden because this is a question that now they’re having to drive and answer and much is riding on that response. So we want to make sure we’re supporting them in this process.
Dr. Robert Massa: OK, thank you. To the participant talking about the NSSE survey, why don’t we have a conversation about this offline. My email is massar@lafayette.edu. So let’s talk about that. I am on the overall institution-wide assessment committee. So I can address that, but let’s do that offline. There’s another series of questions that talk about the meaning of inclusiveness. And whether you want to call it open admission or whatever. Can you really define what that means? Do you know at this point even what that means? And if there were just one question maybe we could think that wasn’t a major concern, but there are several that revolve around that.
Dr. Limas: Yeah, it’s really interesting because when you read “an open and transparent member selection process” that can mean a lot of things, right. I mean you’re kind of exposing the sheer fact that embedded within that question is a continuum that can be described in many ways depending on who is thinking about it. For us, as a committee, we haven’t even begun to think about what openness is. I can tell one thing right now for us, it’s very clear that we’re talking about ten organizations that are private, that are housed off campus, they are based as independent organizations that aren’t related to Lafayette. And so you’ve got to walk a very fine line between what our membership processes or selections might be if we were starting a Lafayette fraternity, which we’re not. I mean that’s not something we’re talking about at all. But we understand that openness, open access, and what it means to sort of walk among members is going to look different. And individual organizations, they’ve got the right to go ahead and select who they want to. For IAGGL, I think where we’re sort of choosing to focus some of our initial efforts right now is on the fact about things being open in terms of transparency. So if Jane Doe is looking to join a particular organization, does she know what the process looks like, how it’s going to function, time line, things of that nature, so that we can sort of take some of the mystery out of it. Where we go from here, it would be just really too early to speculate, but I think that if the question is simply are you trying to make Greek organizations, all ten organizations, admit everyone, similar to how the chess club has to admit everyone. The short answer is no. I mean that’s not what we’re trying to do at all.
Dr. Robert Massa: Thank you. The question that came in from one of our participants today that talks about the line between the measurement of learning opportunities and driving a particular type of learning: Is there a mandate to drive a particular type of learning or to measure and promote all forms of learning opportunities?
Dr. Limas: It’s really an interesting question and I would invite Dean D’agostino to weigh in here as well. I think for us, I mean the short answer – what I love about the question is it gives us an opportunity to be clear. And related to that is there a desire or a mandate to drive a particular type of learning, the short answer is absolutely not. I mean we haven’t talked about that at all. I think for us the conversation is still very much so at the surface because we understand the majority of people that are on campus are faculty and students. So do we actually engage them in that process? And then, of course, we’re very willing to sort of expand that and talk about different types of learning, different types of pedagogy, and I think that can be a really rich moment for us to talk about that. There is absolutely nothing that we’re sort of over emphasizing or evaluating when it comes to different types of learning. I mean, what’s your take on this Dean D’agostino?
Dean D’agostino: No, I would agree with what you’re saying. I certainly don’t think that we are looking to drive a particular type of learning. I think really as I mentioned before, I think what we’re looking to do is to encourage additional learning outside of the classroom to involve the whole campus community in some of the great things that our Greek organizations are doing, and not look at one particular type of learning experience. Certainly our Greek organizations, the members of those communities have the opportunity for so many different types of learning as leaders in their organizations as running houses. So I think our hope is that they are going to be able to share some of the experiences that they’re having with the campus at large and engage a bit more outside the classroom with the faculty.
Dr. Limas: Yeah, and with that, before we move one, I suppose one thing that I want to make certain that people can talk with their friends and colleagues about is we, I think, are making an assumption that people that are asking this question about different types of learning, that no one is necessarily opposed or wanting to eliminate faculty involvement from some of these things. What I think where we’re making the assumption is that we would perhaps make that a little bit more of an optional, or if it happened, that’s great, if not, then that’s OK because we can demonstrate that learning occurs in different ways. If for some reason that’s not the case and there is a sense out there that you want to directly exclude faculty from learning opportunities, that would be something that I would be curious for people to go to the website and punch that in because we’re kind of assuming that’s not the case, but if that is something that people believe, please go ahead and share that with us.
Dr. Robert Massa: Great! Another question that came, for these metrics will you distill the analysis down to an organizational level rather than looking at the entire Greek system? Also, would you be willing to look at these over a period of time so that if an organization has a poor year that won’t hurt them in the long run if their efforts have been good otherwise.
Dr. Limas: Yeah, I think that’s a great question and the short answer is not only are we going to drill down organization by organization, but I think one of the fantastic things about the way in which we’re approaching Greek organizations now is we want to actually just drill down by a particular pledge year because if you’ve got an issue that’s present, let’s say, in one class that has sort of gone through the system, and that’s a particular issue and you don’t see that in other pledge classes, that’s a very different discussion we can have with that particular organization. And there could be a wealth of reasons as to why that was perhaps that anomaly. So I think people out there should be very confident in knowing that we are not going to take one aggregate Greek metric. That is one thing that we’re using but that’s not going to be where the analysis ends. I mean we want to drill down organization by organization and where possible by class year by class year. One of the neat things about some of the analyses that we’re doing is that when you actually are willing to go to that granular level, maybe you can actually identify whether or not there are particular students even within a pledge class that are derivative of some of the issues right there. So I think we want to find out what are the answers to some of these questions instead of validating any preconceived notion about whether or not Greeks will be successful or unsuccessful. We’re just, we’re not even there. I mean I think if anything the group is very much so committed towards what can we do to enhance Greek life. No one on the committee at all has an agenda that is looking to validate an opinion that Greek life is not valuable. So we’re completely not even in that ball park. And I think the more that we can actually talk through some of these things the better. It’s a great question.
