AEPi Struggling at Dartmouth
Bad news from the Dartmouth Newspaper:
The Interfraternity Council voted Tuesday night against allowing national Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi to receive official College recognition. The vote marked the first time the Council has considered expansion since the Board of Trustees lifted its moratorium on new Greek organizations last June.
A small group of students interested in AEPi have been meeting weekly since late fall and now seek to be officially recognized by the College. Although IFC presidents seem reluctant to expand, members of the AEPi interest group believe there is a need for their fraternity within the Dartmouth social scene.
AEPi President Patrick Karas offered some comments in the article about why he thought the vote went the way it did:
Karas said he fears that the current fraternities of the IFC view a new fraternity as competition, but he stressed that “there are plenty of eligible undergraduates” interested in AEPi who are currently unaffiliated, and thus AEPi would not be competing with current fraternities for new members.
Cunningham believes that the vote against AEPi is not related to the fraternity’s official affiliation with Judaism. Rather, Cunningham believes that IFC presidents do not see a need for expansion at this time.
Karas said that some fraternity presidents expressed concern that a Jewish fraternity would segregate the Jewish community, but he believes that this will not happen due to the social, rather than religious, nature of the organization. Despite AEPi’s initial setback, the club plans to try once again for the IFC’s approval.
The Dartmouth fired back two days later with an editorial criticizing the decision, “Having the Players Call the Game”
Karas said in the article that they will move forward with their plans, and that they hope to eventually gain university recognition. Brothers everywhere can help out their efforts be using the online rushee referral form from the International AEPi website to pass along information about any Jewish friends or relatives at Dartmouth.
There is a quote somewhere in Ender’s Game that goes something like “They hate you because you’re better than them. They’ll stop hating you when you are so good, they can no longer deny you.”
We refounded our colony without the permission of IFC, and just this last year joined when they decided to add more fraternities. During our presentation to them, we were questioned as to why we didn’t ask permission first and why we were “going against the ifc”. We explained we had no idea, first of all, and second of all, we’ve been trying to join from the start and we were given trouble by them.
They asked us “so what will you do if we don’t let you on?” And I responded that we would stay in the house directly across campus, shine our light on the letters on the front of the house, and continue to be so good, they’ll wonder why they didn’t let us on.
They let us on.
Comment by Dan Goldberg — June 16, 2006 @ 3:38 pm
Don’t stop, guys. Keep going, and make yourself so amazing that they simply cannot ignore you. It certainly worked for us.
Everyone on campus knew that AEPi was there, and that we weren’t going anywhere, and the people on IFC were complaining because we were doing better than some of their chapters and weren’t under their rules.
They’ll come around.
Dan Goldberg
Omicron Deuteron ‘08
Comment by Dan Goldberg — June 16, 2006 @ 3:40 pm
Oops, the first time it told me it didn’t get posted, so I resposted. My apologies.
Comment by Dan Goldberg — June 16, 2006 @ 3:41 pm
I have faith in the brothers at Darmouth. I met a few of them at our past regional conclave, and they seem like they have their acts together. It took Gamma Mu (George Mason University) a long time to be recognized at our campus, and now we are. The presence of being recognized does not feel as good as knowing that we worked hard to become recognized. I look forward to hearing future progress.
Marc Ehrman
Gamma Mu ‘07
Comment by Marc Ehrman — June 20, 2006 @ 11:10 pm