The Panhellenic Council, Inter-Fraternity Council and Greek Leadership Council held elections for their respective executive boards for the spring and fall 2015 and winter 2016 terms. Panhell and IFC held their elections on Monday, Feb. 9 while the GLC held its elections on Feb. 2.
Jordyn Turner ’16 will replace Rachel Funk ’15 as Panhell president. The new president of the IFC will be Chase Gilmore ’16, who will replace Wil Chockley ’15. Elizabeth Wilkins ’16 will replace Alistair Glover ’15 as GLC moderator. The new leaders will be responsible for enacting their agendas in the wake of College President Phil Hanlon’s new policy initiatives under the “Moving Dartmouth Forward” banner, announced late last month.
Turner, who is a member of the local sorority Kappa Delta Epsilon, said that the major goal of her presidency will be advocating for the localization of sororities that are currently nationally affiliated. Turner said that she has been passionate about sorority localization for some time.
“Most of the sororities would be on board with going local,” she said, later clarifying that she was speaking about her personal beliefs and not for Panhell. “It’s a matter of incentivizing their nationals to let them make that transition.”
She also called for the reformation of sorority recruitment to remove stigmas associated with specific houses and make the process more inclusive and accessible.
Funk emphasized the need to view Panhell as a collaborative, consensus-based body, and noted that its leadership will also have to find a common agenda with the presidents of individual sororities and with affiliated women in general.
Gilmore wrote in an email that he hopes to be closely involved with ongoing reforms to the Greek system as IFC president, wanting to ensure that future Dartmouth students have access to the same sort of Greek system he has known and enjoyed. Additionally, he emphasized the role fraternities have in curbing sexual assault and wrote that the IFC will focus on the creation of an interfraternity network in the near future to combat sexual assault on campus. This will be a standing committee with at least one delegate from each fraternity.
Other prominent goals for Gilmore are the implementation and organization of certain “Moving Dartmouth Forward” policies — notably the third-party bartender and bouncer policy for parties — and focusing on student safety, rather than “the amount of beer in the basement.”
Wilkins could not be reached for comment by press time, but incoming GLC vice chair David Bassali ’16 said that he hopes to address fundamental problems in the Greek system and to work with other GLC executives to overcome those challenges.
“The problems that we are facing are definitely wider issues that are affecting not just Dartmouth but everyone, but I don’t think that’s an excuse to not address those issues,” he said.
Bassali emphasized curbing sexual assault and binge drinking as a major objective for his time on the GLC.
Taylor Watson ’16, the incoming GLC accountability chair, said that he wants Greek houses to shift attention away from themselves and instead focus on being social and academic spaces or “living rooms for campus.”
“If you look at the reality of campus, these [Greek organizations] are the main social groups,” Watson said. “They are the dominant forces for people’s efforts and activities, so it makes sense that rather than ignore that fact, [we] embrace that fact and have them take on more responsibilities, but also get more flexibility from the College in exchange. It’s a mindset shift away from ‘Greek houses for Greek houses’ and toward ‘Greek houses for campus.’”
Watson called Greek houses “self-centered organizations” and said that he hopes to end the stigma associated with non-members studying, socializing and generally being present in Greek houses.
“People talk about Greek houses in the day versus the night, because they really do not exist during the day outside of letters on shirts, but in the night is really when they’re present,” he said. “But think about a living room space — that’s present throughout the day.”
Watson said that he hopes to make the position of accountability chair more visible to students, and said that he hopes to attend pre-rush events and Greek events for freshmen during their orientation.
Election procedures for the three organizations varied greatly. Brett Drucker ’15, the outgoing IFC public relations and outreach chair, said that IFC houses nominate candidates as they see fit, and those candidates then make their pitch to assembled IFC house presidents. The candidates then leave the room and a secret ballot is taken, Drucker said. In several cases, a runoff ballot was needed to determine a winner, as races were very close, he said.
Most houses put forward candidates, but Drucker said that house rivalries do not play into the election process.
For Panhell’s election process, applications are first sent out to sophomores and juniors who are affiliated with a Panhell sorority, outgoing Panhell vice president for public relations Jessica Ke ’15 said. Interested candidates submit a resume and, for some positions, a writing sample, she said.
The incumbent executive board is then responsible for holding 15-minute interviews with each candidate and selecting a slate of 10 individuals they feel would make the best new executive board. They then distribute this slate to the presidents of the Panhell sororities, who have the option of challenging the executive board’s recommendations on behalf of their own members who applied for positions and were not put on the final slate, Ke said. Four or five challenges were made this year, Ke said.
In total, 45 women applied for positions on Panhell’s executive board. Of the 10 elected, nine were members of the Class of 2016 and one belonged to the Class of 2017. The applicant pool was larger than it has been in years past, Ke said.
This process, which replaced Panhell’s previous procedure of allowing each candidate to make a 30-second speech before the assembled sorority presidents, was more effective, Ke said. She noted that it is more than a popularity contest, unlike the former system.
All but one Panhell sorority — Epsilon Kappa Theta — are represented on the new board, and Alpha Xi Delta, Kappa Delta Epsilon and Sigma Delta sororities are all represented by two members. There is no requirement that all Panhell sororities be represented on the executive board, but four members must be from local sororities and no house may have more than two members, Ke said.
Ke said that the new board was selected in part because Panhell’s executives felt that they would continue the current board’s work in promoting scholarship opportunities, achieving equal representation on the GLC and altering the recruitment process.
Funk said that the election process was more holistic than it has been in years past.
“We purposely picked women who have a myriad of opinions,” Funk said. “They’re not all just coming from the same place, but they all have the same goal in mind, which is to try to improve the Greek system.”
The GLC uses a different process from those of IFC and Panhell. Resumes are collected from each candidate one week before the election. The current GLC board views the resumes and clears candidates to advance to a vote from all Greek presidents, GLC accountability chair Sarah Lucas ’15 said.
The process went smoothly, Lucas said, but no applications were submitted by members of the Gender Inclusive Greek Council, the National Pan-Hellenic Council or National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations.
Elections for vice chair and accountability chair were quite close, Lucas said, while the election for chair was less so, with Wilkins — who presided over the GLC in the summer 2014 term — elected by a considerable margin.
“She did a fantastic job over the summer, and the presidents just saw what a clear vision she has for the upcoming year, and they were just really excited about putting her back in as chair,” Lucas said.
The new executives will now undergo a training process with the outgoing executive boards, with boards training future executives both in groups and on a one-on-one basis.
