Some ETSU fraternities decided to withdraw from Homecoming events after a fight between two groups last month.
The two fraternities invol-ved, Sigma Chi and Sigma Phi Epsilon, were banned from Homecoming after an altercation on Sept. 16.
At 3:08 a.m. police responded to a call about a fight at the Sigma Chi fraternity house.
The fight occurred in the alleyway behind Poor Richards, where Robert J. Cole, a member of Sigma Chi, stated that a group of Sigma Phi Epsilon members started a fight with him and his brothers for unknown reasons.
Cole did not wish to pursue charges and said that “Sigma Chi would take care of the problem.” He also stated in the police report that he did not know who hit him.
At 4:15 a.m. there was another fight in progress involving 50 people at the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house. There was no physical fight, only a “verbal exchange.”
The motives for the original incident are still unknown.
This incident, and the judicial action taken against Sigma Chi and Sigma Phi Epsilon, led four other fraternities to refrain from participating in some Homecoming events.
Sigma Chi and Sigma Phi Epsilon are not allowed to participate in Homecoming. Both fraternities appealed, and were denied. Lambda Chi and Sigma Nu were not officially registered to begin with and made the decision to not register at all. Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Pi Kappa Alpha withdrew their notice of participation.
According to Pi Kappa Alpha President Brian Broyles, there have been five disciplinary sanctions handed out since the beginning of the semester, and all of them were given to fraternities.
The other four disciplinary sanctions against the frater-nities deals with ‘unregistered parties.’
“Technically three guys in the same fraternity sitting at their house or an off-campus house that’s not even their fraternity house can be perceived as an unregistered party,” said Brett Baker, president of the Inter-Fraternity Council. “The same thing goes for, obviously, 60 people at a fraternity house. It’s all gray in that sense, based off of perception,”
To have a registered party, fraternities have to submit paperwork, train honor guards, get sober monitors for parking, and hire security guards at a cost of $200 to $250 a night.
“When you have three guys at an off-campus location, should they have to hire a security guard or two security guards for $250? It’s very gray in my opinion,” Baker said.
Disciplinary sanctions could be in the form of limiting alcohol or parties in fraternity houses, requiring community service or banning the fraternities from major school events like Homecoming.
“I don’t like the word ‘boycott’ because we still put a contestant in for the Homecoming king,” Broyles said.
The only events fraternities are participating in are Up ‘Til Dawn and Homecoming king. As far as philanthropic events, the IFC will sponsor its own separate food and blood drives.
“Basically we want to be treated like any other student organization,” Broyles said. “There are several fraternity members on campus who are members of SGA as well. If someone from other organizations were to do something that the university didn’t like, the only student organizations that would be liable for that student’s actions would be a fraternity.
“It’s not fair; we’re held to a different standard than everyone else,” Broyles said.
The problems experienced by fraternities lie partially in the rules themselves and partially in the way the rules are handled.
“We have no problem playing by the rules, but the rules need to be uniform across the board,” Broyles said.
The fraternities are pushing for clarity and reform to the ‘unregistered event’ policy, as well as fair treatment.
“The Greek life office is there to police us and not to further us. As administrators it is their job, it is their sole purpose, to make our system better,” Broyles said”It’s not our fault that things are ‘disorganized’ according to campus standards. They should do their job, which they are paid for. They are paid to do a job, obviously they’re not doing it, and through their comments they admitted to everyone that they’re not doing it.”
This incident is the first time in a long time that fraternities have banded together on an issue.
“We rarely have any agreement among the chapters and we rarely have any cooperation,” said Gary Carver, a graduate assistant in the Greek life office. “This is the first time the whole time I have been working with the fraternities that they have really agreed on something, and come together on it.”
“It sucks that it took them getting in trouble for them to say, ‘Hmm’ and put their heads together,” Carver said. “The disciplinary sanctions were the catalyst for them getting together and trying to figure out what they were doing as a Greek community.”
Broyles agreed.
“This is the first positive step that IFC has collectively made since I have been in school.”
Correction:
Sigma Chi fraternity is not boycotting Homecomg events as
previosuly stated in the “Homecoming Boycott” article published
in the Oct. 19 issue.

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