Beginning Fall Semester, the U’s fraternities are implementing a new alcohol policy requiring houses to petition the privilege to have alcohol on fraternity property. The fraternities that do not meet the U’s requirements will have their petition denied and not be allowed possession of alcohol on fraternity grounds.
“The legislation is basically how we’re going to control which house has the opportunity to be wet,” said Arash Bakhshandehpour, a senior in business administration and the president of the Interfraternity Council. “For example, they have to meet certain requirements. For academics they have to be above the all men’s campus average GPA, there can’t be any citations, any misdemeanors that are related to the house, and if a house meets those kind of requirement[s] then they’re allowed to petition for a wet semester.”
The all men’s GPA average for the U is 3.08. Along with the requirement mentioned by Bakhshandehpour, other rules and requirements the fraternities must meet before they are allowed permission to partake in the consumption of alcohol on Greek Row, including being in good standing with the U and no alcohol-related incidents in the past calender year.
The fraternities must petition annually for a wet semester. Sororities have been dry for decades, said Arlyn Bradshaw, the assistant dean of students.
“The fraternities and sororities properties are all privately owned so they’re not owned by the university, so we don’t specifically set rules. They have individual housing corporations that own them for the individual groups,” Bradshaw said. “However, though, both under university policy and city ordinance we are responsible for somewhat governing the area, making sure they are meeting the policies and standards of the university, and we do enforce university policy as well as Greek Council policy on the row.”
Bakhshandehpour said the reason the U began considering an alcohol restriction is related to an incident at a Utah State University fraternity. At the time Utah State had no policies in place regarding alcohol and some of the liability for the incident fell back to the university.
“The reason we thought it was a great idea is because it puts less liability on the University of Utah,” Bakhshandehpour said. “So the university was basically going to make all the fraternities dry, and opposed to having the administration come in and make a decision for us, we kind of took up the initiative and wrote up a legislation.”
The new policy also requires police officers who are hired to supervise fraternity events to check picture identification and monitor the entrances. According to the Interfraternity Council’s alcohol policy, the houses will also be required to have two sober chapter officials to be “present at the entrance to all functions to assist the police.”
The new policy also stipulates an official guest list for each event which must be submitted to the Greek Council coordinator prior the event. Non-members who are not on the list will not be granted entrance to fraternity grounds. As well, there will be no drinking games permitted on fraternity property.
When asked about the new alcohol policy, the members of the Sigma Nu house declined to comment or had no idea about the new policy. They said the fraternity president James Russell-Field would be the person to contact. Russell-Field did not respond to an interview request.
Bradshaw said there have not been any specific instances involving alcohol at the U that led to this policy.
“By and large, especially I think for the size of our greek community, they’re fairly well-behaved, but there is always concern about alcohol consumption with any subset of college students. College students like to have fun, not just fraternity and sorority students, but the other reality is you have a lot of students that aren’t 21 yet. Even if alcohol is legally allowed in the house a majority of their members are likely not old enough to consume that alcohol,” Bradshaw said.