Why the delay on Greek Life?
Having lived among Penn State fraternities for more than 25 years, I was very interested to see the university’s response to the recent tragedy at the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. Seemingly, glossed over in the Centre Daily Times lead article on Friday was the work of the Greek Life Task Force.
“President Eric Barron formed a task force (in 2015, chaired by VP for Student Affairs Damon Sims) to address fraternity and sorority issues after the Kappa Delta Rho incident. Sims said some ideas for the measures did come from that group.”
To the best of my knowledge, the university didn’t implement any of the recommendations from the Greek Life Task Force, until now. If that’s the case, my question is why not? Why the delay? Many deeply invested town and gown committee members spent countless hours over many months meeting to develop sound recommendations for consideration. There was no final report released. More importantly, could any of those shelved recommendations have prevented the tragedy at Beta? What if one of the recommendations was to eliminate freshman rush? Having participated in many GLTF subcommittee meetings on community relations, I, for one, would like some answers.
Ted Sebastianelli, State College
This story was originally published April 1, 2017 at 10:12 PM with the headline "Why the delay on Greek Life?."