U. of Missouri IFC fraternity houses will ban hard liquor in the fall

Rose Schmidt | college.usatoday.com

University of Missouri fraternities in the Interfraternity Council (IFC) will say goodbye to hard liquor in all fraternity houses in the fall, says an IFC representative.

This decision comes in light of the MU Fraternity Alumni Consortium’s list of proposals for improving the “safety of women students in fraternity houses” and limiting the number of sexual assaults on campus. These proposals include prohibiting women guests in fraternity houses between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, forbidding out-of-town social events and formals, outlawing hard alcohol and implementing mandatory drug testing for all Greek members.

Parker Briden, IFC vice president of public relations at Mizzou, says IFC does not support all of the consortium’s proposals as they currently stand.

“We don’t like what most of them are — with the exception of the alcohol policy — in their first form,” Briden says. “I kind of think it’s the wrong direction to go, but we don’t want students to be in a panic and think that these are the new policies without amendment.”

However, the council will be changing some of its own policies sometime during the fall 2015 semester.

“While alcohol doesn’t necessarily cause sexual assault, it’s definitely a contributing factor,” Briden says. “So, in order to try and discourage people from binge-drinking, we’re going to be banning hard liquor in all fraternity houses and having a system that allows for people to drink beer and wine.”

He says this new policy will hopefully “discourage people from going overboard with their alcohol consumption.” Any fraternity found in violation of this policy will be turned over to the Office of Student Conduct.

IFC fraternities will also change the ways in which they educate fraternity members on sexual assault.

Briden says IFC has begun training people to talk about sexual assault issues, who will go into fraternities and teach people about what leads to sexual assault, bystander intervention and other ways to prevent sexual assault.



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The original purpose of the Fraternity Alumni Consortium’s proposals was to eliminate sexual assault on Mizzou’s campus.

But some think their passage could lead to change for the worse.

“For freshman year, I think it would lead to a lot more drinking in dorms and places that aren’t — I mean, honestly — as safe as fraternity houses,” Panhellenic Vice President of Public Relations Carolyn Welter says. “I think it just would lead to trying to find ulterior places to do the same things that you do in fraternity houses in a less safe and controlled manner.”

According to the National Institute of Justice, university women know their perpetrator in 85-90% of sexual assaults. The most common locations of reported sexual assaults are at the man or woman’s home. Even in the environment of a fraternity house, a random meeting between two individuals has a smaller likelihood of ending in a sexual assault than between two people who previously knew each other.

“It could happen in fraternity houses, but it’s just as likely to happen in other places,” Welter says.

And if the proposals are enacted as is, female students will not be allowed in fraternity houses during specific hours on the weekend. However, female students and male students are allowed to live on co-ed floors in residence halls, share gender-neutral bathrooms and live in gender-neutral housing, as USA TODAY College reported.



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“You’re allowed to socialize in the dorms with no restriction on when women are allowed to be in your dorm room, but in your private house that you all own, you wouldn’t be able to do that,” Briden says. “I think that would be inconsistent and be a cause of frustration for a lot of students.”

Over the past week, members of Mizzou's Greek community have expressed outrage over the proposals the MU Fraternity Alumni Consortium introduced. On June 5, 2015, IFC and the MU Panhellenic Association (PHA) put out a press release detailing their positions on each of the proposed policies.

Attached to the press release was a letter PHA wrote to MU Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin. The letter said the women of PHA supported the social and recruitment events and the alcohol policies.

“Some of the policies that we supported I think would change it for the better,” Welter says. “For example, the one that is only allowing beer in fraternity houses, I think that definitely would lead to less intoxicated people and therefore have the ability to make more informed decisions.”

According to the letter, PHA members do not, however, support drug testing for all Greek members or prohibiting female students from becoming guests in fraternity houses.

“By doing that, it makes women feel like they don’t have the ability to [make that decision],” Welter says. “PHA probably should have been consulted or at least some current college women should have been consulted prior to the policies being written.”

And Briden agrees.

“I think that women on our campus are generally adults,” Briden says. “They should be able to decisions for themselves, and I think it does show a certain lack of respect for their decision-making ability.”

And it’s not just the Greek community that will be affected if the proposals are enacted.

“Greeks are 27% percent of the campus, so anything that affects the Greek community affects the entire Mizzou community,” Briden says.

According to the Office of Greek Life, 7,651 students were involved in Greek life out of 27,654 undergraduate students in 2014.

The proposed policies affecting MU students will be discussed further at the Chancellor’s Summit on Sexual Assault & Student Safety in Fraternity Houses, which Loftin will host on June 20, 2015. The summit is by invitation-only and will include members of PHA and IFC, and various stakeholders.

Both Welter and Briden expressed hope that the number of sexual assaults on campus will decrease and that the summit will begin to help change the culture.

But until then, the dialogue will continue.

“A complete 180-degree change like this – completely banning women from fraternities for certain hours, banning something that’s been a tradition on Mizzou’s campus like out-of-state formals – you’re just going to get so much pushback, incentivize so many people to find ways around the rules. You’re not actually going to affect real positive change, at least in our opinion,” Briden says.



Rose Schmidt is a student at the University of Missouri and a summer 2015 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.