Gee: No more ‘wild west’ Greek life

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — WVU President Gordon Gee said the latest issues in dealing with on-campus fraternities, five of which are now under a 10-year ban, was both disappointing and ‘encouraging.’

“This is not the wild west,” Gee said Monday on WAJR’s Morgantown AM. “The old days of a fraternity being able to do anything they want to is not what should happen — nor should it happen with any organization.”

West Virginia University President Gordon Gee

Kappa Alpha, Alpha Sigma Phi, Phi Sigma Kappa, Theta Chi, and Sigma Chi declared the formation of a new Independent Fraternity Council in Morgantown late last week, just hours before the university enacted a harsh decade-long ban of the fraternities.

“I’m encouraged by those fraternities that have decided to remain as members of our university family,” Gee said. “We’ll do everything to make them successful. For those who have left, I’m sorry for them. I still appreciate their students, and I want them to achieve and do great things. But this is wrong, and it should not be allowed to just go into the ether without the kind of restrictions that we’ve put on them.”

Those fraternities questioned some of the merits of Reaching the Summit, a new initiative designed to mitigate high-risk behavior in Greek Life and engage in more active education on major issues facing fraternities and sororities. Releases from national and local chapters of the five fraternities in question often cited or described punishment as “arbitrary” and lacking in due process.

“We were willing to work on those issues,” Gee said. “In fact, we received a proposal from the National Interfraternity Council that we actually are taking a careful look about how we can have some exceptions to deferred recruitment under certain circumstances.”

Deferred rush for first-semester students was one of several points of contention between dissociating fraternities and WVU following the Aug. 1 adoption of Reaching the Summit.

“We want to work with these folks,” Gee said. “We want to make certain that they are successful. We don’t want to be draconian. We want to come up with good solutions.”

Disputed by the fraternities, Gee once again placed blame on national chapter leaders who had economic reasons for supporting dissociation and opposing the restrictions of Reaching the Summit.

“In this instance, the nationals tend to put pressure on (locals) to get out from underneath the rules of the university for basically money issues,” Gee said. “I find that to be really not in the best interest of anyone.”

“Our students are the adults, and the national leadership are the kids. And that is not the way that it should be.”





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