Greek standards rise in search for additional sorority

As part of the initiative to bring a sixth Panhellenic sorority to campus, University of Richmond introduced the Standards of Excellence guidelines for Greek organizations this year, which require fraternities and sororities to adhere to higher standards than required by most of their national organizations. This will require most chapters to change their programming, service and facility policies.

The standards are academically driven, but are also part of the initiative to attract organizations bidding to become the sixth Panhellenic sorority on campus in the next few years, said Katy Norfleet, president of the campus Panhellenic Council. “They [Meg Pevarski, assistant director of Greek Life, and Alison Keller, director of the Center for Student Involvement] drafted it so they could present it to organizations that were interested in coming to our campus,” Norfleet said. “They just wanted to have it on paper that this is what our chapters accomplish each year.”

Each Greek organization has national guidelines for academics, service and fellowship, but the new university standards add requirements that fraternities and sororities may not have had in the past, such as attending educational programming, holding service events, updating OrgSync and more.

For instance, the standards require that “all chapters complete a total of six educational programs during the academic year,” and maintain at least 75 percent member attendance at each program, according to the Standards of Excellence overview document. Two of these programs must be related to alcohol/drugs and sexual assault prevention, but the chapters may determine the remaining four.

Some Greek chapter leaders, such as Jill Husband, president of Richmond's Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter, are concerned that the new standards will lead to over-programming. “That is one of the biggest causes of poor attendance for us,” Husband said.

“It wasn’t meant to be seen as a burden,” Norfleet said, “because most of these organizations go to chapter development education programs already. For example, for the sexual assault program requirement, Take Back the Night, which is usually very well-received and well-attended event on campus, is acceptable and automatically approved as an ‘SOE.'”

The standards also state, “Each organization shall initiate and implement a minimum of one philanthropic event during the course of each semester," which "must relate or be the same organization for whom [the] chapter organizes at least one of the yearly services projects."

All chapters have both a national philanthropy and a service component, but for some, these are unrelated, as chapter members prefer to serve the Richmond community in other ways. For these chapters, the standards will require a transformation of its current service activities to fit university guidelines.

“The one thing we are having to change a lot that we didn’t have in place is the new requirement to have a community service event with the majority of our members,” Husband said. “That’s hard for us because we used to do once-a-week volunteering and now we’re going to also have to have one big event.”

The Bonner Center for Civic Engagement had a hand in shaping the community service component and helping Greek chapters meet this standard. Adrienne Piazza, manager of educational initiatives and leadership development at the CCE, worked with chapter leaders to find these opportunities and stressed the importance of supporting each chapter’s national philanthropy with similar local service.

“What I think it could do is increase the local impact,” Piazza said. “I think our Greek organizations have strong ties to organizations that they’ve been fundraising and gathering goods for and supporting for years. This is a way to help Greek organizations connect to local organizations that support similar or the same issues.”

The standards will affect each chapter differently, depending on the standards already enforced by their national headquarters. “I think the fraternities definitely have a lot more ground to cover than sororities do,” Norfleet said. “I think that fraternities are realizing that they have to do community service now, and that the standard is a little higher now.”

Nevertheless, Mike Buckbinder, president of Richmond's Sigma Phi Epsilon chapter, said, “I don’t mind the Standards of Excellence. We already fulfill most – if not all – of the requirements, because they are already part of our national standards. The only change we will need to make is having a stricter attendance policy at certain school events.”

Although the Standards of Excellence focus on Greek organizations and their members, proponents of these goals hope that their effect will be campus-wide. “I think that when people think of Greek Life on this campus, they think more of the social scene, so these standards could help both the Greek organizations and others' opinions about them,” senior Andres Navarro said. “Also, it can help Greek students be more active on campus and with the community.”

Contact reporter Rhiannon Bell at rhiannon.bell@richmond.edu