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The Dartmouth
July 27, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

College may shelve AEPi's charter plans

Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity's plan to establish a Dartmouth chapter may be permanently shelved for violating College policy, according to Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman.

Redman has told The Dartmouth that accusations of student induction may count as a severe strike against the national fraternity by College administration, should AEPi resume its plan to establish ties here.

Plans to create a chapter of AEPi, a national Jewish fraternity, were suspended Dec. 15 because the fraternity's national office claimed to have lacked enough staff to expand at present.

Last spring, The Dartmouth learned that a representative of the national fraternity had inducted six members from an AEPi interest group.

Induction is not the same thing as fraternity initiation. Rather, induction is, as then-AEPi Master Matthew Feinstein '04 told The Dartmouth last spring, "basically akin to sinking a bid."

Still, Redman noted that the alleged AEPi induction would be considered a violation of College Greek by-laws.

A fraternity must receive College recognition before it can perform any new membership procedures, Redman said.

AEPi's national office would neither confirm nor deny The Dartmouth's accusations that it had violated College policy.

"We would only have records of initiation," AEPi Director of Chapter Services Andrew Borans said. "I don't know if they were inducted."

Borans, however, declined to indicate if AEPi was aware that Dartmouth by-laws forbid the fraternity from inducting students at Dartmouth.

Borans also refused to comment on whether or not AEPi had familiarized itself with Dartmouth Greek policy before sending a representative to campus.

Nevertheless, AEPi may receive a free pass on the matter.

Redman said that to his knowledge, The Dartmouth's claim that students were inducted was incorrect.

Redman said that he based his assessment on the fact that he has no hard proof that students were inducted and that he was never informed of any induction ceremony in his correspondences with AEPi's national organization.

Controversy aside, Redman said he had doubts as to whether the fraternity would have been able to form at Dartmouth.

Although the student interest group may have claimed more than 10 members at its peak, by the end of Fall term its membership dwindled until only Feinstein was left.

For his effort to create a chapter an AEPi chapter at Dartmouth, Feinstein, who could not be reached for comments will be initiated into the fraternity in February at either Harvard or MIT, Redman said.

Strangely enough, Redman insisted that the failed attempt to create a new fraternity at Dartmouth might better serve the Greek community in the long run.

"I think there is a limit to how many organizations a campus can support," Redman said.

Redman said that he was concerned that more Greek options could detract from the membership of existing organizations, making them more susceptible to financial difficulties.

At least some will be sad to hear the news the AEPi interest group has dissolved.

Hillel chaplain Rabbi Edward Boraz said that he appreciated how the members of the dissolved AEPi interest group cooked a Friday night dinner at the Roth Center last term.

Boraz indicated that Hillel was neither a primary avenue for the group to recruit members nor affiliated with the AEPi efforts. However, Boraz said that Hillel "was supportive of their efforts to express their Jewishness."