IOWA CITY — After spending years in the headlines as a party-school mecca and just as many years addressing that with new initiatives and policies, the University of Iowa for the first time has recorded a full academic year in which sorority and fraternity members were arrested or cited less often than their non-Greek peers.

“This drop in arrests and citations means that our Greek community students are leading the way to a safer, healthier environment,” UI Vice President of Student Life Tom Rocklin wrote in an email earlier this year to then-UI President Sally Mason. “I am so proud to be the only chief student affairs officer I know who can brag that their fraternity and sorority members get in less trouble than other students.”

The first semester on record that both UI fraternities and sororities had arrest and citation rates under their undergraduate male and female peers was fall 2014, according to new data provided to The Gazette. And they held those numbers down in the spring 2015 semester.

Those rates matter, UI officials said, as arrests and citations on college campuses often are tied to alcohol use and abuse — behavior the institution has been trying to curb for years through efforts such as the creation of an Alcohol Harm Reduction Advisory Committee in 2009, an associated harm reduction plan and the UI-city Partnership for Alcohol Safety project.

In 2011 — viewing Greek organizations as leaders in the area — UI officials enacted a new policy requiring all fraternities and sororities to maintain arrest and citation rates at or below overall rates for undergraduate students of the same gender.

That policy provided incentives and sanctions “to reduce negative behavior and results.”

“As value-based organizations, (sororities and fraternities) provide leadership to the campus in our attempts to reduce the harm students experience as a result of their alcohol use,” Rocklin said in an email to The Gazette.

And that policy, he said, seems to be working.

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In spring 2011, before it was enacted in November, sorority and fraternity members were arrested or cited at about twice the rate as their undergraduate peers, according to the UI data.

Nearly 4 percent of sorority members were arrested or cited that semester, compared with 2.1 percent of undergraduate females. Nearly 8.5 percent of fraternity members were arrested or cited, compared with 4.1 percent of undergraduate men.

Those arrest and citation rates increased in the fall 2011 semester — but they dropped sharply in spring 2012, and they’ve continued to trend down.

Last semester, 1.17 percent of all UI undergraduate women were arrested or cited, compared to .83 percent of UI sorority members, according to the data. While 2.13 percent of all UI undergraduate men were arrested or cited in spring 2015, 1.99 percent of fraternity members faced a charge that semester — the lowest on record for Greek men.

That means UI sorority members have reduced their arrest and citation rates to just 71 percent of all undergraduate women on campus, and UI Greek men have cut their rates to 93 percent of their male counterparts.

“These numbers represent an important change in culture and behavior,” Rocklin told The Gazette in an email. “I’m pleased that members of the University of Iowa fraternity and sorority community have chosen to align their actions with their values.”

‘They all had to do something’

The policy’s sanctions also might have helped.

Chapters with non-compliant arrest and citation rates are subject to a schedule of sanctions that become increasingly severe as the rate-gap widens. The policy lays out four tiers of sanctions, and any chapters that stay out of compliance for four consecutive semesters are required to appear at a hearing “to explain why its relationship with the University of Iowa should not be terminated.”

Lesser sanctions include limiting or prohibiting a chapter’s ability to hold date party or formal events; limiting or prohibiting it from holding any events involving alcohol; preventing it from participating in Greek Week, homecoming or intramurals; and barring it from requesting funding through the UI Student Government.

Although the combined arrest and citation rates for UI sororities and fraternities were in compliance all last year, some individual houses did not comply and were sanctioned, according to data provided to The Gazette shows.

Seven chapters were out of compliance in fall 2014 — including Sigma Nu, which had five of its 127 members arrested or cited, and Pi Kappa Alpha, which had four of its 73 members arrested or cited. In spring 2015, eight chapters did not comply, putting them under various levels of sanctions this semester.

In a case that made the news this month, a Delta Chi member on Nov. 1 was arrested on suspicion of assault with a dangerous weapon and carrying a concealed dangerous weapon outside the fraternity house at 308 Ridgeland Ave. in Iowa City.

Logan Santel, 19, according to police, pulled a semi-automatic gun from his waistband during an argument in the parking lot, cocked it and pointed it at the ground. Santel, who officers said doesn’t have a permit to carry the weapon, was placed on inactive status with the fraternity and removed from the chapter house, according to Justin Sherman, executive director of Delta Chi International.

“Delta Chi does not support nor condone activities inconsistent with the values of strong moral character, leadership, educational excellence, and civic responsibility,” Sherman said in a statement.

Delta Chi officials declined to speak further about efforts to curb arrest and citation rates. And the university’s Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic Council did not respond to repeated requests for interviews on the topic of fraternity and sorority violation rates.

But Anita Cory, associate director for the Center for Student Involvement and Leadership, said all the university’s more than 50 Greek chapters have taken deliberate steps to address dangerous drinking and reduce arrest and citation rates.

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“It hasn’t occurred naturally in any chapter,” Cory said. “They all had to do something.”

‘It’s a huge improvement’

At a minimum, the university’s Greek houses have educated members on rules and policies and talked to them about what can happen if they get arrested — from their status as a UI student to the chapter’s standing with the institution.

Some have gone further, Cory said, enacting accountability measures and providing consequences within the chapter — putting members on probation, for example, if they are arrested or cited.

“There is a multipronged approach for most groups,” she said. “The chapters that have been most successful at changing have done a couple things.”

The university does not have compiled in one place information on how many UI Greek chapters — and which ones — have been under sanctions each year since the new policy was enacted in 2011, and it could not immediately provide arrest and citation rates for each chapter for previous years. But Cory said that, anecdotally, some chapters have seen rates drop from as high as 15 percent to zero.

The largest arrest or citation rate among UI fraternities and sororities with more than 10 members in the spring 2015 semester was 3.23 percent for the Kappa Sigma fraternity. And, Cory said, those numbers can be deceiving — depending on the size of the fraternity.

In Kappa Sigma’s case, two of its 62 members were cited or arrested last semester, Cory said. And the highest number of members any fraternity or sorority saw arrested or cited last semester was four, according to the data.

“That is not a big number or percent,” she said. “It’s a huge improvement from what it was a few years ago.”

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And Greek arrest and citations rates aren’t the only numbers going down on campus. The rate for all undergraduate women on campus has dropped from 2.6 percent in fall 2011 to 1.2 percent last semester. The rate for all undergraduate UI men has dropped from 5.3 percent in fall 2011 to 2.1 in spring 2015, according to the UI data.

“There is research and data out there that can show that on Division I campuses of large public universities with a substantial-sized fraternity and sorority community, they often are engaged as leaders on campus and involved in guiding and shaping the culture,” Cory said.

About 18 percent of UI undergraduate students are involved in the Greek community.

“That is a big chunk,” Cory said. “If you can get fraternities and sororities on board with something … it will help other people do it too.”