Although it was open to the entire campus, an audience of mainly Coed, Fraternity and So rority presidents and social chairs advocated for CFS houses to bear more responsibility in social events management procedures at a SEMP review committee forum held Tuesday night at Phi Delta Alpha fraternity.
Tuesday's meeting was part of an ongoing effort to reach out to students to gain suggestions about the policy. It follows a community hour last week that just one student attended.
The committee has been examining the flaws in the current policy since October, according to committee chair and Associate Dean of Student Life Joe Cassidy.
"Last term's focus was [on] getting the members of the committee selected and then educating ourselves," Cassidy said. "Now that we know what the issues are, we want to find out what the solutions to these issues are going to be."
The committee has addressed statistics from Safety and Security reports, Dick's House admissions and similar information from other schools.
Tuesday's meeting had much better attendance than the past open forum, consisting mainly of those affiliated with Greek organizations.
"These are the presidents, these are the social chairs, these are the people who understand the workings of the policies," Phi Delt president and committee member Rob Freiman '05 said of the event's attendees.
The presidents and social chairs largely criticized the College's current definition of a party, which is characterized as an event with more than 40 people.
"If we were to bring out a case of beer right now, we'd be in violation of SEMP policy," committee member Mallory Fosdick '05 joked about the current policies. Fosdick is the social chair of Kappa Delta Epsilon sorority.
The difficulty of party registration was another major point, and while some members of the administration suggested allowing less time for registrations, most students agreed that the only solution was a same-night, "on-the-fly" registration system.
"I don't think the issue is three-day registration or one day," Phi Delt member Brad Hogate '05 said, noting that it is just as easy to register a party one day ahead of time as it is to register it three days ahead of time.
"I think the matter is something spontaneously growing out of your hands," Hogate said.
Keg policy was another key issue discussed at Tuesday's forum, with students noting the unnecessary strictness with kegs, as well as several flaws in the process. Among those, students complained of a seemingly arbitrary system of keg distribution and faulty online registration procedures.
"We're getting about half the beer we need," one attendee commented, noting that less beer at parties contributes to students drinking harder alcohol in their rooms before going out.
Behind the discussion, there was genuine concern for the safety of students attending social situations.
"All restricting alcohol does is make people leave the party earlier and go some place that's unregistered," one attendee said.
Primarily, the students in attendance showed an overwhelming desire for more responsibility.
Dean of the College James Larimore created the SEMP committee in October to evaluate current policies. Six seniors, three of whom are members of the CFS system, join five faculty members on the committee.