Dr. Robert Massa: And to follow up on that as well, another question that came in, which non-Greek groups will be used as a comparison for the learning opportunities objectives and why?
Dr. Limas: Yeah, and I’ll go back to a couple of the comments that we had made earlier. I mean the short answer to that is it depends. One of the things that we want to be very cautious of is if you’ve got a particular honor society in a particular academic discipline, chances are they are going to be doing more demonstrated learning opportunities of a particular facet than Greek organizations because of their definition as an academic honor society. So that, I think, would be a great example of why we, in many cases, would not use those peer groups. This may be a situation where when we get to demonstrated learning opportunities – and again, when you look at our metrics nowhere in there does it sort of have that comparison label that it did with academics in conduct because we’re striving for apples to apples. And you may be able to do that when it comes to demonstrated learning opportunity metrics and you may not be able to. So right now I think the short answer is we’re not sure. It’s going to kind of depend but we reserve the right to not compare Greek organizations to other non-affiliated groups because if it makes Greek organizations look bad because it’s not their comparison we’re not going to do that. I think our interest is in being fair. And so if we don’t have a fair comparison then so be it. So we’re going to kind of see how that plays itself out here in the next little bit.
Dr. Robert Massa: Okay, we are just about to the end of our time. We’ve got about three minutes left. Any comments from either Dean D’agostino or Mr. Umberger before we close or Dr. Limas?
Dean Dagastino: I wanted to actually just reiterate something that Bob had said earlier regarding the notion that perhaps there was already an agenda to this committee. And I wanted to say that from my perspective, obviously, as a Greek member and an alumnus, I certainly would not have wanted to be on a committee that already had an agenda. I think that at the end of our time that the IAGGL has looked at all of these metrics. I think we’re going to find that our Greek organizations are doing wonderful things, that they are working well with the campus, that they are providing a wide range of activities that engage faculty, other students, alumni, friends of the college. So in no way are any of us here with a particular agenda. If I do have one it probably is to show how strong our Greek community is and how many wonderful things they’re doing.
Dr. Robert Massa: Stewart?
Stewart Umberger: Just in summary, I mean with everything going like she said, this is still an interacting stage and there’s a lot of things to come back and discuss. So just please be confident that we’re hearing everything that you’re saying. I think a lot of this, what’s going to help us is really engaging to make sure we have strong advisers with the advisory structures, that all your fraternities and sororities have to make sure that those have a full cadre of people who are willing to support these things. And I see most of this not being an issue. And we’ll have that moment where maybe one individual group is having a little bit of a challenge with these metrics. And we’re here to learn. This is a college about learning. So I think we’ll bring them in and we’ll sit down with everybody and try to figure out how we can move forward. And there’s a learning moment and figure out how they can move forward and make it better.
Dr. Robert Massa: And I do want to remind everyone that the name of this group is the implementation and assessment group. Right now the group is focusing in on the assessment part, how we measure. But the next step after this is how we implement and help Greek organizations to achieve their maximum potential.
Dr. Limas: Yeah, the last thing I would say is I agree completely with everything that Mr. Umberger and Dean D’agostino said. It’s a challenge, of course, because I think we haven’t really had these kinds of discussions in a town hall format clearly. And I think the charge of the examination of looking at the Greek life from these four objectives is tough. I think for many individuals out there, this perhaps surprised you. I think coming off of the working group report you were a bit caught off guard by this and you were wondering sort of what’s driving this. And I can tell you that there is a good amount of anxiety that we’re aware of and we’re going to do our best to make certain that we don’t lose sight of what we’re charged to do, which is to be objective and really see exactly how we can do our best job of implementing and assessing these recommendations from the first group. And at the same point in time I just want to reassure everyone that we understand all of your comments you’re making because you care about the college, and you love our students and you care about the organizations you were members of and you want to see those continue. And I’ve got to tell you we honor that and we so much appreciate that as well. I would hope that as we move forward, let’s all maybe realize that I think we all want the same thing and if we need to do a much better job of communicating that you bet we’re going to do that. So we appreciate you guys actually being supportive of the process and just know that you’ve got partners here that are going to keep up on what’s going on. But we have – there is no hidden agenda here. There is no process that we’re looking forward to move. All we want to do is make certain that we’re doing our job well in supporting the Greek system. So I really want to thank everyone for that.
Dr. Robert Massa: And with that, that concludes our virtual town hall. Thank you, all of the participants and certainly those here on campus. And we wish you a great day and a wonderful weekend coming up. Thank you very much.