The Interfraternity Council voted Thursday night for the second time not to grant the national Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi official sponsorship. The IFC had previously rejected AEPi sponsorship during Winter term, but decided to give AEPi another chance at sponsorship because "they had been doing a pretty good job towards satisfying the criteria for us to recognize them," IFC President Alex Lentz '07 said.
Lentz said that the IFC rejected sponsorship on the basis of official IFC expansion policy, specifically current and projected rush numbers.
"We simply felt that the Greek community could not support another fraternity at this time," he said.
Currenty there are 13 IFC-sponsored fraternities and six Panhellenic sororities at Dartmouth.
The IFC said in a statement to the press that, although AEPi was rejected, "we think AEPi is an excellent national organization and certainly respect all of the hard work on the part of Patrick Karas, John Tepperman and the other members of the AEPi interest group."
In order to gain IFC sponsorship, AEPi needed the support of three-fourths of the College's fraternities.
The IFC used "closed voting" in Thursday night's decision, so the votes of each house were not disclosed. Lentz said that the votes were private because the IFC came to the decision as an organization and how it made the decision was incidental.
"It's not about individual houses," he said.
The North American Interfraternity Council mandates that the national fraternities vote in favor of other national organizations coming to campus. Lentz said that the relationship between the five national fraternities and their national office would ultimately determine whether AEPi is recognized.
According to Karas, Deb Carney emphasized in an e-mail to Lentz and Karas the importance of a public voting process so that the votes of the national fraternities, who are obliged to support AEPi, could be known. Carney is the director of coed, fraternity and sorority administration.
The five national fraternities are Psi Upsilon, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Nu, Sigma Phi Epsilon and Theta Delta Chi.
"It's up to the national office to hold them accountable for that and not the IFC," Lentz said. "All the national houses were in communication with their national offices before the vote was cast."
An AEPi interest group of five members formed late during Fall term, and they have been working toward official recognition since then. Patrick Karas '08, president of the AEPi Dartmouth chapter, said that AEPi presented official documentation on Thursday demonstrating that they meet the criteria for sponsorship. Since AEPi's first rejection, the group has continued to hold weekly meetings and has retained its original membership.
AEPi has also followed through on its commitment to service.
"We held a big philanthropy event, 'Gift of Life.' We got 74 people screened to go into the national bone marrow bank for bone marrow for people with leukemia," Karas said. "Average colleges that do this get 20 to 30 people."
The IFC was given control over the expansion process in September as part of the new CFS guidelines that were created after the Board of Trustees lifted the College moratorium on new Greek houses this summer.
"I think the IFC executive board has done a good job of putting their criteria out there for everyone to see," Carney said. "The IFC executive board is providing strong leadership."
Lentz added that some of the fraternity presidents expressed concern over the IFC supporting a religiously affiliated fraternity, even though the IFC expansion criteria does not require a new house to be unaffiliated.
The North American Interfraternity Council has already accepted religiously affiliated houses, including AEPi, into its membership, and Dartmouth is the only Ivy League institution without at least a colony of AEPi.
