The Greek judicial review process will be a topic of the second Student Government-sponsored Town Hall Forum, which is scheduled for tonight at 8 p.m. in the Student Senate Chambers.
Jay Dawkins, student body president and junior in civil engineering, said Office of Student Conduct director Paul Cousins will speak about ways that Greek organizationss can handle disciplinary issues internally.
“There have been conversations with the Office of Student Conduct about taking another look at the way we handle situations like social probation and how fraternity and sorority disciplinary actions are handled,” he said.
While plans for Greek judicial review are not final, Public Defender Ben Mazur said it is important that communication improves between the Greek community and Student Conduct.
“This new program will add a new level of responsibility and accountability to the Greek leadership between individual fraternities and sororities,” he said.
Many members of the University’s Greek community have felt they were treated unfairly in the disciplinary process because of negative stereotypes associated with Greek organizations, Mazur, a senior in religious studies, said.
Greek organizations work hard to give themselves a positive image, he said.
According to Mazur, some groups have expressed that “it’s not a fair system when a fraternity is tried as a whole organization instead of as individual members.”
A possibility for a new system would be for a special student-run council to try Greek organizations with disciplinary troubles.
With this, Mazur said, the students on the council would only deal with Greek issues, so they would be more familiar and could handle situations accordingly.
Neil Ballentine, a junior in biological sciences who has planned the town hall series with Dawkins, said the forum will also focus on Centennial Campus growth and development and gives administrators a chance to discuss campus issues with students.
“This is definitely for the students, but the faculty and administration are buying into it as well,” he said.
The forums are monthly events to discuss whatever issues are important to students at that time, Ballentine said.
“The biggest thing is just getting students involved, getting students aware of what’s going on,” he said.
Most of the students at the first town hall were involved in Student Government, but Ballentine said he has gotten a better response for Tuesday’s event than the last.
“The first one was just kind of a trial and error type thing,” he said. “The response has been a lot better.”
Ballentine made a Facebook group and he and other promoters have placed double the sandwich boards and posters than were available for the first forum.