More sober monitors, contact lists for campus resources and an increased focus on peer-to-peer assistance could be staples of Panhellenic Council policy if a new set of recommendations is fully adopted, Panhell vice president of public relations Allison Chou ’17 said.
Existing door duty policy that calls for both fraternity and sorority representatives at each co-hosted event, coupled with every affiliated student’s Dartmouth Bystander Initiative training, means that the policy will fit into a larger framework of sexual misconduct prevention measures, Chou said.
“If these policies are ultimately passed and show great results, the hope is that other organizations in the Dartmouth community might follow suit,” she said.
The policies have in large part been voluntarily enacted by individual sororities already, but Panhell will still vote on the sexual misconduct agenda put forward by Panhell’s summer executive board, Chou said.
“A lot of the houses already had versions of this in place, and this was just to help them develop something more comprehensive, and if they didn’t have something in place, to put it in place,” Panhell’s summer vice president of research and policy Mercedes de Guardiola ’17 said.
The recommendations mandate that each sorority maintain a “safety sheet” including contact information for the house’s president, vice president and risk manager, any members with emergency medical or first aid training, Safe Ride, Safety and Security, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Hanover Police and a variety of College health service offices, and that the sheet be placed by each main entrance and exit, in each bathroom and at the door exiting the house’s basement.
“It reflects the trend in Panhell and hopefully soon in the [Interfraternity Council] of adopting best practices that already exist,” Greek Leadership Council accountability chair Taylor Watson ’16 said.
Similar safety sheets have been used at Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity — where Watson is affiliated — for some time, he said.
The main change in the recommendations is the requirement that sororities dispatch one to two sober monitors to each party, formal or tails event that they host or co-host, regardless of its location. The sober monitor would be limited to one drink per hour and would be drawn from house officers with experience with risk management and sexual assault prevention, de Guardiola said.
The policy mandating that the sober monitor be limited to one drink per hour is intended to ensure that the duty does not seem like a punishment for members, she said.
“We want people to volunteer for this with the aim of helping their own community,” she said. “One drink in an hour is not going to impair you.”
College policy dictates that all parties or tails events already have four sober members of the hosting house on hand, including two members assigned to door duty and two to bar duty, Watson said. The main addition in Panhell’s recommended policy shift is the presence of sorority members at events hosted by houses at which they are not members, he said.
Watson said that it is likely that many fraternity leaders might not notice the sober monitors, and would likely not be bothered by the policy shift.
“The rationale is just to better equip houses with the tools and the basic training that will help them respond to any incidences of sexual assault that might happen to any member of a house,” Chou said.
A major component of the recommendations was the designation of a risk manager at each sorority, Chou said. Since each house’s management structure is unique, some houses do not have an official risk manager, with duties that might come under the risk manager’s portfolio instead being divided up between officers, she said.
While some houses will still not have an official risk manager, they are now highly encouraged to designate one official who can assume that capacity for events and will be required to do so should the policies be officially adopted by Panhell, Chou said.
The recommendations were meant to be a primarily voluntary device through which sororities could standardize their policies, de Guardiola said.
Panhell will review the recommendations and discuss them further following fall recruitment, Chou said. Thereafter, a vote of sorority presidents may occur to officially adopt the measures, she said.
“From what we understand, the women in the Panhellenic community are willing and able to offer their time and effort for the greater good, and that’s exactly what these policies are aiming to do,” she said.
Chou said the recommendations were “well thought out” and represented a positive change for the Panhellenic community.
The policy recommendations do not represent major shifts in Panhell policy or College sexual misconduct prevention policy, de Guardiola said. Instead, they are part of a much broader set of policies that have been implemented over a long period of time to make Greek spaces on campus safer, she said.
“A lot of little changes together can help the bigger picture,” she said.
